(Designs by Masao Okazaki)
The finest fighter/carrier combination ever constructed, the Yorktown and Minotaur go together like rum & coke. Representing the weirder sort of combinations one would expect from the United Earth Navy. And yet, despite this weirdness, these ships were arguably what won the Romulan War, through a combination of excellent deep range strike capability and simple good design.

The idea for the fighter concept ultimately started with the Curran class in 2107. Designed as a patrol vessel the Curran was a rather small vessel at only 62 metres long, used ballistic weaponry and was powered by an admittedly oversized fusion reactor for the day. This gave the ship respectable high warp performance at the expense of extremely poor range, with the ship being unable to travel across interstellar distances unless coasting at relativistic speeds. This resulted in easy construction but difficult delivery, and so the Bison class UESS Somerset was converted to transport the diminutive vessels to their deployments, as a 2 year wait for delivery by a Bison was considered far better than 20 years. In an emergency Somerset was fully capable of releasing the Currans she carried, but this was only expected in event of a reactor failure.

Then the Kzinti attacked. In 2115 the Kzinti Republic made the claim that Earth was within Kzinti territory, and made a point to try and attack the system to enforce the territorial claims. During one of these attacks a Kzinti Vessel made a run on the UESS Somerset. As she was travelling without actual escort the crew made the desperate decision to launch the two Curran class ships she was carrying to use for defence. The ships quickly warped to the Kzinti vessel's position as the Somerset fled, firing off their missiles and dispatching the ship with no casualties on the UE side. Word of this success very quickly got back to Earth, and the impression made was strong. Quickly 5 other Bisons were recalled for identical conversions to the Somerset, becoming the first Carriers of the UE.

During the second Kzinti War, the performance of the Bisons at warp was ultimately becoming problematic, as both them and their Curran escorts were ultimately rather slow by that point. Warp 3 was starting to be achieved by larger interstellar ships with ranges doubled, and so the Curran no longer really offered a substantial advantage, with its weapons rendered obsolete by advances in Lasers. They required replacement and relatively soon. At the Warp 5 Institute, advances however had been made, with the first primitive matter/antimatter reactors offering incredible potential. The first design was ultimately known as the Antimatter Fuel Cell, which consisted of a small self contained antimatter reactor and fuel supply that could be started, but could not be stopped or controlled. This resulted in a fuel cell that offered incredible power but nowhere near good range. Regardless it was acceptable and thus chosen for the Curran's replacement as a strike craft, the Minotaur.

The Minotaur is a rather strange vessel, and has charitably been described as a warp nacelle with a crew on board. The craft was essentially divided in two, with the bow sporting two missile launchers designed for the WM-8 Ri Chu Nuclear missiles, with the ship carrying 16 such missiles. Backing this up were 4 LC-4 Laser Cannons. Behind this was a small 2-deck area for the ship's crew, with a small bridge, bathroom, bunk room and kitchen for the ship's crew of 3 on the upper deck. In case of emergency 3 stasis chambers could be found on the lower deck, which otherwise functioned as an engineering space. These decks were laid out vertically relative to the impulse engines, as was tradition at the time. Beneath this was a fusion reactor capable of powering the ship to Warp 1.4, in event of the carrier being lost. Beneath this was the antimatter cells, the ship's warp engine and the impulse engines. The ship was ultimately capable of speeds as high as Warp 4.5, but lacked the ability to travel more than 500AU at this speed. The Fusion Reactor was only rated to allow the ship to travel 6 light years, though the option of interstellar impulse cruising was always open to the crew.

The Minotaur made its debut on the Bison Carriers during the Battle of Alpha Centauri in 2123, where they easily dealt with the Kzinti vessels at hand. Capable of hitherto unknown speeds the ships were quite popular among crews, though the warp engine required rebuilding every 16 missions for fear of damage. This was relatively easy to accommodate, and so the ships were quickly dispersed among the 5 active Bison carriers. The little ships were ultimately instrumental in the defeat of the Kzinti, and remained in active service postwar.

Unfortunately their carriers did not. Whilst the Bison Class was highly successful, its use as a carrier left something to be desired, and after the end of the Kzinti war Starfleet ultimately desired a more capable carrier. Whilst by this point the Ganges Class was in service and serious thought was given to basing the new carrier on the vessels, the designers ultimately settled on the Conqueror Class as the basis. Inheriting the Conqueror's SXOC-XI-A Open Cavity Matter-Antimatter Reactor the Yorktown Class also carried a 4N-3B Fusion Reactor as an emergency power supply. These powered 4 Jaguar 3 Warp Nacelles, with the ship designed to alternate between two pairs of nacelles to minimise wear, which proved successful. The Yorktown class was ultimately the first to do this, something which evidently proved successful as even the modern Prometheus class does the same thing today. The result was a ship capable of cruising at Warp 3.6 and pushing itself as hard as Warp 3.9 in an emergency, which was incredibly fast for the era. Defending the ship were 4 interceptor missile launchers and two dual laser turret mounts. Internally the ship could carry 5 Minotaur class fighters, held on clamps that could extend and retract as needed. During fighter launch these arms would move along a track, release the Minotaur by the door for it to RCS out and then retract, giving space to allow the next set of clamps to rotate into position. For retrieval the clamps would extend, the Minotaur would make contact and the ship would be rotated into its berth. In an emergency the ship could release all 5 clamps in place and allow the Minotaur's to RCS towards the door, but this wasn't preferred due to the inherent danger of trying to move a fighter in a confined space. The fighter bay could be pressurised for maintenance, but this was usually only ever done on the return flight.

The first Yorktown class ship was launched in 2135, to modest success. Their most common use was in convoy escort, launching one or two Minotaurs if a threat was detected and sending them to intercept the potential opponent. Due to the United Earth always being concerned about its military might 11 other Yorktowns would be constructed, with 45 additional Minotaur class ships for them to carry, atop the 15 originally built for the Bison carriers and 65 in use as patrol ships. These ships would spend a lot of their time supporting Earth colonies with morale, or even carrying using their mildly overbuilt warp drives to expand their warp bubble enough to let impulse transports piggyback off them. Minotaurs even participated in civilian impulse racing tournaments, with the Minotaur fighter 83 Safety Last winning the Centauri 400 in 2142. In 2144 the Yorktowns and Minotaurs would be transferred to Starfleet and thus lose their UESS Prefixes and the Yorktowns lost their brilliant white paint, but otherwise little would change. These days of peaceful roaming around Earth's territory would come to a crashing halt in 2157, with the start of the Earth-Romulan War.

The Yorktowns were initially held back during the War, as the defensive nature of the war made their use ill-advised. However, as the Romulan assault was successfully blunted by the younger vessels, Yorktowns started heading out. Escorted primarily by Daedalus, NX or Intrepid class ships, the vessels would start doing deliberate deep strikes on Romulan territory. The first such mission was done on the Qualor system in 2158, but gradually the missions ramped up. A typical mission would see the strike group head to within 100AU of its target before launching the Minotaurs. The Minotaurs would then jump in at Warp 4.5, accompanied by an NX class ship if one was present. Once there the Minotaurs would go for their primary target whilst the NX screened against Romulan vessels, whilst the Yorktown and its Escorts moved to 400AU away on different vectors to confuse any response. Then the group would then reorganise, the fighters would return to the carrier and the ships would return to UE space. Over 70 such missions would be conducted along these lines, with only one Yorktown class carrier, the Forrestal, lost during the second raid on Berengaria. The fighter crews would be transferred to the Inspiration (NX-07) and the fighters set to return home at impulse speeds on autopilot. Ultimately the Yorktowns were probably the most important ships to the UE victories later in the war, and were present at all major battles.

But then the lasers fell silent, the white flag was raised and peace was declared. With the founding of the United Federation Of Planets in 2161 the ships rapidly became obsolete. The Yorktowns and Minotaurs were quickly sold off, with most Minotaurs rebuilt with a more expansive pressurised area and proper Dilithium M/AM reactor, becoming popular interstellar civilian yachts and racing craft, something extended to the Forrestal's fighters when they finally arrived home in 2180. Many Minotaurs are still active today, and the fighter Safety Last can be found at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum on display, with her 6 Centauri Cups on display within her. The Yorktowns ultimately made their civilian trade as warp ferries for smaller impulse ships, with the last one being retired in 2208. One ship, the UESS Monterey, can be found at the Fleet Museum's Europa Site, where she can not only be found on display but holds another Minotaur, 105 Blue E2, on display with her. All in all they remain possibly the most successful of the Bison Derivatives, and can easily be called some of the most successful ships the United Earth ever constructed.