i needed to make up a flagship and give her a name in honor of the review event, bc of course i did. the acs piorun is a small ship by admiral flagship standards, but i am very proud of her and would not trade her for a bigger ship even if i could. (which ofc i can, bc i am an admiral.)

her name comes from a polish destroyer from world war ii. the polish navy didn't fall when poland did - most of them were able to escape to the uk when it became clear that an invasion was likely imminent, and the polish navy-in-exile operated with the british royal navy for the duration of the war using both their small existing fleet and a number of ships loaned to them by the british. one of those loaned ships was a destroyer they named orp piorun (polish for thunderbolt).

during the war, destroyers often escorted troop transports to help protect them against u-boat attacks. piorun was participating in one such convoy with the british 4th destroyer flotilla in may 1941 when they received orders to break off and assist in locating the german battleship bismarck (which had just dealt a serious blow to the british royal navy by sinking hms hood) before it was able to reach a safe port to undergo repairs. the five destroyers couldn't really take on a battleship - bismarck was way too big - but the hope was that they could find it and direct british battleships to its location.

piorun was ultimately the first ship to locate bismarck, and decided to charge and engage the much, much, much bigger ship alone while the other destroyers reached them and got in position to launch their torpedoes. while doing this, piorun transmitted something along the lines of "i am a pole" (accounts differ on what was specifically said and how frequently, but they definitely announced that they were polish). the destroyers were ultimately able to keep bismarck busy all night and slow her down enough that the british battleships succeeded in reaching them the following day. (bismarck did indeed go down during the ensuing battle.)

there's also a memorial to the piorun's crew in clydebank (which is near glasgow in scotland) for their efforts to defend the town during two devastating air raids a couple months before assisting in the sinking of bismarck.

the g11 is a fake pennant number, and is a reference to the greenpoint neighborhood of brooklyn (zip code 11222), which has sometimes been known as "little poland" and has one of the largest polish immigrant communities in the country. it is also where i grew up.

tl;dr that's why i decided i needed to make up a flagship for myself.