As the Tarren Trade Authority of Abergynolwyn IV expanded its territory, cargo vessels started to be raided by pirates and rogue aliens. In order to protect its interests on the fringes of its space, the T.T.A. commissioned the famous space racer builders on Llwyngwril III to design a fast and agile space fighter. The FLR-23a was the result

It was after the FLR-23a had been in service for a few months that people began to notice something about its appearance. The fighter was equipped with twin ion cannons, fed via grey ducts from the ion drive engines. It had large intakes for scooping what few atoms can be found in deep space, to supplement the onboard fuel. It was also a delta wing design to allow for operations in the atmosphere. Unfortunately from above, the FLR-23a looked very like a pair of Y-Fronts, a type of underwear outlawed over three centuries ago by the last Galactic Emperor, Wonko the Sane.

Despite its new name of the "Y-Front Fighter", the FLR-23a proved popular with pilots. The glass nose gave excellent visibility in dogfights. The Y-Front Fighter's space-racing pedigree gave it better speed and agility than anything else in known space. The designers hadn't covered it in too many useless greebles (like their space-racers) and so it had good atmospheric performance too. It is seen here with its weapons bay open and targeting radar deployed.

The Y-Front Fighter had three large ion drives, plus smaller thrusters at the edges of the engine bay. Its main weapon were the twin ion canons, which fired a stream of hyper-speed plasma, bled from the engines and channeled down the ducting to the front of the ship.

All Y-Front Fighters in Tarren Trade Authoriy service were painted in the T.T.A. colours of red & yellow. Privately owned versions were usually operated in the white primer that they came from the factory with. Unfortunately this would soon get covered in all sorts of stains, which were almost impossible to wash off, and so these Y-Fronts ended up as a sort of grey colour.

The twin ion cannons were supplemented by two "Firestreak", long-range intreceptor missiles. These were carried in an internal weapons bay, which also housed the "Blue Circle" targeting radar. The weapons bay doors also functioned as the landing gear for the Y-Front Fighter. This caused more than one crash landing due to pilot error/confusion.

Here we see a Y-Front Fighter coming in to land on the barren and uncivilised planet of Bala II. Frontier worlds like this were the typical operating environment for the FLR-23a squadrons or "packs".

Often the systems where the packs of Y-Fronts were used were underdeveloped, with old or cast-off equipment. Here we see a modified "Classic Space" fueling vehicle being used.

The Y-Front Fighter was the first ship from the Llwyngwril yards to be built with an escape capsule. Here we see a pilot walking away from being shot down in a dog-fight with pirates who made their money trading in illegal exotic birds. This was a persistent problem and it was common to see Y-Fronts tangling with Budgie Smugglers .

As mentioned earlier, the weapons bay doors also functioned as the landing gear. The edges of the doors worked as skids for landing the Y-Front Fighter. It was not unusual for pilots to land with the weapons bay doors safely closed and therefore with the landing gear up. Here we see workers finishing cleaning the paint from a runway after a crash landing. After a landing like this, incompetent pilots would be forced to clean the skid marks off their Y-Fronts.

This MOC was inspired by many things but mainly the Y-Wing from Star Wars, the colours used by Chris Foss for his 70's & 80's spaceships and the classic book on extra-terrestrial life "Aliens Love Underpants". This contains the line "...there are no pants in space...", well now there are!