Following the New Caledonian War, Oceanyka and most of its constituent polities faced a deep political crisis. Clark Badfellow, the teenage "Mad President", practically ran the country into the ground in his three months of rule, while civil war loomed on the horizon. The Farenday Pirates, which were mostly spared from the political upheaval, planned to resurface into naval dominance with a new project: the Kelly-class Battlecruisers, which incorporated cutting-edge technology (both Oceanykan and "requisitioned" from abroad) to threaten contemporary carrier strike groups, which would allow the pirates to dominate the Indo-Pacific region.
In September, a force approached from the north: the Kaiserliche Marine's East Asia Squadron. They'd been observing the Farenday Pirates for years and knew about the Kelly-class project. Despite hasty defensive preparations, the pirates proved unable to face endless attacks from German naval aviation. Their humiliation only deepened when the Germans got to cannon range and began bombarding Farenday into rubble. However, the true tactical objective of the East Asia Squadron became clear after the drydocks which housed the half-built Kelly-classes were brought down: the entire German air component, four battleships and dozens of screen ships began a merciless bombardment of the FPN Floating Fortress, pride of the pirates and the most powerful naval vessel in Earth.
The destruction of the pirate fleet translated to the virtual wipeout of the Oceanykan Federation's naval power, which deepened Cestlep's crisis even further. A couple weeks after this incident, Clark Badfellow was lynched and butchered by an angry mob. The Oceanykan Revolution followed soon after.
Regardless of the beating it took, the FPN Floating Fortress was sunk in shallow enough waters that it was almost immediately retrieved and rebuilt. In 1963 the FPN Floating Fortress II sailed once more, earning it's moniker as "The Wraith".