How real proposals sometimes are worse then kitbashes: Polaris/Talos Alaska

[acelanceloet]

After the war, CB-3 Hawaii was left unfinished. There was no need anymore for another Alaska class, so numerous proposals were made how to repurpose this ship. Among those proposals, were a conversion to missile test ship, missile conversion (either along the lines of Boston & Canberra or along the line of the CLG's) command ship (in addition to or as alternative to the Northampton and Wright) and finally an conversion to Talos/Polaris ship. In the end, in 1958, the still unfinished ship was towed to the breakers for disposal.

The Polaris/Talos proposal, done in Februari 1957, removed all guns off the ship, fitted 20 Polaris missiles on the stern and converted the rest of the ship into an similar configuration as USS Albany, With Talos and Tartar. Of this proposal, only a few sketches and descriptions have been published and I wondered how she would look if carried out. The drawing posted here is the result of my bit of research and drawing out of this design.

Depriciated, updated version on page 2 (link below)
Current version

As I did this primarily for research, any comments on what I might have forgotten, misunderstood or otherwise done wrong are very welcome! If no terrible errors are found, I will upload her to the test.shipbucket.com archive soon.

[Hood]

I will leave Colo to make any detailed comments on the equipment fit and parts.
It looks good to my eyes, though I would like to point out there is a newer S-58 helicopter in the Planebucket thread that looks much better.

[Colombamike]

interesting drawing
Waiting with impatience to see
- both june 1958 CBG studies (one with only missiles, the another one with guns-batterie forward)
- SCB83 project (command-ship conversion, very close to be really ordered around 1949-1953)
- and the Amazing never-were 1947-1948 CB3 (a mixed carrier/large missile-cruiser project)

[csatahajos]

I like your concept and drawing. It appears though that the funnel is moved way forward compared to the original ship's location. Maybe it's just me but rerouting the fu nel uptakes is not so simple. Otherwise very nicely done!

[acelanceloet]

@ Hood: I did not find any newer S-58, only the wessex...... are you certain there is one?
@ Colombamike: I will not be doing any other CB-1 class drawings in the near future, this one just catched my eye so I did it. If you have any good references for those you mentioned though, post them in the sources and references part of the forums and somebody might pick it up (and I will be glad to help)
@ csatahajos I have looked up if the movement of the funnel was possible, I was puzzled by it at first as well. The funnel is still on top of the boiler space, only now on top of the forward ones instead of the aft ones. Because of that, the ducting is not more complex then it was on the original design (which also had unit machinery but only one funnel)

[Krakatoa]

During this period, did a lot of the US cruisers, Long Beach etc have a pair of 5"/54 fitted to beam positions?

[odysseus1980]

Perhaps you mean 5"/38, because of large avalable numbers.

The conversion itself would be very expensive. However, in that era Italians also came close to fit Polaris in tjeir cruisers and even test fire one from Garibaldi cruiser. She retained their 4 launchers until she scrapped.

[eswube]

It has indeed some of that "relatively well-thought Nationstates design" feel, but a very interesting idea and nice drawing.

[Hood]

Sorry, yes that is a Wessex, but with a few mods to the engine area it could be made into an S-58 pretty easily.

[erik_t]

Dog ugly, but a good drawing.

Interesting to note how little you gain from additional displacement in the pre-Aegis era. CG-10 had an identical missile fit on 17,500 tons full load. Throw in a George Washington (16 Polaris) for 7000 tons submerged displacement and you're only at 25,000 tons or so. Alaska is another 10,000 tons on top of that, with a bigger (I think) crew!

It's inarguably inferior in survivability to the SSBN (as well as range), although it carries four more Polaris. And I think it could be argued the Albany makes for a better missile cruiser (since it has a helo hangar and 5" mounts). I think CBG-Alaska would have much deeper Talos magazines, but Talos fired so slowly that it's unclear to me how valuable these would have been in practice -- just how many engagements do you expect to have in this nuke-happy era?