SPRUANCE Class Radical Reconstruction

[DER386]

With a design like that I doubt that there would be room for an ASROC magazine located forward of the launcher (the magazine on the FF's I served on were a fairly large)
The Sea Sparrow launcher is in a precaious position. It would be very vulnerable to being struck by a helicopter landing/taking off.
I do agree the ship looks more like a warship - which is one thing
But the real key is how well is the ship laid out and how well can it perform it's assigned missions. (And is there room for growth)
Since internal space was at a premium in the actual Spruance class, I doubt the reduced superstructure would support all the required space.

[TimothyC]

Scifibug is there any chance I could get access to the article in question to read please?

And so were it's descendants, Erik. If this design had been built instead of the one that really was, what would Ticonderoga have looked like? I'm assuming Kidd might never have been built.

Litton DDM (Aegis DDG) for USN c. 1980

[Scifibug]

Give me a few days, I have to hook my printer/scanner up.
But I do have the illustration from the article the ship was drawn from.

And the FFG version.

[acelanceloet]

if I see it correctly, you have fixed the SM and the ECM to the latest drawings.... could you please edit the oto 76, the WM and the phalanx too? and maybe use the new SPS-49 then the drawing is up to todays standards again.... it is too good to be left in the past

btw, on the spruance one point: you might want to remove the hatch for the torpedo tubes at the stern, as you have put the TT's at the main deck now.

[erik_t]

Awesome. I'd seen these drawings before, but the scans were of much lower quality.

[MC Spoilt B'stard]

Great drawings , and indeed US warships should look like warships! I do get the feeling that they have some kind of german influance (MEKO) in them.

Love to see more , if there is more! (Ticondaroga's?!)

[erik_t]

There is nothing more because all future USN combatants became even more driven by actual functional needs (eg SPY-1 fields of view) rather than looks. Both Spruance and Perry were fairly layout-unconstrained with regards to electronics, each possessing two directors and a single major air-search set (Spruance also having SPQ-9 rather than the search element of WM20). Compare to eg California or Ticonderoga, with two air-search sets and four or five major directors... Of course even this Spruance is rather less mission-driven than the real thing, with major blind arcs for gunfire and the serious inability to fire ASROC forward into the best sonar arc (unless it fires directly over the superstructure, which is probably possible but would not be popular).

It's a fun exercise to make a warship look aggressive or scary or whatever, but it's an idiotic thing to have as a major priority.