The Isle of California

[TimothyC]

Liveries split to new topic here at the request of the author.

[TimothyC]

In the Isle of California Universe, the Kingdom of Hawai'i stays independent, and has a small, if capable navy. Following the T42B4 destroyers starting to reach their end of life in the 2000s, in 2007 the Ashcroft Administration approves the sale of three AEGIS equipped Gibbs & Cox Air Warfare Destroyers to the Royal Hawaiian Navy. These three ships are the

• D47 Kû Uaki (Sentinel/Guardian),
• D48 Mâkaha (Fierce/Ferocious)
  and
• D49 Po`okela (Champion)

While expensive, significant portions of the funding for the ships comes from US military aid. They will represent the high end of the fleet while three Californian built Worlmamirri (Mod-Absalon) destroyers will be the general purpose ships.
The Kû Uaki class is seen here in her peace-time paint scheme



The sale of SM-3s to the Kingdom was done later (but before the first hulls were delivered) under the Rodham Administration.

[acelanceloet]

I have to say, that is one hell of a paintjob :S

[Thiel]

The mod-absalon intrigues me. DO you have any details?

[Voyager989]

Updated - improved habitability, radars, and a rationalization of other equipment. (If anyone can see a way to put life rafts on without getting into an arc of fire, that would be helpful...)

[Thiel]

There's plenty of room abeam the aft deckhouse and between the 20mm and the A gun. Speaking of 20mm guns, the one you're using is way out of scale.

[eswube]

It's an interesting work. And nice to see this thread continuing.

[Voyager989]

I know the gun is bigger than the current one - it's meant to be a twin 25mm, so it seemed close enough to work.

On ships with inflatable life-raft canisters, they always seem to be placed on a structure one deck above the weather deck (My interpretation of this was that, like the secondary guns set high on US battleship hulls, even freeboard was no guarantee against water lapping up the side of the hull, and that mounted that low, they might be damaged.) - as a flush-deck ship, does she have the freeboard to make such a thing work? The aft area you mentioned I have tested, but the forward just seemed to too vulnerable to weather when mocked up.

[Thiel]

You could put them on one of those scaffolding/overhead rail affairs. That would make it possible to mount them over the 25mm gun, wich should minimise any blast related issues. I'm assuming that the 25mm gun is a low angle only weapon.

[Voyager989]

The Queen Ranavalona I class guided missile cruisers - a total of sixteen were built, to replace a total of forty-four older large vessels of varying types, most of them converted to missile ships. Twenty thousand seagoing berths were saved in the process. Powered by two nuclear reactors of a type used for the Rays of Dawn SSBN class then under development, they had a maximum sustained speed of 30 knots when six months out of dock fully laden. Missiles shown are those available as of 2013 - as built, the ships carried mostly Sea Dart II Mark 2, including NTU-like sharing of illuminators to improve performance - the Type 909's were removed once this missile left service.

Guns taken off post-WWII gun cruiser class which these vessels replaced. Ships were designed for GWS-27, and so lacked 911 directors. First unit completed 1991, and is shown in the darker version of the Navy's paint scheme.

Tomahawk, ALSAM and Sea Lance are stand-ins for the Californian equivalent systems, as I am still trying to conceptualize the missile designs for them.