Shipbucket

Great!

I'm going to be the contrarian here and say that I think the ships, and the drawings, look fantastic. The DDGs have a dashing sleekness to them.

Finished this project by completing the CG variants.
images gone due to the main site deletion, check the first post
Full description in the first post.

The rump #2 stack just looks so stupid! I love it!

I wonder how SCANFAR would like being so close (several feet!) to the #1 stack. All that heat, it... it couldn't be good, right?

I had no idea these had a helo amidships, or I had forgotten. It looks rather exciting, and surely in service it would be heavily criticized for not being able to take even a slightly larger helo (e.g. a cross-decked H-3).

Its certainly interesting and a great drawing.

Erik, I wonder how tight the landing pad is, what's the width of the rear superstructure? In service would they think of quickly fiting the empty Polaris area (assuming OTL none fitting to surface ships?) as a larger second landing/refuelling pad?

That is an impressive cruiser!
The drawing looks good, this has been an excellent series.

Two questions though;
Why wasn't nuclear power considered for the CG? Given the power needs it seems an ideal candidate. I'm assuming the Long Beach was the logical outcome of that though.
Was Polaris included on the CGs because the hull size made a convenient launching platform, or was a strategic strike role integral to the CG?

@ erik_t: The helipad is not designated on the reference works, only that there is an helideck and on board storage for 2 manned helicopters. I put it amidships, as that was the only place that had good access to any possible hangar space, while the Polaris missiles (also not mentioned with position on the drawing) which I first had amidships, interfered with any machinery arrangement I could think off based on the funnels. Putting the hangars in that part of the superstructure also explains the position of the Mk 112 launcher, all the way against the superstructure.

I suspect the funnel would be ducted closer into the superstructure in reality, but with all the electronics in the superstructure block I suspect any passage of funnels trough that space would be problematic.

@ JSB: I suspect that would be the case. The aft superstructure is btw not that wide compared to the width of the ship, (slightly narrower then the Mk 10 launcher in the area with the funnel on it) but the superstructure forward is a full 2-helicopter hangar, so quite wide indeed. I expect diagonal or cross decked landings in any case.

@ Hood: Thanks! It was a lot of fun to work on, and finally no Typhon ships at all are drawn as real/never build designs

Unlikely as it sounds, I think nuclear power would be more useful for the DLG then for the CG, seeing that the DLG is very volume limited and can not easily ship all the power required for these radar systems. Long Beach was under construction while these concepts were made, which is most likely at the time she still would have Polaris on board, this CG would follow the same criteria as that ship I suspect. I would have to look up why she would have shipped it.

Why conventional powered at all then, this series? I suspect that is because of the separate design lineages of nuclear and conventional ships in the US Navy. Alternatively, it could be for a clear comparision, the impact the systems and standards would have on the design, separate from the powerplants. In hindsight, we know that the advanced phased array radar of these ships would develop into SPG-59, which on its own severely limited the operational range of the ships it would be fitted on due to huge power requirements, which meant it was almost impossible to fit it on conventionally powered ships. I suspect that idea would not be made better by adding SCANFAR, so for any ships build from these proposals I suspect nuclear power would be chosen indeed.

That said, the idea that modern capital ships like these could be conventionally powered is great and interesting in itself, especially when noted that CGN-9 was estimated to cost $250 Million, (which ended up as $320 Million), almost 20% more then the $206 Million this supposedly more advanced (and definitely just as or more capable) ship was going to cost.

It should be emphasized that these were very preliminary sketches, akin to Spring Styles. Design concept exploration shouldn't surprise us, even if the eventual ship wouldn't make a ton of sense.

Great work on these!

I bought the Friedman books on US warships some years ago now, usually secondhand.
I especially loved all the unbuilt 1950s and 1960s missile ships.
Talos, Typhon, Sea Mauler etc were much cooler than Seaslug and Seacat.
I always wodered what would have happened if the UK could have afforded the US systems for the County and Leander classes.
Thanks to Shipbucket we can now see