Shipbucket

Yet another personal design of mine as i hone my shipbuilding skills, hope you guys enjoy

It needs refinement of the Shipbucket style and more of certain details, less of others (the superstructure seems busy with things designed to make it look busy, rather than purposeful things).

Really, that's it. What you need to do to fix it is the thing you've done to draw it in the first place - practice. It's a good sign, take this as a compliment and encouragement.

As far as an actual practical ship it's a little confused (a spotting tower with a huge radar dish?) but it seems like a halfway logical scout cruiser.

Agreed with the previous comment(s) but overall a good start mate.

Going to be quite tough to fish those boats out of there since they're totally covered by funnel stay lines!

Correct me if I`m wrong, but ain`t those 8"/55 Mark 15 you have as the main weaponry. If so, this is a heavy cruiser, and therefore CA-1.

I'm also curious why a cruiser is called the "South Carolina class". State names were reserved for battleships, cruisers received city names.

This design is also a bit incoherent -- why are you shipping a bunch of fancy ship's boats, a decidedly pre-war feature, yet at the same time you've got the radar fit of the post-war Oregon City or Fargo classes? Minus of course any surface search capability which you seem to have ignored!

The ship seems to be stuck between years. For pre-war features, you have .50-caliber machine guns, a large boat complement, an enclosed bridge, and a large spotting top. For mid-war features, you have the Kingfisher floatplane, a scattering of heavy AA in the form of twin Bofors, and the Mk.34/8 GFCS combination. For late-war features, you have the extremely modern (for WWII) SK-2 and SP mix, albeit without any form of surface search capability.

The first thing you will need to do is pick a year for this ship to be displayed in, and then do some research as to what components should be present.

This is the evolution I would imagine:

1939:
- 8-10 .50-caliber machine guns, IN TUBS and not along the rails like you have, this is a distinctly modern USN feature
- No machine cannon (delete all 40mm Bofors)
- Enclosed bridge like you have
- No radar fit
- Mast tops have crow's nests and yardarms, complicated rigging system some of which are HF radio wire antennas
- SOC Seagull float plane or earlier
- Armored conning tower ahead of the bridge
- Fancy spotting top like you have

1942:
- Start reducing the size of the bridge
- Remove armored conning tower
- Reduce the spotting top, add 20mm Oerlikons in tubs where the spotting tower used to be
- Add 1 or 2 Bofors mounts
- SC air search radar on foremast, SG on stub mount above the bridge

1944:
- Delete the bridge and replace it with an open bridge a la Fargo or Oregon City
- Cram as much 20mm and 40mm AA as possible
- Mk.51 directors for 40mm fire control
- SK air search radar on foremast, SG on topmast above it, backup SG on mainmast

1945:
- Add ECM gear
- SP height finder on mainmast, relocate aft SG to topmast

This ship has no secondary battery?

Colosseum, when you said put the .50 cals and the 20mm Oerlikons in tubs did you like how they are in your Iowa drawing?



Karle 94, I originally planned on having the main guns be 5"/38 Mk.12's but I decided to go with the 8"/55 Mk. 15's, in turn I forgot to change the CL to CA

I'll add my thoughts on top of Colosseum's words
First your ships has a too long stem/bow compared to the stern, and funnels look too big for the ship.
In my opinion those funnels are too far aft leaving no room for the engines.
Watch the heavy cruisers Astoria CA34 for heavy inter-war cruiser or the Brooklyn CL40 thread for some of the above mentioned topics.
Also bear in mind that all US cruisers, of that era, had four shafts (apart from the Atlanta CL51 class).

You can actually have the 1.1"/75 'Chicago Piano' AA Gun in place of the 40mm Bofors for the prewar version...

Adam_L_M wrote:Colosseum, when you said put the .50 cals and the 20mm Oerlikons in tubs did you like how they are in your Iowa drawing?

Karle 94, I originally planned on having the main guns be 5"/38 Mk.12's but I decided to go with the 8"/55 Mk. 15's, in turn I forgot to change the CL to CA

Yes, more or less. It's really up to your personal judgment on how you want to portray them.

You can actually have the 1.1"/75 'Chicago Piano' AA Gun in place of the 40mm Bofors for the prewar version...

This is true, but only in severely reduced quantities. Large light AA fits only appear towards the middle of the war when it was realized that large fleet units were valuable primarily as carrier escorts with lots of AA guns.