Battleship Yamato Aegis Modernization and Rebuild

[KWAM]

A kitbashed rebuild of Yamato as an Aegis equipped guided missile battleship. I'd like to think the design itself is mostly sound, even though it's prohibitively expensive to build, to say nothing of what absurd reasons must be contrived to explain how Yamato somehow survived into the 21st century.





Reconstruction of Yamato as an Aegis Combat System equipped guided missile battleship. Her superstructure has been entirely rebuilt, using the more angular shapes typical of modern ship designs. An AN/SPY-1D(V) radar has been added, with the distinctive panels visible near the top of what used to be her pagoda. Her fire control system has been replaced with a modern Mk 160 gun control system with AN/SPG-62 fire control radars, though she retains the optical rangefinders on her superstructure and main battery turrets.

The main battery of the ship consists of nine 46cm/50 Type 94 Mod 2 guns, which are largely identical to her original armament but can fire modern munitions such as laser guided rounds, as well as improved iterations of her original 46cm AP and HE rounds. Due to the heavy muzzle blast from these guns, shielding has been added to the deck and superstructure to direct the blast away from the VLS and fire control radars and prevent damage.

Her four 8"/55 Mk 71 Mod 1 guns were originally designed by the United States under the Major Caliber Lightweight Gun program, but have been significantly modernized with a new stealthier turret as well as a 15 rounds per minute fire rate (compared to 12 for the original incarnation) thanks to an improved autoloader.

A Mk 41 VLS with 192 cells has been added aft of the number 3 turret, replacing most of her aircraft hangar. The bow has been lengthened by some 15m to make room for a further 128 cells forward for a total of 320 cells. Thanks to Yamato's wide beam, these launchers are 16 cells wide, rather than the more traditional 8 as fitted to previous Aegis ships. The launchers carry SM-2MR and SM-3 missiles. Due to the lack of on-board sonar, the VL-ASROC is not normally carried. The rear VLS is entirely strike length (7.7m depth), while the forward VLS carries 64 strike length cells inboard and 64 self-defense length cells (5.3m depth) outboard to follow the contours of the hull. All VLS are outside the protection of her armored citadel.

Canister launchers for the Type 90 SSM-1B ship to ship missile are also carried in addition to the 320 VLS cells, with eight quadruple launchers for a total of 32 missiles. These launchers are placed on the deck amidships, near her funnel.

Additionally, she carries eight 5”/62 Mk 45 Mod 4 guns (identical to the examples fitted to the Atago Class destroyers) as well as four SeaRAM missile launchers and six 20mm Phalanx Block 1B CIWS for point defense. As countermeasures, she carries the NOLQ-3D ECM system as well eight Mk 36 SRBOC launchers.

A helicopter platform has been added on her stern, and space is available in her hangar for two Mitsubishi SH-60K Seahawk helicopters. Boats aboard ship are stowed in the boat hangar near her stern.

The large increase in weight due to the rebuilt superstructure necessitated bulges as well as Denny-Brown stabilization fins to maintain her stability as a gun platform and reduce her draft. The ship's auxiliary rudder, deemed ineffective, has been removed to save weight. Her boilers and steam turbines have been stripped out and replaced with eight IHI/GE LM2500-300 gas turbine engines in a COGLAG (COmbined Gas turbine eLectric And Gas turbine) configuration driving four screws. The combination of new engines with the lengthened bow allows the ship to exceed 30 knots despite the negative hydrodynamic effects of the new bulges.

The improved range of her modernized main guns as well as the massive complement of missiles she carries makes her extremely adept in the anti-ship and anti-air roles. However, she cannot effectively carry out anti-submarine duties due to her large size and lack of on-board sonar, and must rely on her escorts and helicopters for ASW. Support of ground troops is also possible, but Japan's pacifist constitution heavily limits her use in this role.

As the ship possesses more than three times as many missiles as an Atago-class destroyer, the decision was made for Yamato to be reclassified as BBG (Battleship, Guided Missile) rather than BB (Battleship).

This is the first shipbucket style drawing I actually finished (the other one is still a WIP), done on and off over the course of about ten days. I probably shouldn't have done something as ambitious as this as my first attempt, but Yamato's birthday was on the 8th so I had to do this.

The design was largely inspired and based on this image, but is nowhere near an exact representation.


In the drawing I credit Erusia Force and acelanceloet as I drew the most content from their drawings, namely Erusia Force's Kure Museum Yamato and acelanceloet's Kongo-class destroyer. However, there are other people who deserve mention. I used some elements from ALVAMA's 1941 Yamato, as well using McConrads' Atago-class as reference for the mast (with some parts copied directly) and taking some parts from BB1987's IJN parts sheet.

I hope I didn't do anything horribly out of line (drawing, style, crediting or otherwise). It's my first real attempt at something like this, so any criticism is welcome.

[erik_t]

The concept is obviously rather ludicrous, but this is actually a pretty well-executed drawing! Out of respect for that quality execution, I'll try to keep comments restricted to within this bizarro alternate reality. I'm considering basically everything on the ship other than the main battery to be replaceable, since that's the level of refit we're considering here.

• First and foremost, one thing that always drives me crazy about super-BB refits is the preservation of long-base optical rangefinders and directors (here, the two objects to which you've attached large rotating candy-bar antennas). I cannot imagine what you would ever want to do with an optical main-battery director that you could not today do with a trivially small laser rangefinder and telescope.
• I don't think the secondary battery makes all that much sense, especially the 8". If I were you, I'd replace the four MCLWG with 5"/62, mostly for utility and starshell usage, and replace the 5" mounts you have with as many Oto 76mm as you can conceivably carry.
• The searchlight is silly, and I'd delete it. I also don't care for the very high Harpoon launcher; at some point, you'll start running into topweight issues, and in any case what crane would even load it?
• Many of your SPG-62 illuminators are so close into the superstructure that they could not elevate or train.
• The stabilizers compromise the TDS, and I'd delete them (if indeed they would even work there at all).
• The little green thing below the after main battery director is a nav light that does not make sense here. Delete it.

It's dumb, but it's a very fun and well-done dumb. If everything on Nationstates was this well thought out, I'd be a happy camper.

[heuhen]

You can kitbash anything in the world and it would just look silly.

But this is so well done kitbash, that even I will say Bravo well done, she looks nice.

I am no expert I'm just good in drawing ships, but I second what erik_t says.

[Tempest]

Excellently done KWAM! I like it a lot, I love your data card also

All the best

Tempest.

[heuhen]

Excellently done KWAM! I like it a lot, I love your data card also

All the best

Tempest.

Just to be nasty, it's standard data card, originally made to be with drawings we post on the forum, but very rarely used.

[Tempest]

Ah, thanks for that, I've never seen that before, should be used more often

All the best

Tempest.

[heuhen]

Ah, thanks for that, I've never seen that before, should be used more often

All the best

Tempest.

it's on the main page.

[KWAM]

Updated:



And B-side updated to reflect changes:



I've made pretty much all the changes erik was suggesting. 8-inchers removed from secondary battery. They were originally added be consistent with the reference but erik was right about them being pretty impractical. Since the 5" guns are much smaller than the 8" guns, the rear of the superstructure had to be shifted to be closer to the mount near the number 3 main battery turret. "As many Oto 76mm as you can conceivably carry" turned out to be 10 mounts around the superstructure.

The searchlight, the navlight and the SSM-1B launcher up high were all deleted, and the funnel moved closer to the bridge structure. The moved funnel combined with the shifted rear superstructure actually ended up freeing up enough room for two additional SSM-1B launchers, so the total is now up to 40 AShMs total in ten quad canister launchers, five on each side.

The stabilizers were not deleted. They've been moved up and they're part of the bulge now, which means that their addition no longer compromises hull integrity/torpedo defense, and also means that they're now in a position where they can actually stabilize something.

I was originally not going to remove the optical rangefinders since I enjoy how they look, but then I decided to run some numbers and found that because the mast is so close to the bridge structure, it's actually physically impossible to turn the rangefinders 90 degrees. So they've been replaced. Two SPG-62 illuminators forward, one at the rear. Considering how many weapons this thing has, having 9 SPG-62s might not be a bad thing. Some of the lower ones were moved slightly as well to give more clearance with the superstructure. Because two SPG-62s were added to the front, the forward OPS-28E surface search radar needed to be moved, so two arms were added to the side of the top of the superstructure, with an OPS-28E on each one. It's a bit reminiscent of the old rangefinders and Type 21 air search radar setup, but is actually still practical in a modern sense. Everybody wins.

[erik_t]

I have had more than my fair share of crazy missile-battleship ideas over the years, but I must confess active stabilizers whose machinery lives entirely inside of a bulge never occurred to me. Kudos.

I suspect the generic parts-sheet object you're using to represent OPS-28E is way, way over-size. Wikipedia tells me that OPS-28 is a 2m swung diameter, or about 13 pixels.

[Hood]

Its a crazy concept but its well drawn and put together.
When something this crazy is well drawn I think everyone can get on-board with the fun side of it.