I don't think it would have enough room in the hangar for F-35s, they're a lot bigger than the Mitsubishi and Aichi floatplanes that were carried.

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Quote from: jcf on July 22, 2024, 02:41:09 PMI don't think it would have enough room in the hangar for F-35s, they're a lot bigger than the Mitsubishi and Aichi floatplanes that were carried.

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And I don't think the Japanese have mastered the "its bigger on the inside" technology of Space Battleship Yamato yet

If you have vertical launch boxes do you need the Harpoon box launchers?
Maybe the F-35s just stopped in for gas? If that rear turret fires this aircraft will be in the drink for sure. Iowa class had the same problem.

It wouldn't make any sense to keep the aft turret if you want to carry the larger modern aircraft.
Removing the turret, its barbette and all the associated ammunition storage and handling gubbins
would give you a lot more room to work with in the aft section of the ship.

The gunblast would rip them up while knocking them into the drink, which is why the ship had
the below decks hangar. The open hold at the rear of the hangar isn't an elevator. The aircraft
were lifted out with the big cranes.

Quote from: kerick on July 22, 2024, 04:21:38 PMIf you have vertical launch boxes do you need the Harpoon box launchers?
Maybe the F-35s just stopped in for gas? If that rear turret fires this aircraft will be in the drink for sure. Iowa class had the same problem.

Plenty of ships have had VLS+Harpoon. Although Mk.41 could theoretically fire Harpoon, in practice there's some reason why they don't: maybe the missiles don't like being stored vertically for a long time?

The real question marks are over VLS+Tomahawk+ASROC+Sea Sparrow. All three of those missiles can be fired from Mk.41, and Sea Sparrow/ESSM can be fired from dedicated VLS systems (Mk.48?) that are short enough to mount amidships in place of the heavy AA guns, either above decks or half sunk into them.

I suspect that all those Phalanx guns' radars are going to interfere with each other too. Replacing some of them with RAM launchers would make sense.

The "smart" things to do would be:

1. If you must have helos and VLS (the F-35s are a non-starter), then take off the rear turret and put them all aft. Six guns is plenty for shore bombardment (which realistically is all they're good for in the modern era) or for anti-ship if you've developed a guided 18" shell. This way you make your stock of barrels and turret spares last 30% longer.

2. Go the New Jersey route and accept that it's only ever going to be a specialised gun+missile ship. Keep all nine guns forget helos and VLS, and replace most of the secondaries with Tomahawk, Harpoon and well-spaced Phalanx.

I've always thought about a modernized Iowa class and what you say makes sense.

The classic battleship is actually a poor choice for shore bombardment because of the limited life of the liners in the big guns. They also have to be brought into the littoral zone to be effective, and that requires control of air and sea because they're a big, fat target. Longer range missile batteries are by far the better choice, plus you'd have better control over what and where you'd hit.

In the case of the big 46cm guns of the Yamato class, they only built a very small number and the design was such that relining was too complicated, the IJN's intent was that a worn out gun would be replaced. Which is not conducive to a long service life.

Quote from: jcf on July 23, 2024, 03:54:08 PMThe classic battleship is actually a poor choice for shore bombardment because of the limited life of the liners in the big guns. They also have to be brought into the littoral zone to be effective, and that requires control of air and sea because they're a big, fat target. Longer range missile batteries are by far the better choice, plus you'd have better control over what and where you'd hit.

In the case of the big 46cm guns of the Yamato class, they only built a very small number and the design was such that relining was too complicated, the IJN's intent was that a worn out gun would be replaced. Which is not conducive to a long service life.

All very true.

The threat of mines is a big deal in the littorals too. When HMS Gloucester shot down the Silkworms heading for the USS Missouri in GW1, minefields were a limiting factor on how all the ships could maneuver.

Any scenario that envisages refitting battleships has to be predicated on a) them being the only big-gun ships preserved into the modern era for whatever reason, and b) there being a significant stock of barrels/liners/turret parts still in existance or the industrial capability to make them (unlikely). Both conditions were true for the Iowas, which is why they were (arguably) worth doing. To make them true for any Japanese WWII ship would need some radical rewriting of history.

However, radical rewriting of history is what we routinely do here...

I must admit though that I'd like to see more modernisation whiffs for WWII 8" or 6" cruisers, which were/are way cheaper to buy and run and more practical/expendable for shore bombardment. I suspect that kit availability has something to do with it, since the kind of late-war ships that would have seen little or no action in WWII, and would therefore be the ones most likely to last for decades afterwards, seem to be regarded as the least "sexy".

It's frustrating that of all the British "big" 6" cruisers (i.e. those with three or four triple turrets), we have a surfeit of kits of HMS Belfast (for the understandable reason that she still exists as a 1:1 scale reference), yet Belfast and Edinburgh were the most non-standard pair of the series since they were stretched to use up the 2.5 ship's worth of "headroom" left in the 10,000 ton cruiser limit. The earlier Southamptons and later Colonies were much more numerous.

If someone did something with the USS Iowa they could replace the #2 turret with vertical launchers as it was pretty much destroyed in the explosion. I believe it's also the #2 turret on the USS Missouri that has a cracked turret ring so same story. Use the spare parts from the Missouri to rebuild Iowa. I know, tons of money. I think the 16" guns still have some use as they scared the hell out of the Iraqis during the gulf war.

Quote from: kerick on July 24, 2024, 06:46:15 PMIf someone did something with the USS Iowa they could replace the #2 turret with vertical launchers as it was pretty much destroyed in the explosion.

Been there and done that. 
https://www.whatifmodellers.com/index.php?topic=50054.0
Most of the other changes I did on my refurbished Iowa model were based on changes I read about in Garzke & Dulin's "BATTLESHIPS" book as well as numerous Internet articles I read years ago, but sadly the links to those no longer exist.

I'm torn between basicly what you did or go whole hog and change everything but the hull. Nuclear power with a whole new superstructure but keep at least two gun turrets. Someday.

The M109A5-A7 with the M284 155mm gun has a range of 40km(25 miles) when used with the
Excalibur guided round. That's the same range as the 16" guns of an Iowa-class, so ...
the three 16" rifles in an Iowa turret replaced with five auto-loading 155mm with Excalibur.

They've also successfully tested the Excalibur S, which has its own laser designator, against
a moving target.

The 155s sound good - and logistics would be much easier.

The navy tried that with the Zumwalt class and couldn't get it to work.

Quote from: kerick on July 26, 2024, 08:46:15 PMThe navy tried that with the Zumwalt class and couldn't get it to work.

It worked but the ammo is very expensive, $800,000 to a $1,000,000 per round, and it has nothing in common with any 155mm gun used by anybody.

They wanted over-the-horizon range, super accuracy, and a ten round per minute rate of fire, all of which they got but it came with a huge bill.

I'm talking about M284s with autoloading and lengthened barrels as the guns used in the turret.