Tarawa Lha As Basis For A Cvs?

[Spey_Phantom]

i guess it could be viable, but it would be verry expensive to do, its kinda like what Russia is now doing with the Admiral Gorshkov, converting it from a VSTOL carrier into a STOBAR carrier for India (INS Vikramaditya)

but with the Tarrawa-class ships, with the big rear loading bay to launch hovercraft from, i doubt there will be enough room to fit the arrestor cable gear.

[Joe C-P]

The Tarawas are all too worn out to refurbish. I did do a whif of a Canadian version some years ago, with the classic green flight deck, and proposed being able to launch lightly-loaded CF-18s as a way of transporting them to land bases overseas.

The USN did have plans to operate the Tarawas as ersatz CVSes, replacing the Marine helos with ASW helos and a few Harriers for air defense.

How about keeping the well deck and fitting out some LCACs for shallow-water ASW and mine-hunting?

[roughneck06]

Nice to see some interest revived on this idea I am starting on Sentinel Chicken's CVS V.1 design. I am doing it in 1:2400 scale. I have a 1:2400 Superior Tarawa LHA and have shaved the LVCPS on the flight deck off. Since my grandkids found it and a few other ships and battle damaged them- I'll use a CinC Tarawa island ( Superior's 1:2400 are a bit larger than their advertised scale- but I'll accept it for a prototype ) I've copied SC's flight deck plan on to cardstock and cut it to use as a template to cut the flight deck out using Squadron Hobby's sheet plastic. From there - paint and install S-3, SH-3, AV-8 and or AV-8 on the flight deck. I'll try to get it done ASAP but please be patient and kind- this is my 1st attempt in 12400 and my detail painting on flight decks in this scale sucks! I painted, stripped and repainted 3 times a Viking Forge CV-9 w/ angled deck before I lowered my standards- It has S-3, F/A-18s, AV-8s from GHQ on it's flight deck now. I bought the Superior Tarawa back in 1986- 24 years later- it becomes a rebuild

Any ideas for names for a Tarawa CVS V.1 ?

[Sentinel Chicken]

Here are the original image files of a Tarawa-based CV.

The dashed lines are the outlines of the original LHA deck. The gray items are obviously the island and the aircraft crane aft of the island.

The scale bar is 100m long with 10m divisions.

The items in red are a standard Nimitz-class catapult and arresting wire "box". I got them from a deck plan of the CVN-71 and scaled to the size of the LHA diagram. So those are items that I considered I'd need if I wanted to operate something the size of the S-3 Viking.

I tried to limit myself to making as few changes as possible. So for v1.0 of our Tarawa-class CVS, the hull length is unchanged, the island and its location are unchanged.

We need an angled deck and the width of the landing area is the same as on a Nimitz-class carrier as well as the width of the arresting gear. So the first step is to make a deck overhang on the port side. This gives room for the angled deck and the arresting gear. There is a sponson on that side that runs about 2/3 the length of the hull.

I'm assuming that the weight of the island means I don't need a similarly sized sponson on the starboard side and since I can't move the island as I'm trying to keep the changes to a minimum, I have two smaller sponsons that each support new deck elevators.

The air wing would be pretty simple, just SH-60s and S-3 Vikings. I'm not sure how much hangar space I have in this version, but it can't be too much.

I tried squeezing both cats on the bow, but it can't happen without either shortening the island or lengthening the hull. So putting one of the cats on the waist seemed like a reasonable solution.

Problems I see with this version:

1. Simultaneous landing/takeoff operations aren't possible. You can see that the Viking on the bow cat overlaps into the landing area. Not to mention it's a tight fit behind the bow cat, even if you kept your wings folded.

2. Landing aircraft would have to be either taxied back up the landing zone to the aft elevator or across the bow cat to the forward elevator.

3. Is there a seakeeping/balance issue with the sponsons as I have it? Somehow it doesn't seem stable or too heavy on the port side.

4. No organic air defense. Not sure if this is an issue as I'd imagine a CVS operating with an AEGIS screen to fill the role of air defense. I suppose if we had some AEW Vikings that would help with OTH threat detection.

[Sentinel Chicken]

This was the second version.

Based on RLBH's suggestions, this is v2.0 of a CVS based on a LHA hull. Changes made from v1.0:

1. Hull extension at the stern to possibly improve the hydrodynamics so the waterplane area aft isn't so flat. This allows the landing area to be a bit longer.

2. Deleted the #4 wire.

3. Resized the island and moved it aft and outboard.

4. Moved the bow catapult to the starboard and angled slightly to improve clearances for simultaneous landing/launch ops.

5. Moved the forward elevator aft to make room for the bow cat.

6. Longer sponsons on both sides now, the one on the starboard will of course have cutouts for the elevator and that should compensate for moving the island outboard.

7. I noticed that some of the defensive weapons of the Tarawa were mounted on the island. These have now been relocated to the corners similar to what larger CVNs would have but with only 2 Phalanx CIWS and two early style Sea Sparrow launchers.

The length of this layout probably approximates that of an Essex class. The Tarawa is about 820' and the Essex class was a bit over 870'.

[Sentinel Chicken]

Any ideas for names for a Tarawa CVS V.1 ?

One of my pet peeves is the total lack of organization on the naming of US Navy ships these days. I'll save my extensive rant for another day, but I had constructed one alternate history that had more SCS and light CV vessels in the US Navy than large CVNs. Since there would probably be more CVLs/CVSs than CVNs, there'd have to be a naming convention for them, so I settled on naval aviators that reached flag rank:

William Moffett
Marc Mitscher (though there is a DDG with his name now)
Apollo Soucek
James Stockdale
John Towers