How about some Naval What-ifs

[dragon]

Anyways, one more and then I'll be gone.  Dragon, this one's for you!

Found this over at the Warships Projects Discussion Board.  It's a modified for the 80's Yamato!  The direct link to the thread it's in is here.



 

Thanks!  So this means that I am not totally insane (or maybe it is mass hysteria- I don't know! ).  It really is close to what I had in mind, just that I had further improvements in mind.

[Son of Damian]

There's an F-15N over at Hyperscale (I think) with canards and wingtip sidewinder rails. I've got one in the stash I've been planning for a while. Was going to give a standard F-15 some F-14 swing wings and do some other mods to it.

I believe it was ARC, though I can't find it!!! This isn't the first time either, there have been several other Whiffs there that have gone missing!!! Really though I think it has to do with that fact that the site was hacked and he had some computer troubles a while back.

Son of Damian,

I found the pictures all over the place - any in particular you're interested in?

Regards,

Greg

Mainly the very first one.

The Stealth Carrier would be doable by rescaling the Sea Shadow...Hmmm



Alvis 3.1

Really the best stealth carrier would be a sub. And I'm sort of surprized America doesn't have one yet. All you really need is a VTOL stealth bomber/fighter and a small hanger behind the conning tower.

The sub could lerk in the depths of the ocean, surfacing long enough to launch and recover its planes. It would be the ultimate first strike weapon.  

Though the whole thing is sort of complex and expensive compared to a cruise missle.



I found this pic in a thread some where else at the forum.

[MartG]

About 30 years ago I read an article about large sidewall hovercraft aircraft carriers - these thing would be able to do over 100kts, which would bring new meaning to 'wind over deck'    

[Sentinel Chicken]

Here's some Spurance modifications for the USN

This was done by a friend in Australia:



It was called the "Air Capable Spruance" and was based on a Spruance-class DD hull. There were several variantions on the design, but up to 6 helicopters could be operated or even Harriers.

Oh, and the picture above? That's a 1/72 scale R/C model christened the USS Halsey.  

[Sentinel Chicken]

Ahhh the nostalgia of the 1980s and the Virginia-class strike cruiser (CGSN):



The intent was to convert the USS Long Beach as an interim type strike cruiser to test the concepts/equipment operationally while the actual Virginia CGSN class would have had 8-12 hulls purpose built as strike cruisers. In reality, cost considerations resulted in the Virginia-class being more modest CGNs.

One from the days of DOS-based Harpoon II that was created in the Harpoon Database would be a modernized USS Alaska. In the game they had an Alaska-class battlecruiser that had been progressively upgraded through the years to become the rough equivalent of a Russian Kirov-clas battlecruiser.  

[Joe C-P]

Some interesting new ideas in this thread.  ^_^

I've just about finished another ship, and promise to post photos soon.

The converted Kiev class could be made out of Kiev or Minsk, but they really are small, with quite limited hangar space. India will be receiving a similar conversion of Admiral Gorshkov, though with a ski-jump like the Kuznetsov instead of catapults.

I'd like to do the Strike Cruiser conversion of Long Beach, but I cannot afford to chop up a really expensive resin model.  

If you want to read up about what-ifs through history, try the book "The Hybrid Warship" by Layman and McLaughlin. It's a bit dated now, but contains many small plans of real and unreal aviation hybrids through the past century.

[anthonyp]

I always liked the "Alaska" in Harpoon II.  The pic of the ship was a Kirov hull with a stretched Ticonderoga superstructure.  The stats were insane (4 61-cell VLS, 60,000 tons, 6 LAMPS III's), but this thing was a blast to unleash on unsuspecting Chinese task forces.  Wish I could get a screen shot of it.

There were at least three different versions of the CSGN, the last of which was an enlarged, AEGIS equipped Viginia.  The first two designs were huge ships.  They were to be the first actual "cruisers" built since WWII (ie, have the ability to operate independantly of a task force).  The designer even proposed a CHGN VTOL enquipped Strike Cruiser which sacrificed some missile capabilites, but had a flight deck on the port side of the ship, able to operate up to 6 VTOL fighters.  The design suffered from a permanent list and was never really seriously considered.  These designs were rejected by the administration as too expensive, and a smaller, CGN-38 based design was put forward.  These designs managed to make it into the 80's before finally being discarded.

I don't have the Norm Friedman books in front of me at the moment, but the US Cruisers and US Destroyers books have data on the CSGN-1/CGN-42 designs.  The Friedman Cruiser book also has a picture of the AEGIS refit of the Long Beach.  All my books are in storage, else I'd have some new scans.  The Destroyer book has a competing design to the Arleigh Burke called the DDM.  When I get my books back, I've got some scanning to do.

I actually managed to reacquire my ancient Revell USS Long Beach kit, and have begun to refit it to the AEGIS design, though it's going to take a while.

Here's some pics of the CGN-42




Here's a few carrier concepts from Friedman's US Carriers book.

The first is the CVV "medium" carrier proposed in the 70's as an alternative to the huge and costly Nimitz class ships.


Next is Admiral Zumwalt's Sea Control Ship.  This little guy actually made it into real life, though in an altered form.  Spain's Principe de Asturias and Thailand's Chakri Naruebet are variants of the SCS.


Here's another Spurance Helicopter Destroyer.  I forget where I found it, but here it is.


Here's some concepts for the forth-coming USN CVNX.  I doubt the new design will look like any of these.  There's more (and larger) pics of the ship on this site.


Here's the FACES II (Phase II) conversion of the Iowa class ships


Finally, here's an escort carrier using the BAe Skyhook for Harrier retrieval.

[Son of Damian]

I remeber that a year or so ago Popular Science/Mechanics had an article about some weird desing of the US military. It was for this platform thingy that was really just a bunch of little platforms put together like legos! Anyway the idea was that you could put any number of these platforms together in any number of configurations with any number of the different platform tpyes to create a hughe floating airfield capable of operating C-5s out in the middle of an ocean or something!!!    

I will have to go reread the article, then I can share it with Y'all.
 

[anthonyp]

Extreme Sea Basing, or some such.  Concepts like that have been around for the last half decade, most have C-17's flying off the decks.  Basically, a bunch of large mobile rigs that latch together to form huge structures.  I remember one in particular with a Nimitz class carrier passing underneath it to dock!

[The Rat]

... create a hughe floating airfield capable of operating C-5s out in the middle of an ocean ...

Well yeah, if anyone was silly enough to go that route. Why, everybody knows that the Galaxy should be amphibious!    

[BlackOps]

Some cool ideas to file away for later!


Jeff G.

[Geoff_B]

Speaking of the Skyhook Drawing, have a good look it and try and work out how the Artist screwed it up to turn it into an optical illusion .......

[Jschmus]

I remeber that a year or so ago Popular Science/Mechanics had an article about some weird desing of the US military. It was for this platform thingy that was really just a bunch of little platforms put together like legos! Anyway the idea was that you could put any number of these platforms together in any number of configurations with any number of the different platform tpyes to create a hughe floating airfield capable of operating C-5s out in the middle of an ocean or something!!!    

I will have to go reread the article, then I can share it with Y'all.

Here you go:

Popular Mechanics: Joint Mobile Offshore Base

[Joe C-P]

That "FACES II" should be "Phase II" - the proposed second phase of upgrades for the Iowa class. Other possibilities included a smaller rear deck for just helicopters, replacing all three main turrets with VLS, and even a version similar to that depicted except the flight deck was flat with a catapult pointing out to port and arresting gear on an angle to starboard, so that it could launch and land a small group of F/A-18s! I have an old Revell 1/350 New Jersey that will end up that way someday.

A model of the Principe de Asturis is supposed to be coming out soon, so if it's a relatively inexpensive plastic kit, I might buy one to "back-date" into an SCS.

[Sentinel Chicken]

A good one for all you battlewagon fans would be a Lexington-class battlecruiser over the course of her service life- suppose the Lexington wasn't converted during construction to a carrier and went into service as a battlecruiser and was subsequently upgraded through the Second World War.