Shipbucket

Oh, believe me, I can understand that completely. For the longest time, and even still with modern radars, I was just shooting from the hip. Listen to folk like Colo, though, he does know his stuff when it comes to WW2 era gear.

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"Anybody remotely interesting is mad in some way." - The Seventh Doctor

Overall it looks pretty good, I like the lines, semi-Italian and semi-American. A good combination.

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Hood's Worklist
English Electric Canberra FD
Interwar RN Capital Ships
Super-Darings
Never-Were British Aircraft

Version 4, added the props suggested by Colo, tried on new radars and raised most of the superstructure up one deck.

Really starting to look like a proper heavy cruiser. A question, though. No aircraft catapult? Or is this class designed to mostly work in concert with shore-based or carrier-based aircraft? If it was me, I'd put a catapult and crane aft, but thats up to you and your preference, obviously.

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"Anybody remotely interesting is mad in some way." - The Seventh Doctor

Didn't the aircraft on cruisers get gradually phased out by the end of WW2? If my memory doesn't fail me, the Des Moines class for example didn't have a catapult...

I believe so, yes. But I've always been a believer in having some sort of aircraft on cruisers, which is why I just said "in my opinion". Just tossing it out as an option is all.

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"Anybody remotely interesting is mad in some way." - The Seventh Doctor

This ship is outfitted with mid-war type radar fits and relatively-modern gunnery and fire control systems, but it still ships a large complement of ship's boats (which had been mostly removed by 1942 after disastrous experiences in the Solomons, where several ship's boats had caught fire and provided a beacon for enemy gunfire).

This cruiser needs to be drawn in various stages of its evolution, probably starting with a "1939" version (full boat complement, seaplanes, older fire control (or none at all), very few light AA, no radar), a 1942 version (no ship's boats, early radar, more light AA, etc), and a 1946 version (no boats, reduced air arm, "modern" radar, loads of light AA and cleaned up sky arcs for better AA coverage).

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USN components, camouflage colors, & reference links (World War II only)

to balance out the lack of boats adding more rafts should suffice, am I correct?

as for drawing the ships evolution, could a straight-ish bow (for the 1930s version, something similar to the Trento class perhaps?) be converted to the current one?

Yes, by that time they were replacing the boats with rafts.

The Brooklyns are a good example of cruiser refits during the war.

http://www.shipbucket.com/Real%20Design ... 201939.png
http://www.shipbucket.com/Real%20Design ... 201944.png

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USN components, camouflage colors, & reference links (World War II only)