Hi Ace,
Can you advise why it's such a bad location for a helideck? My guess would be that it's between the masts and funnels (which I assume will to horrible, horrible things to lift just as you are landing) but I'd thought the location purely as a location, without considering all the rest of the ship, wasn't too bad as used on the Type 43 proposals...
Regards,
Adam
that one was designed for and had more place for it, but the type 43 was only an prototype, something that should also explain many things why it wasn't build. When you do an prototype design you can do almost whatever you want. place an mk 26 GMLS o top of the funnel. But then an engineer that will make you'r concept in to an ship will say you can't.
The other thing is that haveing the helo deck that high.... well the deck move more out there than on the main deck, increasing the risk for the helicopter to crash in to the funnel.
Best place for the Helicopter is on the aft deck. just add an helicopter hangar on deck there aft. The main guns doesn't need to fire aft, since this is 1975, big guns was at that time only an secondary weapon, and will most of the time do only artillery operation, and when they do they will only fire broadside, mostly for protecting the deck from being damaged.
If you want this ship to be modernized, then you should look at Iowa class, they was modernized as mush a ship a BB can be.
for the engine. well 60-70% of the length is the ship engine and boilers, then you have magazine and ruder control. the engine room is so big and the engine is so heavy that if you replace the entire engine with diesel engine, the ship will flip around and have it underwater hull up in the air. you see the engine works as the ship ballast, so if you replace 5.000-10.000 tons of engine and boilers with equal powerful diesel engine that weight only 1.000-3.000 tons... you just get an stability problem since the center of gravity of the ship will come higher up, and the center of gravity you want to have as low as possible.