Shipbucket

[air guitar]

The FINAL COUNTDOWN is a stupid garbage RAWK MUSIC song that everybody loves, because it's the Final Countdown, of course you love it. BAH DUH BAH BAH, BAH DUH BAH BAH BAH

"The Final Countdown" is also an early-1980s quasi-sci-fi movie that involved USS Nimitz falling through some kind of stupid time portal to December 7, 1941. It's sort of silly, but it's also pretty good. Watch it sometime.

Anyway, let us mash these together. We've had drawing challenges before, and they've been fun. They've also been sort of rigid in concept.

I present everyone the following: there's some sort of magic USN time pacific portal to 1941. What can you draw: anything. What can't you draw: NO MISSILES. No guided missiles of any sort, in any context. Nuclear devices ought to be as limited as possible, I think, since the real answer is a bunch of Iowas nuke-shelling Japan to death. Otherwise, anything gun-based can transit your stupid magic portal. Technology is restricted to whatever you want it to be. Do you want this question to be circa 1955? 2005? Who cares, go crazy.

You want to have great AA, obviously, but beyond that it's all open. Do you want to be able to torpedo a Yamato? Do you want to look at battleship-scale hulls? Do you want to merely be the most amazing Atlanta derivative in the history of the world, and instead focus on something like a Spruance derivative?

Later I'll present some concepts I've formulated over the years, but I think this could be fun. How do you approach this question? What hulls would you send back in time to most sway the war effort?

Hi erik,

A quick question ... any restrictions on subs? One obvious solution would be to supply a Los Angeles class and just sink the entire IJN one boatload of torpedoes at a time. Post-WWII exercises revealed the difficulty the Allies had tracking down SSNs, I can't imagine the IJN would find it any easier.

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I had the mindset on surface ships, because it's not clear to me how you'd build a better WW2 anti-shipping ship than a 688

Exactly - I felt rather like I was cheating as I typed that out!

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Final Countdown is my favorite movie. If you like it too you should read the Axis of Time Trilogy by John Birmingham. Its the exact same premise except the battlegroup stays and fights.

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"All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity, but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible. This I did." Thomas Edward Lawrence, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom

No missiles? But I could draw a 7x3 16" battleship that is 1400' long, right? Or a Tillman type monstrosity? I'm not going to, but I need to establish the limit!
Sounds interesting, though, I'm in!

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If I understand this right, you're calling for modern (post-1945, whatever) ships, preferably surface, with then-current technology, outfitted to fight the Pacific War again.
Couple of questions then:
- How genre-savvy is the design supposed to be? Are we going at this in full 20/20 hindsight knowledge of the ways things turned out?
- No missiles, but were do you draw the line? Are e.g. guided shells or guided torpedoes taboo as well?
- Any other technological restrictions on non-historical tech, like e.g. nuclear propulsion, electronics, DE weapons, etc.?
- Should we design one stand-alone ship, or are multiple complementary designs allowed?

Edit: Also, what's the mission? Based on the title, I assume the portal is on the US side by default, in that case, what are we there for? Survive? Get back? Win the war? Win the war even harder? Push the Allied forces 20/70 years forward? Conquer the world?
(I fully realize I'm going through half the plot of the movie here, but the question is open nonetheless)
Can we switch over to the Japanese side and try to turn the tide of war? Double-cross everyone and set up a nice little time colony/empire?

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Hi all,

No drawing yet, but a SpringSharp and some assumptions to check:

[spoiler=SpringSharp]Final Countdown Cruiser, U-S-A, U-S-A Heavy Cruiser laid down 1950

Displacement:
20,281 t light; 21,137 t standard; 22,968 t normal; 24,433 t full load

Dimensions: Length overall / water x beam x draught
799.79 ft / 787.40 ft x 85.30 ft x 24.93 ft (normal load)
243.78 m / 240.00 m x 26.00 m x 7.60 m

Armament:
9 - 7.99" / 203 mm guns (3x3 guns), 335.10lbs / 152.00kg shells, 8"/55 (20.3 cm) RF Mark 16
Automatic rapid fire guns in turrets (on barbettes)
on centreline ends, majority forward, 1 raised mount - superfiring
8 - 5.98" / 152 mm guns (4x2 guns), 130.07lbs / 59.00kg shells, 6"/47DP (15.2 cm) Mark 16
Automatic rapid fire guns in turrets (on barbettes)
on side, all amidships
16 - 3.00" / 76.2 mm guns (8x2 guns), 24.03lbs / 10.90kg shells, 3"/50 (7.62 cm) Mark 33
Automatic rapid fire guns in deck mounts
on side, evenly spread
16 - 0.79" / 20.0 mm guns (8x2 guns), 0.27lbs / 0.12kg shells, 20 mm/70 (0.79") Mark 24
Automatic rapid fire guns in deck mounts
on side, evenly spread
Weight of broadside 4,445 lbs / 2,016 kg
Shells per gun, main battery: 150

Armour:
- Belts: Width (max) Length (avg) Height (avg)
Main: 5.98" / 152 mm 511.81 ft / 156.00 m 11.09 ft / 3.38 m
Ends: 0.79" / 20 mm 275.56 ft / 83.99 m 11.09 ft / 3.38 m
Main Belt covers 100 % of normal length

- Gun armour: Face (max) Other gunhouse (avg) Barbette/hoist (max)
Main: 7.99" / 203 mm 3.94" / 100 mm 7.99" / 203 mm
2nd: 6.50" / 165 mm 2.99" / 76 mm 5.98" / 152 mm
3rd: 0.79" / 20 mm - -
4th: 0.79" / 20 mm - -

- Armour deck: 3.54" / 90 mm, Conning tower: 6.69" / 170 mm

Machinery:
Oil fired boilers, steam turbines,
Geared drive, 4 shafts, 125,434 shp / 93,574 Kw = 33.00 kts
Range 10,500nm at 15.00 kts
Bunker at max displacement = 3,296 tons

Complement:
932 - 1,212

Cost:
£12.158 million / $48.633 million

Distribution of weights at normal displacement:
Armament: 506 tons, 2.2 %
Armour: 5,758 tons, 25.1 %
- Belts: 1,511 tons, 6.6 %
- Torpedo bulkhead: 0 tons, 0.0 %
- Armament: 1,136 tons, 4.9 %
- Armour Deck: 2,995 tons, 13.0 %
- Conning Tower: 117 tons, 0.5 %
Machinery: 3,001 tons, 13.1 %
Hull, fittings & equipment: 9,016 tons, 39.3 %
Fuel, ammunition & stores: 2,687 tons, 11.7 %
Miscellaneous weights: 2,000 tons, 8.7 %

Overall survivability and seakeeping ability:
Survivability (Non-critical penetrating hits needed to sink ship):
37,243 lbs / 16,893 Kg = 145.9 x 8.0 " / 203 mm shells or 3.7 torpedoes
Stability (Unstable if below 1.00): 1.16
Metacentric height 5.2 ft / 1.6 m
Roll period: 15.8 seconds
Steadiness - As gun platform (Average = 50 %): 56 %
- Recoil effect (Restricted arc if above 1.00): 0.30
Seaboat quality (Average = 1.00): 1.13

Hull form characteristics:
Hull has a flush deck
and transom stern
Block coefficient: 0.480
Length to Beam Ratio: 9.23 : 1
'Natural speed' for length: 32.31 kts
Power going to wave formation at top speed: 51 %
Trim (Max stability = 0, Max steadiness = 100): 50
Bow angle (Positive = bow angles forward): 20.00 degrees
Stern overhang: 1.64 ft / 0.50 m
Freeboard (% = measuring location as a percentage of overall length):
- Stem: 29.53 ft / 9.00 m
- Forecastle (20 %): 19.69 ft / 6.00 m
- Mid (50 %): 19.69 ft / 6.00 m
- Quarterdeck (15 %): 19.69 ft / 6.00 m
- Stern: 19.69 ft / 6.00 m
- Average freeboard: 20.47 ft / 6.24 m
Ship tends to be wet forward

Ship space, strength and comments:
Space - Hull below water (magazines/engines, low = better): 69.9 %
- Above water (accommodation/working, high = better): 183.8 %
Waterplane Area: 45,689 Square feet or 4,245 Square metres
Displacement factor (Displacement / loading): 129 %
Structure weight / hull surface area: 141 lbs/sq ft or 687 Kg/sq metre
Hull strength (Relative):
- Cross-sectional: 1.01
- Longitudinal: 0.99
- Overall: 1.00
Hull space for machinery, storage, compartmentation is excellent
Room for accommodation and workspaces is excellent

Warning: Wrong mount for rapid fire gun - 3rd battery[/spoiler]

Assumptions

• We're only sending a single ship back. So unless that CVN can generate an appropriate defensive zone from on-board resources it's going to be relying on 1941 USN escorts to do the job and might therefore not be the best option. The cruiser specified has significant misc weight to account for things like sonars and big radars that might not be on a normal cruiser - it would be unfortunate indeed if our supership got nailed by an IJN sub that appeared out of nowhere.
• "No missiles" means that our best option might be immediately post-WWII designs. The peak of all-gun ship designs might be a better bet than a Burke derivative loaded down with sensors for weapons it cannot use.
• I'm assuming "no nukes" - I think that nukes are valid for an SSN, as they're designed to operate independently to a greater degree than surface ships, for which I think the absence of a support structure would prove too great a hurdle, and, as discussed, SSNs are "cheats" for the purposes of this challenge. SSBNs are just hax.
• Supply and support are biasing me heavily towards immediately post-WWII designs. A railgun supership is great until it expend the contents of the magazine and has to reload. This will take shells either in existence or stuff that's relatively (assuming the presence of a boatload of 3" VT fuses significantly shortens the time necessary to get them into production) easy for the 1941 USN to get into production.

Given the above, I've settled on a heavy cruiser based on the Des Moines, with 8", 6" and 3" automatic cannon to generate a significant (though limited, in the case of the 8") AA capability, plus a fairly decent surface \ shore bombardment ability too. I don't think that this would carry significant ASW gear apart from the sonars - it's big ship, probably not manoeuvrable enough to run down submarines itself - but hopefully the sonar would help the ship's 1941 escorts get any hostile sub.


So, assuming that this passes sanity checks, I'll start doodling - what do we think?

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The anime Zipang also has the same premise, this time with a modern JMSDF destroyer being sent back. For the record, the ship from that anime has been drawn in SB already (though obviously it fails most of the requirements of this challenge ):

That's sort of the spirit in which I evaluate the premise, but I would love to see this go kind of open-ended.

Like you, my brain goes toward a sort of turbo Des Moines, with enough short-range AA and modern radar to be unstoppable early in the war, during which you might raid freely, and become a task group AAW centerpiece surrounded by Essexes when the time comes. Maybe you only get to have one, maybe you get to have a little SAG of them, but you're not replacing the USN en bloc or anything.

But, y'know, I just want people to have fun with it. One presumes (well, I presume) that the vessel would go back in time with maybe whatever you can find on Wikipedia. The best answer might be a floating university technical library, but that feels like cheating