Shipbucket

By 1956, the USS Kentucky (BB-66) was a relic of another era, the Second World War, and the navy no longer saw it useful to complete the unfinished hull. Of course, numerous proposals did spring up to convert her into a missile battleship, but these all came to nothing; mostly due to budget problems. Interestingly enough, several of the conversion proposals survived, and have been recreated by Tzoli from SecretProjectForums. It's not quite Shipbucket, but very similar, you can find their work here: https://www.deviantart.com/tzoli But, as far as I can tell, nobody has done this proposal; dubbed "BBG-1 Scheme 1".

BBG-1 Scheme one would be the most radical change to an Iowa imaginable. The entire superstructure would have been blowtorched and rebuilt to resemble something like one of the original Long Beach proposals. Instead of the big 16" guns, we all know and love, a mixture of 16 Tartar and Talos launchers would take their place, guided by only 32 directors. Yes, you read that right, 16 launchers and 32 directors - on an Iowa. And to top it off, in the middle of the ship, is an erector launcher for 16 ballistic missiles. To launch these missiles, they would be loaded onto the erector launcher, wheeled off the side of the ship and onto a fixed platform, and launched from there. It was estimated it could launch one every 30 minutes.

There are some other odd notes for this proposal. Most importantly the Long Beach structure, the reference drawing has it as an octagon, with some of the radars being on the “middle sides” and others on the angled sides. The odd thing is the drawing is not big enough to support the radars, so I thought it would be best to replace it with the Long Beach’s superstructure. Other interesting thoughts include there being so many directors, that they begin blocking or canceling each other out. I also find it odd there is no mention of any aviation equipment, and the complete lack of guns. It is said that when JFK has presented with the Long Beach plans, he ordered that it would be redesigned to include a pair of guns, hence the 2 5”/38’s strapped onto it. Another interesting feature of the proposal is that instead of a funnel, 4 “smoke pipes” come out of the superstructure, onto the main deck, and hang over the ship, this was a pain to draw. Everything else apart from the location of weapons, electronics, and the overall shape is completely speculative, note that I had only a very terrible sketch.

I have attached a drawing below to give a brief visual of the concept, note this is based on our previous understanding of the concept, but the same idea applies. The missile is loaded onto the launcher, wheeled off the ship onto the platform, fueled, and launched. The missiles would be stored up and down the length of the ship. Note that this is 1956, before the first launch of the Polaris, so my guess is it would be a liquid-fuel Jupiter derivative.


Drawing by ThHappyYatcher

Now for the ship itself:



*Special Notes: This is my best attempt at the proposal and seeing I had very little to go off of, and only one terrible sketch, I can not promise full accuracy. Below I have attached information regarding the proposal, which is once again from here:
https://www.amazon.com/Battleships-Unit ... 1557501742
I'd also like to say a very big thank you to the guys on the Discord, they're feedback helped get the drawing to this stage, I'd also like to say a very big thank you to TheHappyYatcher for his interpretation and guidance on the proposal, their help was immeasurable. Any feedback would be appreciated!

As promised, additional information:

This is a great rendition. The scheme as proposed is completely ludicrous, of course, but never mind that.

My only quibble is that, at the time, SCANFAR was intended as an octagonal setup, with the 3D radars on the diagonals. Whether you want to portray it as sketched or as SCANFAR actually existed is a reasonable extension of artistic license, I think.

16 IRBM & 824 missiles

Its a crazy design but it looks good.
I'm no USN systems expert, but looks reasonable to me.

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

it sooo....

I bet, if they really wanted to, they probably would be able to fit in a 5th TALOS launcher


would have been fun to see it lunch all it's missiles in one go

After I finished BBG-1 Scheme 1, I began work on Scheme 2. While it is definitely not as radical as the first one, it is still pretty out there. Once again the superstructure would be blowtorched down to the hull and rebuilt to house IRBM’s. But here’s the catch, half the machinery would be ripped out to make room for 12 VLS style launchers, each containing one IRBM. This gave the ship a top speed of 27.5 knots. The rest of the vessel would be similar to the first scheme, except with a dramatic loss in armament. Instead of 16 launchers, the 4 launchers (2 Talos and 2 Tartar’s) would provide AA coverage, and 8 x 3” AA guns; the design emerged after WW2 as a weapon to better stop kamikazes. Electronics are pretty much the same, but again, a lot less. Both schemes where ultimately canceled in favor of more “conventional” designs (they were still crazy) and the Polaris, but they’re still neat to see in Shipbucket form.


I should also point out I dug up more information on these schemes, thanks to General_Dave on the Discord. There were a lot more detailed drawings, and they are oddly named “Ballistic Missile Monitor (BB(MG)). I’m not sure how accurate this is, so no comment on that.

I have also updated the BBG-1 Scheme 1 drawing, with just a couple of minor changes, and corrections. I thought about doing another version with the original superstructure from the proposal, but I decided not to (I am too lazy and started a new project ). As promised, I posted an image of info from my book (link on my first post), so enjoy!







Edit: I posted the wrong image.

wtf crazy


btw. The radar fit on BBG-1 S-2: is it side by side?

Scheme II, with half of the plant removed, should probably only have two shafts (the ones on the skegs, in this case).

What are the large crane-like structures fore and aft of the IRBM deckhouse intended to portray?

Nice work.
I too am curious about the crane thingies.
Also, you might want to tone down the lattice structure for the star and sun trackers, I don't think it would be a hefty structure, just a normal lattice mast.

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

Agreed. The foremast also needs some diagonal bracing in the usual style.