Posted by Don Murphy on September 9, 2014, 14:35:49
A guy at the local model club came in one night to the monthly meeting and announced that he was giving up plastic model building to concentrate on train building. He therefore was giving away kits and had two huge boxfuls. Being one of only a handful of ship builders, I easily picked up the two kits he had. One of the kits was the Skywave "Dry Dock" kit which includes one Fletcher Class destroyer in the kit. I got home, opened the kit and inside were no less than four kits worth of parts! Dang! Not really helping me thin my stash out, is it?! Well they build rather quickly as you can imagine, but after Fletcher number two, burnout sets in. What to do? Well, I did the third one as a World War Two "what-if." Well, not actually a "what-if" but we'll get to that later. For the last one, I decided to do a real "what-if." A Cold War Fletcher.
The Skywave Fletcher kits come with virtually every weapon known to man, let alone every weapon a Fletcher ever carried. Post-war, the Cold War Fletcher's carried pretty standard weapons. The last commissioned one was USS Mertz who lasted until 1977. So my what-if centers around President Carter getting re-elected and keeping the old Fletcher Class destroyers around. The funny thing is that the Fletchers were already in the fleet in large numbers so there were a ton of spare parts around. The ships could be used as weapon test beds (which is what they occassionally did) prior to flooding the fleet with new technology. Aft, we'll remove the tried and tested (but obscelete) depth charge racks and all guns. We'll replace the rear-most gun with a "new" (for the day) MK-45 five inch gun and aft of that, two SLCM Tomahawk launchers (four missiles per launcher).
Behind the gun mount, we'll place a MK-29 Sea Sparrow launcher with no reload capability (just like the rest of the Navy). Behind that we have some comms gear that the US Navy was testing in the mid-1970's including the familiar WSC-3 satelite communication antenna. Mid-ships, we'll remove the two AA gun installations. The US Navy removed the two quintuple torpedo tube banks in the 1950's and replaced them with twin three inch rapid fire guns and their associated fire control equipment. We're going to put quadruple Harpoon launcher tubes, Phalynx close in weapon system 20mm guns and and ASROC launcher in the area. The large air-surface search radar is the old SPS type that was mounted on the gun cruisers in the late 1960's. Although obscelete by 1970's standards, it would be sufficient for a Cold War Fletcher.
A lot of the weapons like Sea Sparrow, Tomahawk and Harpoon are fire-and-forget weapons. So a Fletcher operating alongside a capable ship like a Spruance Destroyer could launch it's weapons and have the other, more capable ship, control them. This was done a lot in the Cold War US Navy and was the key reason for the NTPU upgrades of the 1980's. Forward we have another of the new MK-45 rapid fire five inch guns and behind it in the old five inch gun location, we have another MK-29 Sea Sparrow launcher. Behind the Sea Sparrows, the Hedgehog launchers were removed and in their place are two MK-32 triple anti-submarine torpedo tubes. The ships are actually quite clean and organized when you remove the ton of World War Two weaponry (20mm and 40mm guns plus their associated fire control equipment.
The long whale boats have also been removed and two RIBs put in their place. President Carter's rationale was "work smarter not harder." Why build a fleet of ships just for the sake of building them? Carter's goal was heavy destroyers and no cruisers. So the Ticonderoga Class of cruisers (which are essentially stretched Spruance Class destroyers) would have made up the bulk of the fleet defense. The obscelete destroyer fleet would have been decommissioned. What Reagan did instead was carry forward Carter's building schedule but also keep the ships they were replacing. While this left the US Navy with way more ships than it could have had during normal means, it also put a strain on the supply chain as Storekeepers struggled to stock spares for 1940's and 1950's era shipping. The 1950's/1960's era cruisers were parts intensive/cramped and crowded for suitable modification.
Like most Skywaves, this kit has few parts and builds quickly. In 700th scale the guns are grossly overscale and improved with after market. There is no dedicated after market photo etch set for these ships but the generic GMM USN WW2 Destroyers And Cruisers set can be used. I therefore used my scraps from that set to do up the ship. Honestly, not much is needed other than the obligatory ladders, stairs, hatches and rails. In Second World War configuration, you'll obviously want the MK-37 radar gear and the depth charge racks. Skywave's molding is really accurate and even in this small scale you appreciate the workmanship that Skywave have achieved. I forgot to include the ruler in the photo but the ship is little shorter than a dollar bill. For my colors I used the Tamiya rattle car US Navy World War Two Haze Grey as the ships pretty much retained their post-war colors.
It's just a joy to see these confections of yours, Donny - bestowing further life on what could otherwise be a rather roadworn subject - with every one of your imaginative details firmly grounded in actual historical fact. This is what IMHO distinguishes a really interesting "What-If" from one that is irrelevant or just plain silly (and therefore boring).
My only Failure-To-Suspend-Disbelief comes regarding the total, topside missile load-out: between all the AA, AS and ASW canisters, the entire deck being practically one continuous, missile-magazine! Indeed, God Help Them not only if taking a hit - practically anywhere topside - but also if the backwash from simply launching any of the Harpoons or SeaSparrows, as it would appear, melts the radomes on the Phaylanx or Sat-Nav installations - or up forward, launching a SeaSparrow even cook off the torpedoes!
Fortunately, already the Cold War is safely Consigned to History, without any significant incidents...
Again seriously though, just terrific to see such great use of these excellent little SkyWave kits, and details. (If I had any brains at all, I would have spent all my time building a product line of true, 700-scale accessories for all these kits - including the new ones continuing to come out - instead of for the ancient 500-600 scale ones, now mostly OOP.)
Anyway, send me your leftover/labelled spares anytime, buddy. And, as always, Thank You for another great post, Don!
A lot of ships - surprisingly - had just the launcher. Case in point being the Knox and Spruance Class. No reloads were carried for the MK-29 or the earlier BPDMS. Why? Not really sure. Also, if you notice the way the launcher is reloaded...
(MK-1 arm power) it's not really very ergonomic, ha ha! After test launches an ammo ship or replenishment ship would normally drop off "reloads" with each ship. So if a ship shot off six, then UNREP would drop six shipment canisters on the ship's helo deck. With a max range (at the time) of little better than 8nm and being a beam-riding weapon, the mantra of the day was that it was a last-ditch weapon only.
ASROC as well, was (in most cases) a reload-less weapon system. The Knox Class and some of the King/Coontz Class had a "garage" that sat under the bridge, holding around 12 (random number!) reloads or so but it leaked badly and most ships made due with just the MK-8 box and the eight rounds it came with. A handful of the Adams Class had a small "garden shed" type structure near the forward stack that held a whopping four reloads but the leaking and the effort to get the several thousand pound rounds out of the locker and reloaded was more trouble than it was worth.
As to melting due to gunfire, I always thought about that too. And that must be why I have never seen any Sea Sparrows launched "straight." They are always off to the side:
I thought maybe my models didn't come with blast deflectors like those on the LHA bridges but then when I looked at photos of the real ships I noted no shields. So perhaps standard operating proc. was to shoot them off to the side? Now it is funny that you mentioned CIWS interferance due to missile blast. Check this out:
All of the Belknap and Leahy CG's had the 'Poon tubes and CIWS near/on the old twin 3inch mount tubs. During the Gulf War, two of the Belknap CG's were ripple firing 'Poons to complete the illusion that the USN was getting ready to do an amphibious landing. Both Mo and Iowa were firing randomly and Marines were embarking/disembarking from the LHA's. The ruse worked. Saddam thought he was going to be getting a landing and moved troops accordingly. Early CIWS had a distressing habit of shooting down a ship's own missiles. During a launch from USS Arkansas (I believe), the ship shot an SM-2ER from it's aft launcher and the CIWS promptly brought it down! So SOP had always been to "turn off" CIWS prior to a shoot.
The CG's turned their guns back on following the 'Poon shoot and they wouldn't come on. The missile exhaust blast had fried the radar! As a result, the canisters were removed. Tico's and Burke's were okay as the canisters were aft. Other ships had to make sure the birds were moved! What a hoot! Just think, Rear Admiral Matt "Matty" Stein at BuShips would have gotten a medal for spotting that potential hazard!!
What that last goes to prove is that the Harpoon was never (thoroughly) pre-tested on an operational Belknap or Leahy - how f-ing unprepared is that?!! (I'm going to petition DOD for a bunch of my old man's tax money back...)
Thanks for the compliment buddy, but I'd like to think Radm Matty got his medal just for not being a moron...!