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Loading...This is my depiction of the USS Kentucky BBG-2, a Guided Missile Battleship. I started this drawing back in 2009, but didn’t actually end up completing it until 2012 and then let it sit in a folder for 2 years. After such neglect, it was in pretty bad material condition. With a LOT of work, I was able to restore it and even tweak it a bit. I used a drawing by A.D. Baker III of the New Jersey as a starting point and completely reworked it. Unlike much of my other work, this is purely a line drawing. It also is purely a modification of an existing drawing as opposed to a wholly original work. The point of this drawing was less artistic than visually expressing a design I’d come up with. Still, I really like the way this turned out and while the drawing is not a completely original work for me, the design it depicts largely is.
As for the ship itself, there was a ‘real’ battleship Kentucky. It was never completed and eventually scrapped while still half built. There were proposals to make her a guided missile ship, but obviously they were never acted on. My vision of how she could have been completed has her as a unit of a notional Illinois Class (another sister ship that also wasn’t completed), with essentially the same dimensions as an Iowa class Battleship (both she and the Illinois were to be units of that class). The hull is somewhat reshaped forward and the Number 3 Gun Turret has been replaced by a heavily armored deckhouse aft that serves the Mk 10 Missile Launcher. It should be noted that the armor envelope would be a bit different from the Iowa class. In particular, the thickening of the forward armored bulkhead and forward barbettes that the Missouri and Wisconsin received would be eliminated and the Turret and Conning Tower roofs would be thinned by .5″. In addition, the armor distribution for the main armor deck would be redone with a 5″ thick layer on top of a 1″ backing structure instead of the 4.75″ on top of a 1.25″ backing structure.
Although not apparent, the Steam Turbines (and their associated Boilers) along with the Steam Turbo-Generators have been completely replaced here. She would now have a Combined Diesel or Gas (CODOG) arrangement for propulsion and Gas Turbines for generating electricity. Due to the new propulsion and power systems weighing far less than the previous systems, significant changes would be made in the Engineering spaces. The new engines would have heavily reinforced and insulated foundations to reduce vibration, noise, and protect the engines from shock damage. This ship would be nearly as quiet as a Spruance or Arleigh Burke at cruising speeds.
The innermost bottom structure of the ship would also be heavily reinforced with an additional layer of steel plating on top of a layer of sound insulation. The holding bulkheads of the side protection system would also be heavily reinforced along with all of the transverse bulkheads in the Engineering spaces. There would also be new (and quite thick) longitudinal bulkheads running the length of the Engineering spaces. These measures would all serve two purposes. The first would be to improve the ship’s longitudinal strength allowing it to far better withstand underbottom explosions. The second would be to add over 2,500 tons of additional structure to compensate for how much lighter the ship’s new propulsion and power systems are.
Also not shown is the Tactical Flag Command Center (TFCC) this ship would have, along with Intelligence and Communication spaces that would allow this ship to serve quite effectively as a Fleet Flagship. The fire controls would also be updated with most of their analog components replaced with solid state digital computers. The fire control radars themselves would be similarly upgraded, with the Mk13 radar on the Main Battery Director (Mk38) becoming a fully digital radar. The Mk25 radars on the Secondary Battery Directors (Mk37s) on the other hand would be replaced outright by SPG-53s. All of these systems would be integrated into two Mk 34 Gun Weapon Systems (GWS), with one supporting the 16” (406mm) guns, and the other supporting the 5” (127mm) guns. These sytems would allow for data linking with other platforms to obtain telemetry for plotting firing solutions as well as improving the accuracy of plotted firing solutions. Also, the aft Main Battery Plot would be reconfigured into a Combat Information Center (CIC). It should also be noted that the Conning Tower depicted here is the three-story Force Flagship version. Finally, I also reworked the aft stack into a sort of Mack (mast-stack combination) of my own design.
Specifications (for 1995 recommissioning) would be:
Length (WL): 860′
Beam (max): 108’2″
Draft (max): 35’10” (not including sonar dome)
Displacement (full load): 57,000 tons
Power Plant:
Propulsion: CODOG; 8x General Electric LM2500 Gas Turbines (26,250 bhp each; 210,000 bhp total), 4x Caterpillar 16-cylinder Diesel Engines (20,000 bhp each; 80,000 bhp total), coupled to 4 Shafts, driving either 5-bladed (inner shafts) or 4-bladed (outer shafts) reversible controllable-pitch propellers
Electrical: 8x Allison AG9140 AC Gas Turbine Generators (2,500 kW, 440V each; 20,000 kW total), 2x 400-cycle 2,000 kW Emergency Diesel Generators
Max Speed: 25 knots (Diesel propulsion), 33 knots (Gas Turbine propulsion)
Crew Complement: 1,420 Officers and Enlisted Personnel
Armament:
6 (2×3) Mk7 16″ (406mm) 50cal guns
6 (6×1) Mk45 5″ (127mm) 54cal guns
74 (4×4 ABLs + 2×29 Mk41) BGM-109 Tomahawk cruise missiles
16 (4×4 Mk141) RGM-84 Harpoon missiles
1 (twin arm) Mk10 missile launcher (holds 80 RIM-67B SM-2ER missiles + 20 RUR-5 ASROC anti-sub missiles on 5-20 round missile rings)
2 (triple tube) Mk32 torpedo launchers (each launcher holds 3 Mk46mod5 NEARTIP torpedoes with no reloads)
6 (6×1) Mk15 Vulcan Phalanx 20mm CIWS
4 (4×1) .50cal machine guns
4 (4×1) 7.62mm machine guns
Search Sensors:
Sonar: SQS-53C Bow sonar, SQR-19 Towed sonar array
Air Search: SPS-48E S-Band radar, SPS-49(v)5 L-Band radar
Surface Search: SPS-67(v)3 C-Band radar
Aircraft:
4 SH-60B Seahawk helicopters
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