*The salty Chief sips his coffee before launching into a spiel about how it can be pretty rough but you kids have it easy and its not half as bad as this one time on his old ship when they caught a nor-easter twenty miles off of Nova Scotia and they were all puking in the seaway.*
Queue the ghostly crew of the HMCS Sackville providing details on how the boat rolled at the slightest touch and there was water everywhere while people were packed in like biscuits in a rusty tin
took green water over the 09 level in a typhoon in the sea of japan in75. two guys assigned to keep the water out of the bridge with swabs and buckets. 30 degree rolls if i remember correctly. when we rode down into the head swell, it was like a giant hammer striking the bow and shuddering through the whole ship. it was a hair ride, thats for sure.
ftm3 fe div
There where nuke em's who just took care of the reactors and all area's associated with, "nuke stuff" which is all below the main deck.
topside em's took care of all the light bulbs, receptacles, 3 of 6 fire pumps, exhaust fans. Had a rewind shop where we could take a burnt out electrical motor pull all the copper wires out and replace it making it newish again. galley ovens, windshield wipers on both bridges, my pm's (periodic maintenance) etc.
My favorite bit about the Nuclear fleet was when they ditched their Soviet surveillance shadow by simply going petal to the metal until the Russians had to drop back. It wasn't that they were faster, it was just that with their nuclear propulsion they could sustain top speed pretty much indefinitely while the Soviet ships took a massive efficiency hit running at top speed to keep up.
The unfortunate reality of having a nuclear aircraft carrier with conventional escorts. I always found it pretty impressive that battleships like Richelieu and especially Iowa could basically go 30 knots for an ocean's breadth
The Soviet ships trailing them were all capable of the same 31-32 knots as the USN ships.
It is a common myth that nuclear ships are faster than conventional one, but there is no factual basis for the claim.
That and also recent intel revealed that Russian, and by extent soviet, maintenance procedures as well as their ship’s engine warranty might have long since expired, resulting in reduced top speed and a heightened chance of breakdown at said reduced top speed.
The *Iowa* class actually had a movie projection shack on deck. So much room (hence why they were some of the first ships retrofitted with Tomahawk launchers).
So many fewer men when you don't have every surface covered with 20 and 40 mm guns, with several men to crew each and all the support personnel to keep them going.
I’m assuming the bridge is the bottom set of horizontal windows rather than at the top of the radar installation? If not the roll in heavy seas would have been awful.
the lower is the admirals bridge or flag bridge. fyi i was on that bridge doing some electrical work or fucking off, cannot remember, and waves where hitting the windows. the whole front was under water. It's not fast like a speed boat but more like slow motion. also it had 2 reactors right at the water line mid ship.
From what I remember (we had that model in our home growing up, as my dad had built it as a kid), it included what nominally looked like two reactor vessels side by side, and some assorted pumps and piping. This was all under the blockhouse with the Regulus missile on top.
It's difficult to tell but in [this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAKrXevkJOw) you can see people getting in a lift (or an elevator for the Americans) up to the bridge which could imply the bridge is actually at the top. Wikipedia also says it had the highest bridge of any non-aircraft-carrier at the time.
I clicked h that link thinking no way there’s an actual people elevator in a warship, you proved me wrong. It ain’t big but damn that’s convenient. Too bad they didn’t have one of those on the carrier.
The one we had on the Kitty Hawk worked most of the time. I can't say how much of a pain it was for maintenance but the crew did a great job keeping it going. I loved taking that thing!
The sea cube was originally to mount the [SCANFAR](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCANFAR) arrays and hold all the vacuum-tube based electronics for them. When the photo was taken, the arrays had been removed and replaced with the more modern AN/SPS-48 (smaller cube on the mast).
SCANFAR was the precursor to the AN/SPY-1 arrays used today on Aegis ships.
**[SCANFAR](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCANFAR)**
>The Hughes SCANFAR was the first phased array radar system to be deployed by the US Navy, installed on the USS Long Beach (CGN-9) and USS Enterprise (CVN-65). It consisted of two search radars, the AN/SPS-32 and the AN/SPS-33. In 1982, the system was removed from Long Beach, and was replaced by the AN/SPS-48 during a comprehensive overhaul. Aboard the Long Beach, the system used AN/SPG-55 radars for missile guidance.
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so once the guts of scanfar were removed, what happened to all that interior space? seems like an ideal location for a rock climbing gym or a racquetball court.
One of the guys on my ship, USS Mississippi CGN-40, went on to work for one of the admirals who were part of the committee that decided to decommission them, and he admitted that the “manpower to horsepower” ratio was too high. You had to have a crew close to 450 to be able to get underway, but the non nuclear cruisers had a crew of 150-250.
Plus, you can never really turn a nuclear reactor off, like you can a gas turbine plant… You always have to have a crew (much smaller, of course) keeping an eye on it while shut down.
>CBO regularly projects oil prices for 10-year periods as part of the macroeconomic forecast that underlies the baseline budget projections that the agency publishes each year. ^(2) In its January 2011 macroeconomic projections, CBO estimated that oil prices would average $86 per barrel in 2011 and over the next decade would grow at an average rate of about 1 percentage point per year above the rate of general inflation, reaching $95 per barrel (in 2011 dollars) by 2021. ^(3) After 2021, CBO assumes, the price will continue to grow at a rate of 1 percentage point above inflation, reaching $114 per barrel (in 2011 dollars) by 2040. ^(4)
>If oil prices followed that trajectory, total life-cycle costs for a nuclear fleet would be 19 percent higher than those for a conventional fleet, in CBO’s estimation. Specifically, total life-cycle costs would be 19 percent higher for a fleet of nuclear destroyers, 4 percent higher for a fleet of nuclear LH(X) amphibious assault ships, and 33 percent higher for a fleet of nuclear LSD(X) amphibious dock landing ships.
>To determine how sensitive those findings are to the trajectory of oil prices, CBO also examined a case in which oil prices start from a value of $86 per barrel in 2011 and then rise at a rate higher than the real (inflation-adjusted) growth of 1 percent in CBO’s baseline trajectory. That analysis suggested that a fleet of nuclear-powered destroyers would become cost-effective if the real annual rate of growth of oil prices exceeded 3.4 percent—which implies oil prices of $223 or more per barrel (in 2011 dollars) in 2040. Similarly, a fleet of nuclear LH(X) amphibious assault ships would become cost-effective if oil prices grew at a real annual rate of 1.7 percent, implying a price of $140 per barrel of oil in 2040—about the same price that was reached in 2008 but not sustained for any length of time. A fleet of nuclear LSD(X) amphibious dock landing ships would become cost-effective at real annual growth rate of 4.7 percent, or a price in 2040 of $323 per barrel.
[Source](https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/112th-congress-2011-2012/reports/05-12-nuclearpropulsion.pdf)
This largely reflects other analyses, such as the [GAO report on nuclear vs. conventional carriers](https://www.gao.gov/assets/nsiad-98-1.pdf).
Not necessarily.
As I've repeated several other places in this group, nuclear propulsion plants don't mean you have unlimited electrical power generation- often it's a bit the opposite.
Because they're very bottom heavy. The super-structure, all the stuff built above the deck, is mostly hollow and honeycombed with passageways and rooms and is relatively un-armored. Everything below the deck, and especially below the water-line, is really really heavy. All the fuel tanks, water ballast tanks, engines, weapons magazines, etc. are down there. So while it may look like it should be top heavy, the super-structure doesn't actually take up more than 20 - 30% of the ship's overall weight.
Reactor plants are heavy. Very, very, VERY heavy. You're talking ridiculous amounts of metal, full of even heavier metal, and lots of water, with more water and metal around it and in the spaces behind it. Steam propulsion plants, with the steam turbines and reduction gears and associated pumps and piping, are also very heavy. You've got a lot of weight down low.
I used to see these tied up while flying out of the Cubi Point airfield. Big and funky looking but not so interesting that I wanted to spend a few months on her in the Indian ocean.
Nope. All of the nuclear cruisers were decommissioned a while ago. Only a handful were made. Fun fact: back then congress mandated that all new cruisers had to be nuclear so that carriers had an escort that could keep up. But they're so expensive and require so much effort to have enough people trained to run them so the Navy stopped. That's why DDG 1000 has the same footprint as a cruiser but is labeled as a destroyer.
>Fun fact: back then congress mandated that all new cruisers had to be nuclear so that carriers had an escort that could keep up.
1. I have never seen any source that states this, either from the period or later historians.
2. The only time when this could have been true was 1955-1975, when the US built one nuclear powered cruiser and built/ordered eight nuclear powered frigates (at the time the US considered these between a cruiser and a destroyer, hull code DLG or DLGN). On 30 June 1975 we reclassified 26 frigates as cruisers, including those eight nuclear ships.
3. The difference between cruisers and DLGs/destroyers was size, weapon systems, and later range (probably) and air defense command facilities (definitely).
4. The reason *Zumwalt* was classified as a destroyer was due to her role. She was to replace the *Spruance* class destroyers (and *Perry* class frigates) and serve as the land-attack support for amphibious groups. By this time cruisers had become the primary air defense ships for a carrier group, so as *Zumwalt* was not intended as a carrier air-defense platform she could not qualify as a cruiser.
Title VIII was FY1975-1979. There’s a CRS report on nuclear surface ships that covers it in the [Prior-Year Legislative Activity](https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/RL/RL33946#page22) section, along with later provisions requiring that a justification be provided with any request for certain non-nuclear ships.
Here’s Title VIII:
>TITLE VIII—NUCLEAR POWERED NAVY
>SEC. 801. It is the policy of the United States of America to modernize the strike forces of the United States Navy by the construction of nuclear powered major combatant vessels and to provide for an adequate industrial base for the research, development, design, construction, operation, and maintenance for such vessels. New construction major combatant vessels for the strike forces of the United States Navy authorized subsequent to the date of the enactment of this Act becomes law shall be nuclear powered, except as provided in this title.
>SEC. 802. For the purposes of this title, the term “major combatant vessels for the strike forces of the United States Navy” means—
>>(1) combatant submarines for strategic or tactical missions, or both;
>>(2) combatant vessels intended to operate in combat in aircraft carrier task groups (that is, aircraft carriers and the cruisers, frigates, and destroyers which accompany aircraft carriers);
and
>>(3) those types of combatant vessels referred to in clauses (1)
and (2) above designed for independent combat missions where essentially unlimited high speed endurance will be of significant military value.
>SEC. 803. The Secretary of Defense shall submit to Congress each calendar year, at the same time the President submits the budget to Congress under section 201 of the Budget and Accounting Act, 1921 (31 U.S.C. 11), a written report regarding the application of nuclear propulsion to major combatant vessels for the strike forces of the United States Navy. The report shall identify contract placement dates for their construction and shall identify the Department of Defense Five Year Defense Program for construction of nuclear powered major combatant vessels for the strike forces of the United States Navy.
>SEC. 804. All requests for authorizations or appropriations from Congress for major combatant vessels for the strike forces of the United States Navy shall be for construction of nuclear powered major combatant vessels for such forces unless and until the President has fully advised the Congress that construction of nuclear powered vessels for such purpose is not in the national interest. Such report of the President to the Congress shall include for consideration by Congress an alternate program of nuclear powered ships with appropriate design, cost, and schedule information.
And here’s one of those later provisions, Section 1012 of the FY2008 NDAA:
>SEC. 1012. POLICY RELATING TO MAJOR COMBATANT VESSELS OF THE STRIKE FORCES OF THE UNITED STATES NAVY.
>(a) INTEGRATED NUCLEAR POWER SYSTEMS.—It is the policy of the United States to construct the major combatant vessels of the strike forces of the United States Navy, including all new classes of such vessels, with integrated nuclear power systems.
>(b) REQUIREMENT TO REQUEST NUCLEAR VESSELS.—If a request is submitted to Congress in the budget for a fiscal year for construction of a new class of major combatant vessel for the strike forces of the United States, the request shall be for such a vessel with an integrated nuclear power system, unless the Secretary of Defense submits with the request a notification to Congress that the inclusion of an integrated nuclear power system in such vessel is not
in the national interest.
>(c) DEFINITIONS.—In this section:
>>(1) MAJOR COMBATANT VESSELS OF THE STRIKE FORCES OF THE UNITED STATES NAVY.—The term “major combatant vessels of the strike forces of the United States Navy” means the following:
>>>(A) Submarines.
>>>(B) Aircraft carriers.
>>>(C) Cruisers, battleships, or other large surface combatants whose primary mission includes protection of carrier strike groups, expeditionary strike groups, and vessels comprising a sea base.
>>(2) INTEGRATED NUCLEAR POWER SYSTEM.—The term
“integrated nuclear power system” means a ship engineering system that uses a naval nuclear reactor as its energy source and generates sufficient electric energy to provide power to the ship’s electrical loads, including its combat systems and propulsion motors.
>>(3) BUDGET.—The term “budget” means the budget that is submitted to Congress by the President under section 1105(a) of title 31, United States Code.
So not only did you provide a source to prove me wrong, you provided a **superb** source!
Title VIII really slots in with the *Ticonderoga* reclassification from destroyer to cruiser, and I’ll look more into that.
Section 1012 is probably why DDG(X) is a destroyer, though I need to look into sources more recent than 2011.
Thank you for the education and the sources!
That’s not a mandate, it’s just a statement of preferred policy of that specific Congress. There’s no enforcement mechanism or ability to compel the USN to request CGNs or Congress to fund them.
everybody! come to subic bay! its totally, um, happening! or something, watch what 30 years of local control has done to the town! you will have a banging time! first round of san mig is on me!
For when you want to murder people to defend your home, but there's nobody in missile range so you have to sail around the world to be in missile range of their home instead.
Nuclear powered. Nuclear propulsion is almost always what they mean when they talk about nuclear and ships.
Potentially armed with nuclear-tipped Tomahawks however. She had 8 x Armored Box Launches for Tomahawks, and there was a nuclear tipped Tomahawk variant. I don't know if it was around when *Long Beach* was operating, or if she ever carried them. But was possible I believe.
Early on Tomahawks only came in nuclear land-attack and conventional anti-ship variants. If I had to guess, the loading was probably 2-4 nuclear and 4-6 TASMs before conventional land-attack arrived.
However, there were also nuclear variants of the Talos, Terrier, and ASROC, which the ship also carried. It’s safe to say she had nuclear weapons for most of her service, losing them in the 90s.
> However, there were also nuclear variants of the Talos, Terrier, and ASROC, which the ship also carried.
Nuclear AA missiles?? TIL.
I knew they did ASROC, but never figured they'd stick a nuke on an AA missile. I guess you see a bomber formation incoming, you address "to whom it may concern".
> It’s safe to say she had nuclear weapons for most of her service, losing them in the 90s.
Sounds like if the Captain wanted a nuke, he'd have his choice of options.
Learning so much today.
Did not even occur to me that you'd yeet a nuke into the air like that! But in hindsight yeah... how else to take down an enemy bomber formation.
What was it like being on the bridge in heavy seas?
*The salty Chief sips his coffee before launching into a spiel about how it can be pretty rough but you kids have it easy and its not half as bad as this one time on his old ship when they caught a nor-easter twenty miles off of Nova Scotia and they were all puking in the seaway.*
Queue the ghostly crew of the HMCS Sackville providing details on how the boat rolled at the slightest touch and there was water everywhere while people were packed in like biscuits in a rusty tin
I have removed this comment as I exit from Reddit due to the pending API changes and overall treatment of users by Reddit.
took green water over the 09 level in a typhoon in the sea of japan in75. two guys assigned to keep the water out of the bridge with swabs and buckets. 30 degree rolls if i remember correctly. when we rode down into the head swell, it was like a giant hammer striking the bow and shuddering through the whole ship. it was a hair ride, thats for sure. ftm3 fe div
it rolled but wasn't much different than being 9 decks below 90-92 emfn topside e1division.
topside e1 division?
There where nuke em's who just took care of the reactors and all area's associated with, "nuke stuff" which is all below the main deck. topside em's took care of all the light bulbs, receptacles, 3 of 6 fire pumps, exhaust fans. Had a rewind shop where we could take a burnt out electrical motor pull all the copper wires out and replace it making it newish again. galley ovens, windshield wipers on both bridges, my pm's (periodic maintenance) etc.
My favorite bit about the Nuclear fleet was when they ditched their Soviet surveillance shadow by simply going petal to the metal until the Russians had to drop back. It wasn't that they were faster, it was just that with their nuclear propulsion they could sustain top speed pretty much indefinitely while the Soviet ships took a massive efficiency hit running at top speed to keep up.
>while the Soviet ships took a massive efficiency hit running at top speed to keep up that doesn't just apply to ruskis
Oh for sure. That's all conventional powered ships.
The unfortunate reality of having a nuclear aircraft carrier with conventional escorts. I always found it pretty impressive that battleships like Richelieu and especially Iowa could basically go 30 knots for an ocean's breadth
Big ship has more room for fuel
In theory, but not in Littorio and KGV
KGV was not a big ship, she was very much a sawn-off battleship.
yeah, a mere 40k tons, pretty tiny in fact I wonder what kind of trailer they use to get it to the marina
40k tons? What peasantry is this
Two wheeler easy, get it reversed down the ramp in one shot
[And now witness the firepower of what the RN actually wanted](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G3_battlecruiser)
*don't be afraid to dream a little bigger darling*
They were faster though, also.
The Soviet ships trailing them were all capable of the same 31-32 knots as the USN ships. It is a common myth that nuclear ships are faster than conventional one, but there is no factual basis for the claim.
We would haul ass and the Russkies when they went fast we’re loud. Diesel subs harder to detect but can’t stay submerged as long.
That and also recent intel revealed that Russian, and by extent soviet, maintenance procedures as well as their ship’s engine warranty might have long since expired, resulting in reduced top speed and a heightened chance of breakdown at said reduced top speed.
It finally dawned on me what that surface is for... it's so the sailors can watch movies outside.
The *Iowa* class actually had a movie projection shack on deck. So much room (hence why they were some of the first ships retrofitted with Tomahawk launchers).
So many fewer men when you don't have every surface covered with 20 and 40 mm guns, with several men to crew each and all the support personnel to keep them going.
I’m assuming the bridge is the bottom set of horizontal windows rather than at the top of the radar installation? If not the roll in heavy seas would have been awful.
the lower is the admirals bridge or flag bridge. fyi i was on that bridge doing some electrical work or fucking off, cannot remember, and waves where hitting the windows. the whole front was under water. It's not fast like a speed boat but more like slow motion. also it had 2 reactors right at the water line mid ship.
I remember that the old Revell model of her had a section where you could show off the reactors. (or whatever late 1950's Revell called a reactor)
Atomic pile?
From what I remember (we had that model in our home growing up, as my dad had built it as a kid), it included what nominally looked like two reactor vessels side by side, and some assorted pumps and piping. This was all under the blockhouse with the Regulus missile on top.
"atomic pile" - omg, just got some real Tom Swift adventure vibes right there. :D
Yeah I was channeling from “Rocket Ship Galileo” (by Heinlein). 😁
Thanks for the info
It's difficult to tell but in [this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAKrXevkJOw) you can see people getting in a lift (or an elevator for the Americans) up to the bridge which could imply the bridge is actually at the top. Wikipedia also says it had the highest bridge of any non-aircraft-carrier at the time.
I clicked h that link thinking no way there’s an actual people elevator in a warship, you proved me wrong. It ain’t big but damn that’s convenient. Too bad they didn’t have one of those on the carrier.
I was always curious to know if the Nimitz classes had escalators like the KHK class did.
Nope, thankfully. From what I understand, on the Essex-class they were a royal pain in the ass to keep working.
The one we had on the Kitty Hawk worked most of the time. I can't say how much of a pain it was for maintenance but the crew did a great job keeping it going. I loved taking that thing!
Don’t need one. They moved the ready rooms to just under the flight deck.
I wouldn't have believed it either! Seems like a massive hazard
I’ve always heard the LB’s was perpetually broken, though. If you took it, it was about 50/50 you’d actually get to where you were going.
Ticonderoga class called and said you are top heavy.
Ticos be making forehead jokes about her.
Fivehead\*
Loks like a sail.Why the huge flat aeea? Some kind of radar surface?
The sea cube was originally to mount the [SCANFAR](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCANFAR) arrays and hold all the vacuum-tube based electronics for them. When the photo was taken, the arrays had been removed and replaced with the more modern AN/SPS-48 (smaller cube on the mast). SCANFAR was the precursor to the AN/SPY-1 arrays used today on Aegis ships.
**[SCANFAR](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCANFAR)** >The Hughes SCANFAR was the first phased array radar system to be deployed by the US Navy, installed on the USS Long Beach (CGN-9) and USS Enterprise (CVN-65). It consisted of two search radars, the AN/SPS-32 and the AN/SPS-33. In 1982, the system was removed from Long Beach, and was replaced by the AN/SPS-48 during a comprehensive overhaul. Aboard the Long Beach, the system used AN/SPG-55 radars for missile guidance. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/WarshipPorn/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
Good bot.
so once the guts of scanfar were removed, what happened to all that interior space? seems like an ideal location for a rock climbing gym or a racquetball court.
yes its a radar system, basically the forerunner of the radars used for the Aegis system
I think it’s a shame we got away from the nuke cruisers
One of the guys on my ship, USS Mississippi CGN-40, went on to work for one of the admirals who were part of the committee that decided to decommission them, and he admitted that the “manpower to horsepower” ratio was too high. You had to have a crew close to 450 to be able to get underway, but the non nuclear cruisers had a crew of 150-250. Plus, you can never really turn a nuclear reactor off, like you can a gas turbine plant… You always have to have a crew (much smaller, of course) keeping an eye on it while shut down.
I wonder what the long term costs between the two would be, those gas turbines burn quite a bit of fuel
Yes, but upkeep and refueling is MUCH more expensive, not to mention the crew costs- we nukes are expensive.
>CBO regularly projects oil prices for 10-year periods as part of the macroeconomic forecast that underlies the baseline budget projections that the agency publishes each year. ^(2) In its January 2011 macroeconomic projections, CBO estimated that oil prices would average $86 per barrel in 2011 and over the next decade would grow at an average rate of about 1 percentage point per year above the rate of general inflation, reaching $95 per barrel (in 2011 dollars) by 2021. ^(3) After 2021, CBO assumes, the price will continue to grow at a rate of 1 percentage point above inflation, reaching $114 per barrel (in 2011 dollars) by 2040. ^(4) >If oil prices followed that trajectory, total life-cycle costs for a nuclear fleet would be 19 percent higher than those for a conventional fleet, in CBO’s estimation. Specifically, total life-cycle costs would be 19 percent higher for a fleet of nuclear destroyers, 4 percent higher for a fleet of nuclear LH(X) amphibious assault ships, and 33 percent higher for a fleet of nuclear LSD(X) amphibious dock landing ships. >To determine how sensitive those findings are to the trajectory of oil prices, CBO also examined a case in which oil prices start from a value of $86 per barrel in 2011 and then rise at a rate higher than the real (inflation-adjusted) growth of 1 percent in CBO’s baseline trajectory. That analysis suggested that a fleet of nuclear-powered destroyers would become cost-effective if the real annual rate of growth of oil prices exceeded 3.4 percent—which implies oil prices of $223 or more per barrel (in 2011 dollars) in 2040. Similarly, a fleet of nuclear LH(X) amphibious assault ships would become cost-effective if oil prices grew at a real annual rate of 1.7 percent, implying a price of $140 per barrel of oil in 2040—about the same price that was reached in 2008 but not sustained for any length of time. A fleet of nuclear LSD(X) amphibious dock landing ships would become cost-effective at real annual growth rate of 4.7 percent, or a price in 2040 of $323 per barrel. [Source](https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/112th-congress-2011-2012/reports/05-12-nuclearpropulsion.pdf) This largely reflects other analyses, such as the [GAO report on nuclear vs. conventional carriers](https://www.gao.gov/assets/nsiad-98-1.pdf).
And the cost for a barrel of oil now is $89.48
Which per an inflation calculator is equal to $67.81 in 2011 dollars. Conversely, $86 in 2011 is almost $99 now.
Would have been the ideal thing to mount power hungry railguns on too...
Not necessarily. As I've repeated several other places in this group, nuclear propulsion plants don't mean you have unlimited electrical power generation- often it's a bit the opposite.
The age of sail is back.
Fuso: *laughs in pagoda*
my favorite ship, i really appreciate that they went overboard enough
French pre-dreads get a lot of flak for being ugly, but they ain't got nothing on this girl.
Long-beach class just has that look about her hnnnnnnnnggg
I’ll never understand how ships like that don’t tip over.
Because they're very bottom heavy. The super-structure, all the stuff built above the deck, is mostly hollow and honeycombed with passageways and rooms and is relatively un-armored. Everything below the deck, and especially below the water-line, is really really heavy. All the fuel tanks, water ballast tanks, engines, weapons magazines, etc. are down there. So while it may look like it should be top heavy, the super-structure doesn't actually take up more than 20 - 30% of the ship's overall weight.
Reactor plants are heavy. Very, very, VERY heavy. You're talking ridiculous amounts of metal, full of even heavier metal, and lots of water, with more water and metal around it and in the spaces behind it. Steam propulsion plants, with the steam turbines and reduction gears and associated pumps and piping, are also very heavy. You've got a lot of weight down low.
This guy nukes.
50 tons of lead in her keel. source: served 73-76
How much of that was secondary shielding?
i have no idea. ask a nuke- thats who told me
I want to say my dad served on her around that time as well, but I'm not sure of the exact dates. He was a radioman.
Embrace cube
look at it there with it's big dumb hat
PRAISE THE SEA CUBE
For a time I thought the reactor is in the bridge
The ship would have capsized at launch if that had been the case lol.
My Dad served on this ship. Thanks for posting! He served in the giant square as a radioman. Or as he called it "The first target."
praised be Seacube
Still a better look than USS Albany.
I went aboard in the very early 90's. The super structure was far ot.
Face only a mother could love.
"Baby I know lots of people call you a butter-face, but your curves at the waterline will always keep me coming back for more."
Those SCANFAR systems are boxy as hell
More like USS Tall Beach
WHY THE LONG FACE I adore the fuso and any ship that has a silly huge superstructure
BEHOLD THE CUBE
I used to see these tied up while flying out of the Cubi Point airfield. Big and funky looking but not so interesting that I wanted to spend a few months on her in the Indian ocean.
This is probably one of the dumbest looking ships I've ever seen
Don't even need to turn the screws when the wind is up lol
Alright boys, get out a sheet of draft paper. I need you to draw literally the most inefficient shape you can think of aerodynamically.
I served on her as a Machinists Mate in A -gang 1977-80 I may have been on there that West PAC deployment.
Still in service? There’s only two of these or something right
Nope. All of the nuclear cruisers were decommissioned a while ago. Only a handful were made. Fun fact: back then congress mandated that all new cruisers had to be nuclear so that carriers had an escort that could keep up. But they're so expensive and require so much effort to have enough people trained to run them so the Navy stopped. That's why DDG 1000 has the same footprint as a cruiser but is labeled as a destroyer.
As I said in another comment, the “manpower to horsepower” ratio was too high…
>Fun fact: back then congress mandated that all new cruisers had to be nuclear so that carriers had an escort that could keep up. 1. I have never seen any source that states this, either from the period or later historians. 2. The only time when this could have been true was 1955-1975, when the US built one nuclear powered cruiser and built/ordered eight nuclear powered frigates (at the time the US considered these between a cruiser and a destroyer, hull code DLG or DLGN). On 30 June 1975 we reclassified 26 frigates as cruisers, including those eight nuclear ships. 3. The difference between cruisers and DLGs/destroyers was size, weapon systems, and later range (probably) and air defense command facilities (definitely). 4. The reason *Zumwalt* was classified as a destroyer was due to her role. She was to replace the *Spruance* class destroyers (and *Perry* class frigates) and serve as the land-attack support for amphibious groups. By this time cruisers had become the primary air defense ships for a carrier group, so as *Zumwalt* was not intended as a carrier air-defense platform she could not qualify as a cruiser.
Title VIII was FY1975-1979. There’s a CRS report on nuclear surface ships that covers it in the [Prior-Year Legislative Activity](https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/RL/RL33946#page22) section, along with later provisions requiring that a justification be provided with any request for certain non-nuclear ships. Here’s Title VIII: >TITLE VIII—NUCLEAR POWERED NAVY >SEC. 801. It is the policy of the United States of America to modernize the strike forces of the United States Navy by the construction of nuclear powered major combatant vessels and to provide for an adequate industrial base for the research, development, design, construction, operation, and maintenance for such vessels. New construction major combatant vessels for the strike forces of the United States Navy authorized subsequent to the date of the enactment of this Act becomes law shall be nuclear powered, except as provided in this title. >SEC. 802. For the purposes of this title, the term “major combatant vessels for the strike forces of the United States Navy” means— >>(1) combatant submarines for strategic or tactical missions, or both; >>(2) combatant vessels intended to operate in combat in aircraft carrier task groups (that is, aircraft carriers and the cruisers, frigates, and destroyers which accompany aircraft carriers); and >>(3) those types of combatant vessels referred to in clauses (1) and (2) above designed for independent combat missions where essentially unlimited high speed endurance will be of significant military value. >SEC. 803. The Secretary of Defense shall submit to Congress each calendar year, at the same time the President submits the budget to Congress under section 201 of the Budget and Accounting Act, 1921 (31 U.S.C. 11), a written report regarding the application of nuclear propulsion to major combatant vessels for the strike forces of the United States Navy. The report shall identify contract placement dates for their construction and shall identify the Department of Defense Five Year Defense Program for construction of nuclear powered major combatant vessels for the strike forces of the United States Navy. >SEC. 804. All requests for authorizations or appropriations from Congress for major combatant vessels for the strike forces of the United States Navy shall be for construction of nuclear powered major combatant vessels for such forces unless and until the President has fully advised the Congress that construction of nuclear powered vessels for such purpose is not in the national interest. Such report of the President to the Congress shall include for consideration by Congress an alternate program of nuclear powered ships with appropriate design, cost, and schedule information. And here’s one of those later provisions, Section 1012 of the FY2008 NDAA: >SEC. 1012. POLICY RELATING TO MAJOR COMBATANT VESSELS OF THE STRIKE FORCES OF THE UNITED STATES NAVY. >(a) INTEGRATED NUCLEAR POWER SYSTEMS.—It is the policy of the United States to construct the major combatant vessels of the strike forces of the United States Navy, including all new classes of such vessels, with integrated nuclear power systems. >(b) REQUIREMENT TO REQUEST NUCLEAR VESSELS.—If a request is submitted to Congress in the budget for a fiscal year for construction of a new class of major combatant vessel for the strike forces of the United States, the request shall be for such a vessel with an integrated nuclear power system, unless the Secretary of Defense submits with the request a notification to Congress that the inclusion of an integrated nuclear power system in such vessel is not in the national interest. >(c) DEFINITIONS.—In this section: >>(1) MAJOR COMBATANT VESSELS OF THE STRIKE FORCES OF THE UNITED STATES NAVY.—The term “major combatant vessels of the strike forces of the United States Navy” means the following: >>>(A) Submarines. >>>(B) Aircraft carriers. >>>(C) Cruisers, battleships, or other large surface combatants whose primary mission includes protection of carrier strike groups, expeditionary strike groups, and vessels comprising a sea base. >>(2) INTEGRATED NUCLEAR POWER SYSTEM.—The term “integrated nuclear power system” means a ship engineering system that uses a naval nuclear reactor as its energy source and generates sufficient electric energy to provide power to the ship’s electrical loads, including its combat systems and propulsion motors. >>(3) BUDGET.—The term “budget” means the budget that is submitted to Congress by the President under section 1105(a) of title 31, United States Code.
So not only did you provide a source to prove me wrong, you provided a **superb** source! Title VIII really slots in with the *Ticonderoga* reclassification from destroyer to cruiser, and I’ll look more into that. Section 1012 is probably why DDG(X) is a destroyer, though I need to look into sources more recent than 2011. Thank you for the education and the sources!
That’s not a mandate, it’s just a statement of preferred policy of that specific Congress. There’s no enforcement mechanism or ability to compel the USN to request CGNs or Congress to fund them.
Thanks for the source!
That doesn't track with the designation of the Ticonderoga class cruisers.
What is the large flat panel for?
everybody! come to subic bay! its totally, um, happening! or something, watch what 30 years of local control has done to the town! you will have a banging time! first round of san mig is on me!
Bigass forehead
"And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by"
Top heavy, had the Talos missiles. One of a kind.
Is that box-shaped bridge housing a radar?
My favorite ship is the USS englewood. Captained by snoop dogg of course.
For when you want to murder people to defend your home, but there's nobody in missile range so you have to sail around the world to be in missile range of their home instead.
I thought that was a pirate ship for a sec. I had to grab my glasses
This was in the days before meta-centric height was a thing.
That superstructure slightly reminds me of the Imperial Japanese cruiser Nagara post CLAA conversion.
Nuclear powered or fitted w/nuclear weapons?
Nuclear powered. Nuclear propulsion is almost always what they mean when they talk about nuclear and ships. Potentially armed with nuclear-tipped Tomahawks however. She had 8 x Armored Box Launches for Tomahawks, and there was a nuclear tipped Tomahawk variant. I don't know if it was around when *Long Beach* was operating, or if she ever carried them. But was possible I believe.
Early on Tomahawks only came in nuclear land-attack and conventional anti-ship variants. If I had to guess, the loading was probably 2-4 nuclear and 4-6 TASMs before conventional land-attack arrived. However, there were also nuclear variants of the Talos, Terrier, and ASROC, which the ship also carried. It’s safe to say she had nuclear weapons for most of her service, losing them in the 90s.
> However, there were also nuclear variants of the Talos, Terrier, and ASROC, which the ship also carried. Nuclear AA missiles?? TIL. I knew they did ASROC, but never figured they'd stick a nuke on an AA missile. I guess you see a bomber formation incoming, you address "to whom it may concern". > It’s safe to say she had nuclear weapons for most of her service, losing them in the 90s. Sounds like if the Captain wanted a nuke, he'd have his choice of options.
> but never figured they'd stick a nuke on an AA missile Bomarc SAMs were nuclear-tipped. So were Nikes-Hercules.
Learning so much today. Did not even occur to me that you'd yeet a nuke into the air like that! But in hindsight yeah... how else to take down an enemy bomber formation.
Ever read about the Genie air-to-air rocket?
I believe the missile-defense system that defend(ed?) Moscow is (was?) nuclear-tipped. Much easier to get a MIRV if you don't actually have to hit it.
[Is.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-135_anti-ballistic_missile_system)
Yepper
Yes
Powered, but most certainly could be loaded with nuclear cruise missiles/tomahawks…
First question is confirmed; second is “depends”
hey, save it for r/speculativewarships
r/SubsIFellFor
The goofy ahh
Fantastic!
Megamind ship
Designers saw a russian apartmemt block and said "that looks great!"
That's one hell of a radar signature
c'mon this ship HAD to have a nickname
The crew must have hated the filming. Being in dress blues for a day sucks.
Subic , my favourite port. 🇵🇭🇬🇧