by Tom Dougherty » Wed Jan 25, 2017 3:45 pm
If you look at the dates involved, the Scorpion had just been started a few weeks before it was reordered as the George Washington. When submarines were built in that era, the hull sections were placed on the building ways, all medium to large equipment was installed in place, and then the completed sections were welded together (which takes several weeks to accomplish). Once sections were welded, from there on in, everything to be installed had to go through a small hatch, so smaller equipment was the rule. If I recall, it was only 8-9 weeks into the build when the Scorpion SSN was reordered as an SSBN.
Much of the equipment for the GW was originally intended for Scorpion. The engineering section and SW5 reactor compartments were basically the same. The control areas had to be redesigned to accommodate the missile control and firing equipment, gyro stabilizers were added, as were ballast compensation tanks for the missiles and the missile compartment itself was obviously newly designed. To fit the missiles, the larger compartment was necessary, and the hull diameter increase for the missiles is partially hidden beneath the turtleback section. It basically had to bulge to 33 feet to fit the Polaris missile tubes into the basic Skipjack hull. The rudders were beefed up and the sail redesigned to contain extra equipment and masts. The submarines did not have the rafted machinery spaces (neither did the Skipjacks) so they were acoustically louder than the follow on classes which were based more on the Thresher/Permit designs. It was a quick, interim design to get some SSBNs out sooner than the planned dates.
If you look at the dates involved, the [i]Scorpion[/i] had just been started a few weeks before it was reordered as the [i]George Washington[/i]. When submarines were built in that era, the hull sections were placed on the building ways, all medium to large equipment was installed in place, and then the completed sections were welded together (which takes several weeks to accomplish). Once sections were welded, from there on in, everything to be installed had to go through a small hatch, so smaller equipment was the rule. If I recall, it was only 8-9 weeks into the build when the[i] Scorpion[/i] SSN was reordered as an SSBN.
Much of the equipment for the GW was originally intended for [i]Scorpion[/i]. The engineering section and SW5 reactor compartments were basically the same. The control areas had to be redesigned to accommodate the missile control and firing equipment, gyro stabilizers were added, as were ballast compensation tanks for the missiles and the missile compartment itself was obviously newly designed. To fit the missiles, the larger compartment was necessary, and the hull diameter increase for the missiles is partially hidden beneath the turtleback section. It basically had to bulge to 33 feet to fit the Polaris missile tubes into the basic [i]Skipjack[/i] hull. The rudders were beefed up and the sail redesigned to contain extra equipment and masts. The submarines did not have the rafted machinery spaces (neither did the [i]Skipjacks[/i]) so they were acoustically louder than the follow on classes which were based more on the [i]Thresher/Permit[/i] designs. It was a quick, interim design to get some SSBNs out sooner than the planned dates.