The Ship Model Forum

Yes this is what I was trying to say - apologies for using the incorrect terminology unintentionally while wrangling a toddler

Dick is right, but the matter of who would make changes to the contracted design of a ship often depended on the builder. As Dick says, any change the USN made to a ship a given builder was building, would require a change order and an extra payment to the private builder. However, with some builders, the USN had a contentious relationship about contract mods. An example, with the FLETCHER class, the USN agent for the class (BosNY) had a "good" working arrangement with Bath Iron Works (BIW) and frequently BIW would "welcome" making mods for reasonable negotiated cost. That was partly because BIW ordered parts during the whole building process only as needed, so changes weren't as disruptive to their building schedule. On the other hand, with Federal-Kearny the USN would get kickback from making any changes involving REWORK. Federal ordered and assembled ALL the items needed to build the FLETCHER class destroyers before laying the keel. This allowed FEDERAL to build the destroyers on a stable schedule and build times were among the shortest for the FLETCHER class. BIW's build schedule on the other hand was longer. The USN liked FEDERAL's quick builds, but not their resistance to make changes AFTER the keel was laid. FEDERAL was willing to make mods after the ship was launched during Fitting-Out, but by a separate group not part of the building yard crew and given allowance for not making the contracted delivery date ... at a high cost to the USN. So, the USN decided accepting the destroyer and then letting New York Navy Yard (NYNY) make the update mod was the best option. Sometimes the USN would tell FEDERAL to not install certain items that would not be needed with a configuration update, and pay them for not installing.

Hmm. You guys consider the Baltimores as a whole class? Not into two classes or at least two sub classes?
Baltimore and Oregon City (sub)classes?

And the stern and the superstructure and to some extent the light AA layout.

Rick and Dick,

Thanks for the information. I was thinking of the early Clevelands, which I am very familiar with. After production got into full swing there were fewer changes after the shakedown cruise when supplies of guns and such were much better. However, there were a lot of modifications to the original design as production continued during the war.

There are many photos of early Clevelands with 20 mm guns on the shakedown cruises that were replaced by twin 40 mm later. This was especially true of the twin 40 mm mounts outboard of turrets 2 and 3. All of the 40 mm support installation (foundations, ammo hoists, wiring, etc.) seems to have been installed during construction but the initial fit out was with one or two single 20mm guns at these 40 mm positions. Ditto for some of the gun directors. I am pretty sure some of these ships carried the 20 mm guns in lieu of the dual 40 mm after deployment, possibly to be replaced at Pearl Harbor with the twin 40 mm guns, but I would have to go back through the many hundreds of photos I have to verify this. It would be easy for a repair ship to swap the guns if all the 40mm support had already been installed. And when ships suffered enough damage to have to return to the States there were a lot of changes to the 20 mm and 40 mm gun complements.

I have thousands of blueprints for the Clevelands, and it was interesting that several of the yards made changes to the original design that were unique to ships constructed in that yard. It appears they got blueprints of the original BuShips drawings and hand copied them in house. While doing this they changed the drawing numbers to the format the shipyard used, so each drawing package has a cross reference list of yard drawing numbers to BuShips numbers. In some cases they didn't use the BuShips drawings but substituted in house drawings (I have several examples).

You only need to look at the profile photos of some of the ships to identify which yard they were constructed in. Two good examples are the aircraft crane on the stern and the smoke pipes for the trash burner. Most cranes were pipe lattice but ships built at Quincy had a crane with metal web with lightening holes.

The trash burners were usually in the after part of the midships superstructure between the smoke pipes, some external on the aft side of the deck house and some internal. But the trash burner stacks were built several ways:

New York Shipbuilding put the trash burner pipe up the port side of the aft smoke pipe on early builds, but later ran it up the forward center of the after smoke pipe. Columbia CL-56 had the trash burner pipe moved twice after initial construction!

Quincy built them all with the trash burner pipe running up the forward center of the aft smoke pipe.

Cramp built them all with the trash burner pipe running up the forward center of the after smoke pipe.

Newport News ran the trash burner pipe up the port side of the aft smoke pipe on the first two ships, but built later ships (Biloxi CL-80, Houston CL-81, Vickburg CL 86, Duluth CL-87 Amsterdam CL-101, and Portsmouth CL-102) with the trash burner pipe routed forward to the aft port side of the forward smoke pipe. Photos show they moved the trash burner to a different location near the center part of the midships deck house based upon the photos. There appear to be two configurations (high and low) for this forward routed pipe. This forward routing of the trash burner pipe has always seemed odd to me.

When some of the Clevelands were converted to guided missile cruisers each yard had its own way of constructing the radar towers, and you can identify the yard just by looking at the photos. I also know that there were a lot of other small changes to vents, internal phone positions, etc. on ships built indifferent yards.

I am pretty sure there were no two ships exactly alike, even vessels built side by side in the same yards. I suspect the same is true of the Baltimores.

Phil

_________________
A collision at sea will ruin your entire day. Aristotle

TZoli,

Some references identify the OREGON CITY group as a separate class, others define them as a sub-group. In my view they should be defined as a different class. Likely the USN initially looked at the OREGON CITY units as a sub-group of the BALTIMORE class because they were basically just an alteration of the superstructure arrangement. Much as the USN initially called the SUMNER and GEARING classes as SUMNER-short hull and SUMNER-long hull until the early 1950's, I suspect the USN officially classified the OREGON CITY units post-WWII.

The BALTIMORE class proper, has two sub-groups. The first four ordered (CA-68-71) had the two cranes and a different shape stern, from the rest of the class with one crane.

Yes I've noticed that. It's like the design evolved:
Early Baltimores -> Late Baltimores -> Oregon City -> Des Moines

By the way does anybody know what defect(s) were found on the USS Oregon City as she was decommissioned very early and not chosen for Missile ship conversion?

Question:
What kind of close range directors the Oregon City class cruisers carry while they were still equipped with the 40mm Bofors guns?
Did they carry the mix of the Baltimores eg Mark 51 and 57 or only Mark 57s? I know when they received the 3" RF Mark 22 guns they received their respective Mark 56 / SPG-35 GFCS as well.
Does somebody have drawings of the Mark 57 and maybe mark 51 directors? (Top and side views? )

The editor of the WARSHIP INTERNATIONAL quarterly journal (INRO), looked into this question about why USS OREGON CITY was decommissioned so soon, several years ago and came up that there were no defects with her. The USN was limited with how many ships could be in active service due to funding limits. The selection of which cruisers to decommission between 1946 and 1950, was somewhat random and may have been a factor of how up-to-date they were with equipment. Radar and Fire Control Systems were changing rapidly during the late 1940's. The BALTIMORE class in general had more "room" onboard for flagship roles and were less crowded and "won out" over the CLEVELAND and ATLANTA class cruisers. But, an attempt was made to have at least one of each class of the modern cruisers in commission early in the 1950's.

As for GFCS installed on the OREGON CITY class as completed, I'm not sure for all of them. But, it appears they initially had several Mk 57 GFCS and Mk 63 GFGS (Mk 63 used a Mk 51 mod director and had radar installed on the 40-mm mount). Prior to 1950, it looks like four Mk 56 GFCS were installed.

Rick:

Thank you for as always posting the most accurate information and the best photos. Perhaps the issue is with my display, but you beautiful photos always exceed the size of my screen and I have to scroll to look at the whole photo or read the text.

Thanks for sharing! Best regards: Tom

Tom,

I have the same problem with wide photos like Rick posted, and Pascal's images in the Scratch Build section. However, I don't mind the scrolling because the larger images have much better detail.

My laptop has 15 1/2" diagonal display with only 1366 x 768 pixels.

Phil

_________________
A collision at sea will ruin your entire day. Aristotle

Thanks I presume the Mark 56 / SPG-35 GFCS are at the platforms just forward of the bridge, behind the conning tower and next to the 4th pair of wing Bofors mounts which are behind the aft wing 5" turrets eg around the aft mast.

Here are my drawings of 4 units of the classes:
CA-68 USS Baltimore as looked like in 1944/45:


and CA-132 USS Macon as looked like in the early 1960's say 1960/61 (What I was able to determine from photos):


CA-122 USS Oregon City as looked like in late/post war in 1945/1946:


and CA-124 USS Rochester as looked like in the early 1960's say 1960/61 (What I was able to determine from photos):


I hope they are accurate.

TZoli,

Excellent! Thanks! I think it helps with the colors.

The stern of the Macon should look more like that on the Rochester, with the off-center hangar hatch and more rounded deck. In the late 1950's, she even had the starboard side twin 3" mount on the stern. That was removed in order to install a Regulus missile launching system. The mod included sponsons for the launch and changing the hangar hatch to slide sideways, as seen in this shot of the Los Angeles: https://www.navsource.org/archives/04/135/0413506.jpg Only the first 4 Baltimore's, with the two cranes, had the more square stern. The switch to the single crane caused them to round off the corners of the stern at the deck level in order to help hoisted aircraft avoid bouncing into the corners of the deck. Ironically, when the twin 40MM were installed there, it negated the benefits of rounding the stern. The waterline remained more squared off, giving the complex contours characteristic of the later Baltimore's, the Oregon City's and the Cleveland variants. The off-center hatch also was part of the "round stern, single crane" mod starting with Pittsburgh.

The round (a circular arc) stern at main deck level and square (ish) stern at the waterline is something that some modelers miss.It is tricky to model.

Phil

_________________
A collision at sea will ruin your entire day. Aristotle

This rounded deck configuration is unusual in that it (for a USN ship) incorporates a degree of tumblehome. I hadn't noticed this before but the aircraft handling considerations with the single crane make sense, this would have also reduced top weight a little. But then of course the light AA considerations in the final event overrode the aircraft handling niceties.

When needs must, the Devil drives!

As I recall the Baltimores didn't have tumblehome along the sides, but there was some from the "corners" of the square stern at the waterline and the founded main deck level.

However the Clevelands were (re)designed with tumblehome. After the Navy increased anti-aircraft guns and armor protection the ship was unstable. The contractor (New York Shipyards) proposed widening the hull at the waterline, producing tumblehome, and improving stability. Tumblehome was unusual in US Navy ships.

I always thought it gave the Clevelands a "nostalgic" appearance hailing back to the days of wooden ships and broadsides of smooth-bore cannons.

Phil

_________________
A collision at sea will ruin your entire day. Aristotle

When I was in grad school I lived in an old house with a couple of other climbers and sailors, we called the house 'Tumblehome". Yes the Tumblehome brings back images of sailing ships of the line with decks of canons and towering masts.

Tom

Wiki mentions:



That the two Bostons would had been refitted with the new RIM-67 Standard ER missiles and associated guidance radars and likely updated other sensors as well.
Does somebody know what other changes might had been included? What radars would had been fitted or considered?