Guest wrote:
Hello all
I have some issues, specificly about the first ship of the Spruance-class, the own USS Spruance (DD 963).
In my research, I realized that the VLS was introduced in a refit circa 1986. And I have a picture of the Spruance in which the ship still had the black masts, circa 1990. On the other hand, I have another image, circa 1991, in which the vessel didn't have the black mast anymore (I don't know how to add images in this kind of forum to exemplify because my pictures are in my computer, not in Instagram, Facebook, etc.).
That is, I think that there were some structural improvements in a "1991 second major refit", but I didn't find documentation or images to support such hypothesis.
In this "1991 refit", the masts got the same color of the superstructure between 1990 and 1991. This is one of my issues: I wonder when and why.
Other issue: how was the aft part of the superstructure, on board (above the hangar) ? Because, in the 1980's pictures, there were a few structures in this part. In the 2000's pictures, this part of the ship seems to have much more details (e.g., the Phalanx CIWS wasn't in a "plataform" like the 2000's pictures).
Anyone can help me with this issues ?
There was a separate refit which altered the Hangar - it was expanded to handle the SH-60 helicopter (LAMPS III), which is larger than the SH-2 (LAMPS I) the Spruance class handled on original build. The hangar was expanded to match the hull side to gain width.
So you are not seeing things, the hangar did change at a refit separate from the VLS fitting.
However, the change in color of the stacks was for the reasons mentioned in posts above, and was not a function of the refit, but it did happen at nearly the same time in many cases.