The Ship Model Forum

A question for Red/anyone else knowledgeable about this class and its weapons, how reliable was the Mk-11 missile launcher? I've heard stories about massive jamming problems among others that prompted its discontinued use and that's why the rest of the class have Mk-13s instead. Was it something that they fixed later on or did it always plague those ships with 11s or was it simply blown out of proportions?


Red, those are some FINE photos of some very graceful ships. Feel free to post more

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Drawing Board:
1/700 Whiff USS Leyte and escorts 1984
1/700 Whiff USN Modernized CAs 1984
1/700 Whiff ASW Showdown - FFs vs SSGN 1984

Slipway:
1/700 Whiff USN ASW Hunter Killer Group Dio 1984

no idea what was wrong with the launcher. here are more photos.

Not exactly. The Mk 13 was more reliable and had a higher rate of fire but was still going through development for the first two years of CFA's being deployed to the fleet. It just wasn't ready yet.

I served on the Royal Australian Navy's version of the class. They were slightly modified with an extra deck in the centre for the Ikara missile instead of ASROC. I have constructed a model of the HMAS Brisbane a 1967 commission ship and modelled it in year 2000 the year I served on it. Even in year 2000 it could still get to a top speed of 36 knots on full power trial. During its career the ship was fitted with two phalanx CIWS on either side of the aft funnel during the Gulf War of 1991. The deckhouse in the middle was a magazine to fire the Australian designed and built Ikara anti submarine missile that carried a MK44 torpedo to a distance of 10km from the ship. There were two of these missile launchers located on the deck just aft of the fore funnel and loaded from the magazine behind. The ship did have the same boats as the US navy when launced and some time in the 90's they changed to RHIB's kind of like what we see on the Arleigh Burke class today. On the bridge there initially was an extra director for the Ikara but that was removed and in 2000 it carried an EOTS machine (Electro Optical Tracking System) Kind of like night vision and video camera to be seen in the ops room at all times.

I constructed this ship from the WEM USS Benjamin Stoddert kid and modified it to make HMAS Brisbane DDG41. As you can see the aft RAS platform is different from the US version and there is also a RAS station midships and forward of the torpedo tubes. It carried chaff decoy launchers and the comms antenna were different in locations. It also had the NIXIE torpedo countermeasuers and the inflateable liferats were in different locations too.

that is very nice build sir!

Very nice indeed sir, thank you for sharing it and the info I never knew any of these ships carried any sort of CIWS save for the RAM launchers on the German ships; COOL! Question about the Ikara system, was it manually re-loaded or was it automatic similiar to say the USN Mk-10 missile launcher? Was the magazine just the space immediately behind the launcher or did it extend below decks at all?

_________________
Drawing Board:
1/700 Whiff USS Leyte and escorts 1984
1/700 Whiff USN Modernized CAs 1984
1/700 Whiff ASW Showdown - FFs vs SSGN 1984

Slipway:
1/700 Whiff USN ASW Hunter Killer Group Dio 1984

The Ikara missile was manually loaded and quite time consuming I believe. It became obselete when the MK44 torpedo was removed from service. The reloads only went into the new deckhouse you can see midships. I dont remember how many reloads were carried. I believe the main cafeteria was in the same location as the US ships.

In this photo here you can just make out the port side launcher towards the foot of the tripod mast.


Then in this photo if you look carefully you can make out the missile on the rails on the starboard side.


Although small this photo does show the ship with the CIWS on. for some reason I cannot find many photos online with the CIWS as by 1995 they were removed. The RAN kept the ships in service a lot longer than intended.



Another photo with the Ikara missile loaded


Here is another one taken in 2001


You can just make out the EOTS machine in this photo that was installed for testing in 2000.

Which is this thing here

The Australians had three ships HMAS Perth, Hobart and Brisbane DDG 38, 39 and 41. the missing number was due to the fact that another foreign Charles F Adams DDG was constructed in the sequence.

Also thanks for the comments. They were fun ships to sail on. My first sea posting was the HMAS Brisbane and it was the type of ship that would roll anywhere on the ocean. You had to use the seatbelt to buckle yourself in your bunks some nights, you had to manually do ammunitioning and food stores. There were davits everywhere I scratched my head on a davit doing one food stores inside at night drawing blood. They were tough ships to be on and you always look back at the times with fond memories. We had plenty of swimex off the ship. The full power trials were amazing you could feel the whole ship cavitating and feel the force of that ship moving at over 30 knots.

Has the new L'Arsenal 1/350 scale DDG-22 Benjamin Stoddert been independently reviewed anywhere on the web yet?

Thanks,
Erik

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Hi Guys,
First off, I want to thank Sutho for posting pics and sharing his own experiences on these ships. The ship specific data is what we modeler's thrive on, so this is most useful information! Awesome!

Not as much about the Mk11 launchers, but I have a friend whom referred to the forward 5"54 gun Mt51 as, "beach", and Mt52 as "baby". He said they could only count on getting one round out of Mt51, but relied almost esclusively on Mt52 for all of their 72 WestPac "Nam" shoots.

Erik,
I sent along a L'Arsenal 1/350 DDG-22 kit to Tim Dike to review from his own unbiased opinion and to post here.
He's got so many review samples to do, and I did not press him to push mine ahead or anything, but I'm sure he'll get to it soon; it's been 3-4 months since I sent it away. I spent so much time accurizing WEM's 350th DDG kit and never finished it. Now that I have a L'Arsenal kit to build, I may never finish the WEM kit. At any rate Erik, I can tell you the ship was designed using BuShips Hull contour lines; with the accompanying matrix. Jacques son did the CAD and I was with him every step of the way making corrections so that we would arrive at the most accurate DDG-22, (my favorite of them), and we did so. To do any other ship in the class with the bow-mounted sonar dome, it really depends on the modeler, as there are numerous details differences between the ships of the class. Consequently, as we got closer to a hyper-accurate DDG-22, we went further away from a hyper-accurate kit of any other ship in the class. Simply stated, it is still very much a possibility to do DDG-20-24 from this kit, but the modeler needs to know it won't be just adding different decal hull numbers. There have been some issues with the hull bottom and hull top not matching exactly and the only remedy to that propblem is to offer, (coming from L'Arsenal...soon I hope), a one-piece full hull casting. On the other hand, if someone intends to do a waterline build, there is no problem Also, I had a complaint about the p/e fret being too thin, as it's .1mm thick for accuracy, but another guy loved it. Also, the machined brass tripod mast seems to work well, and one fellow whom bought one from me is thrilled. Sadly, I've only distributed out 11 kits of my original shipment of 18 kits, so I still have some available. There was one other little problem with the kit; the screws. They are shaped very nicely, but the RP company made them a bit too small. The Adams class DDG had 14' diameter screws that should measure to .484", and they don't. The kit screws measure to .390"; which would translate to 11.5' in full size. Alas, only a few modelers will complain about this, but I'm one of them. So, Jacques has already had the screws done again in the correct .484" diameter and when I get some from him, I'll be having Ernie Gee of G-Factor Models cast them for me in brass. They will look sweet when I do get them; timeline uncertain I'm afraid.

Happy Holidays from a rainy Southern CA!
Tony DDG FAN Bunch

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two 1/350 waterline CFA's. tan one Le'Arsenal and the lightgreen IronShipWrights.

Nice pics, thanks for sharing!

Regarding the Mk 11 launcher - my father commissioned USS John King (DDG-3) as the ASW officer. According to him the Mk-11 launcher was designed by Bureau of Ordnance engineers and not FMC Northern Ordance - it never really worked well. Amongst its other issues, it leaked copious amounts of hydraulic oil. The new Weapons Officer checked on board and was appalled by the oil everywhere and, against the advice of the Chief, ordered all of the hydraulic fittings tightened to eliminate the leaks. The crew complied and the launcher compartment was spotless. However, going into an important missile shoot, the launcher stopped moving - its was hydraulically bound! The Weapons officer relented and the chief loosened up the fittings so the launcher could resume operations; they passed the missile shoot. Amongst its complex design issues, the missile rails were at the end of hydraulic pistons that pushed outward to allow the launcher to load from the outer ring. By comparison the Mk-13 was a much simpler and reliable design.

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Charles Landrum
USNA 1983
Norfolk, Virginia

Thank you very much Charles! That clears up a lot of questions. One last one though, why didn't they ever swap the 11s for 13s? Was it simply $$$ or did they just accept the 11s as sufficient but, just maintenance heavy?

_________________
Drawing Board:
1/700 Whiff USS Leyte and escorts 1984
1/700 Whiff USN Modernized CAs 1984
1/700 Whiff ASW Showdown - FFs vs SSGN 1984

Slipway:
1/700 Whiff USN ASW Hunter Killer Group Dio 1984

The Chicago and her sisters had the launchers too. My guess is that they function well enough and the Navy could not justify the replacement costs with so many other priorities. It would have required a complete rebuild of that area of the ship.

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Charles Landrum
USNA 1983
Norfolk, Virginia

Does anyone know what destroyer squadron DDG-24 USS Waddell belonged to when pictured here? http://www.seaforces.org/usnships/ddg/D ... addell.htm Also, does anyone have a closeup photo or drawing of the blue shield with yellow in the center that makes up the destroyer squadron's emblem? I can't tell what it is from those photos.

Thanks,
Erik

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From rooting around here: http://www.destroyers.org/patches/all-patches.htm#Squadron,%20Division,%20Group,%20and%20Flotilla%20Patches it looks an awful lot like DESRON 17. I'm not sure of the dates on those photos you linked though.

http://www.destroyers.org/patches/sq-patches/p-desron-17.htm

Found a shot from the ship's website of an UNREP in 1967 showing DESRON 17's shield on the forward funnel.

https://public.blu.livefilestore.com/y1p5myEsWvLIPuTW0cVMBF5iFke8nXyD5SywE0C7ccB3GtdhJX48Dmip1FI70yjY-mU75Aigv1hxYKsn_RjN_pt5Q/Highline25252520Captain252525201.jpg?psid=1

Go here: http://www.usswaddell.com/ and click "photo albums" on the left hand menu.


Hope that helps,
-Mike

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Drawing Board:
1/700 Whiff USS Leyte and escorts 1984
1/700 Whiff USN Modernized CAs 1984
1/700 Whiff ASW Showdown - FFs vs SSGN 1984

Slipway:
1/700 Whiff USN ASW Hunter Killer Group Dio 1984

DesRon 7. My father was CO of Waddell '80 to '82. The life raft cannisters, UnRep markings and lack of chaff launchers put the photo in that era.

The DesRon 7 shield was a blue shield with a mustard yellow "7" and an arrow in it. After a mid '80's refit, ('86? The chaff launchers would be in the photo post re-fit) the DesRon 7 shield was changed to the shield in a circle.

Prior to that, Cliffy is correct, it was DesRon 17 which has similar colors and shape, but the life rafts would be the basket type during this era...

I have some 1/350 DesRon 17 decals if needed... Late type DesRon 7 shields are on the 1/350 Hawk Graphics/Commanders US signal flag decal sheet, and the earlier shield can be cut out of it.

Here's the squadron's page which has a pic of the shield... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destroyer_Squadron_7

Looking forward to building my own Waddell one day...

~Scott Allen

Mike and Scott,

Thanks for the quick responses! The date on this photo is May 1986: http://www.navsource.org/archives/05/pix2/05012456.jpg The ship appears to be in the same configuration as the photos on the seaforces.org website, so I would think that's around the time that those photos were taken.

Scott, what Desron 17 decal set do you have? I wasn't aware of any 1/350 scale decals for Desron 17. Are they the yellow seahorse on blue background, or multicolored? Do you happen to have an image of them?

Also, just out of curiosity, when the chaff launchers were present, where were they located?

Thanks again,
Erik

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Hello Erik,

I had Darren at Hawk Graphics make the yellow seahorse on blue background DesRon 17 decals for my planned Waddell build before I asked my father about it, and he told me that I was wrong, it should be DesRon 7 and showed me a picture of Waddell at the Portland OR Rose Festival in '81 where it was clearly visible. They look a lot alike from a distance, so it's an easy mistake.

The chaff launchers would be on the forward part of the same deck as the ASROC pointed towards the bow, two to each side.

~Scott Allen

Scott,

On a related issue, I've been trying to find 1/350 scale decals for this DesRon 9 emblem: http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/5513/cds ... opygs5.jpg If you don't mind, please PM me with what Darren charged you for the DesRon 17 decals. I didn't realize that might be an option.

Thanks again for all your help!

Erik

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