I've been doing a bit of research on the post war use of WW2 DDs like the fletcher, and this variant, while not exactly historical, is close in concept to many that were done by other countries; this ship will fill a really big hole in a period lasting about three decades. This is an early post war mod where hedgehogs are in B position and a pair of staggard twin 3in mounts replaced the aft turrents and 40mm mounts. So I'm just illustrating this a bit, partly to show how close you got with this ship.
This was the setup they had from the late 50s until the late 60s. Note the "Weapon A" ASW missle launcher, adn the size of the missle it fired, a predecessor to ASROC.
A line drawing of this FRAM setup, note the towed array sonar on the stern, and the DASH pad.
This is a later Gearing class based on an lengthened hull in ROC (Taiwan) service in the late 80s.Note the 76mm oto melera in B mount, and the quad Chapperal (Sidewinder) SAM launcher aft.
I'd settle for just replacing the two single 5 in mounts with a couple of the twin mounts to fill an extra niche, though I don' tknow how difficult that would be, just making note of it.
However, I also saw a couple of errors made in some of the posts.
18 knts is about the speed of a civilian transport and is way short of the Fletcher's 35 knt speed, easily maintaining 30+ for sustained periods. Nearly all DDs of all sides were in the 30 knt range. The USN modified several after the war, but only six had the ultimate USN mod, and served through the sixties.
The twin 5 in 38 cal auto mounts were not only common in DDs, they dominated the USN into the mid 70s and served on Gearing and Sumner class DDs into the late 70s, and past 2005 in other Navies.
This is a Mexican Navy FRAM II Gearing escorting the Reagan in 2005.
I'm just adding this to show that the Fletcher class is very adaptable. I have no idea what would be involved in replacing the five single 5" mounts with three twin 5" guns, or the ever evolving FRAM improvements made after the war, but the Sumner class was basically a Fletcher hull (a foot wider) with those three twin mounts, 4 quad 40s, two twin 40s and two quintuple torp tubes starting in late 43. They and the Gearings speed is usually given as 34 knts due to a slight increase in wieght. There were 168 of these two classes built overall, including 53 Gearings after the war. These things were everywhere the USN was into the 80s.
This is a shot from Japan in 1958. Note the single Fletcher next to the tender, and the many Sumners/Gearings.
THis is the WW2 outfit of the Sumner class. (models are clearer than photos).
The post war Sumners had the 20s and 40s replaced by 3 in twin mounts.
Then they and the Gearings got the FRAM I, which stripped them and added a DASH drone helcopter ASW hangar and deck (like the Fletchers, which is why they are so hard to land on)
.
Note the neat little DASH model on the pad.
Then the Gearings got the FRAM II in the early 60s with just two twin 5 in mounts, a pair of tripple ASW tubes in B position, an ASROC launcher, and a bigger DASH hangar with 3 DASH drones. I know you can't do a DASH thingy, but it was still pretty cool looking. (I won't even suggest making a static one on the pad, heh heh). But over 40 of these served into the 80s wiht the USN, and much later with other navies. Just a neat looking ship that was in every battle group and ocean.
Again note the DASH drone on the pad. Cool.
The Gearing was identical to the Sumner but a bit longer for extra fuel. The Sumners and Gearings were stripped of thier 20s and 40s by the sixties, adn Robert McNamara (the 2cd worse secretary of defense in US history) decided that missles on the missle armed ships would take on all the aircraft, leaving most ships vulnerable, much to the glee of assorted insurgents. Vietnam resulted in the mounting of 4 to 6 .50 cal machine guns on many of these ships, but that's all the AA defense they had outside the rapid fire twin 5 in mounts the last couple of decades of their service.
And for my last preverted idea that is totally out of place here
, Wouldnt' it be cool
to have a Dash helicopter drone you could fly from external view only (that's how they were flown, had a 70 mile range btw) and launch hoards of these things against ships with two 12 inch torps each?
The Japanese navy loved these thigns and only lost 3 in thier decade of using them. Heh heh, I would love to use something like that online and swarm naval targets,...yeah I know they were ASW torps, but maybe we could mod them.........
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Topic: Fletcher MKII 1960 Destoryer (with Flight Deck) (Read 25588 times)
