CVAN-67 the Nuclear Kennedy

[Tzoli]

It is known that originally the 4th member of the Kitty Hawk class carriers the USS John F. Kennedy were to be nuclear powered variant of that class and would had been the 2nd nuclear carrier in the USN and in the world using a new Westinghouse A3W reactor design though there were plans to build a 2nd CVN earlier as CVAN-66 eg the USS America but that would be a larger design and not just a modified Kitty Hawk. But just before the construction started Robert Strange McNamara and Admiral Arleigh Albert Burke decided to finish the Kennedy as a conventional attack carrier but due to this change, the bridge structure incorporated an angled funnel and not the standard vertical one used on the Kitty Hawks.

Now I ask if anybody seen models or drawings of how would the John F. Kennedy's bridge superstructure look like in her original CVN configuration?

Also Friedman notes that at the time the CVV design were under evaluation it was proposed the to build a 2nd or repeat Kennedy type carrier eg a 2nd modified Kitty Hawk (or 5th Kitty Hawk) as an alternative to the CVV in the late 1970's

 

[A Tentative Fleet Plan]

Kennedy was laid down as a steam-powered carrier, but Conventional and Nuclear-Powered designs were drawn up concurrently.

Several nuclear alternatives were proposed prior to construction, including developments of the small SCB-211 carrier with four A3Ws and Typhon, the final nuclear-powered design being SCB-250, a repeat Enterprise hull with four A3Ws of increased power, four Sea Maulers for defence (although the table for CVAN-67 in the appendices says two Mk 13 Tartar launchers), and a pair of the long-stroke (310ft) C-13-1 catapults to launch F-111Bs.

The island of SCB-250 would have probably looked like that of the Kennedy, sans funnel, i.e. similar to that of the Nimitz class, which was essentially conceived as an SCB-250 with two reactors, and was originally planned to have the same systems as Kennedy.

 

[acelanceloet]

IIRC the Kennedy also was used to test the protection scheme that was originally designed for nuclear carriers, and was in that way different from the earlier Kitty Hawks as well. Would have to recheck Friedman for the exact quote.

 

[A Tentative Fleet Plan]

IIRC the Kennedy also was used to test the protection scheme that was originally designed for nuclear carriers, and was in that way different from the earlier Kitty Hawks as well. Would have to recheck Friedman for the exact quote.

The narrower underwater protection system used on Kennedy was originally developed for the smaller SCB-211 CVAN design.

The Warship 2014 article on CVA-01 has a brief description and rough sketch of the width Kennedy's underwater protection system, as the CVA-01 system was based on it, and is compared with the underwater protection systems of Eagle, Malta, Midway, Forrestal, and 1963 Sketch and Final 1965 CVA-01 designs.

Kennedy's underwater protection system was 14 ft wide, consisting of an outer airspace of 4ft, and a 6ft fuel filled compartment, with a 4ft phenolic foam-filled inner compartment. Abreast the machinery spaces it becomes a four-compartment underwater protection system, with a 15-lb splitter plate dividing the fuel tanks into two 3-foot wide compartments.

 

[Tzoli]

Apart from Friedman's US Carriers is there other books or sources describing the Kennedy design process / Preliminaries?

 

[danwild6]

From what I've read there were to be six Enterprise class ships initially were they all supposed to have 8 reactors or
4 A3W reactors but maintaining the same hull?

Sorry a bit off topic.

 

[A Tentative Fleet Plan]

From what I've read there were to be six Enterprise class ships initially were they all supposed to have 8 reactors or
4 A3W reactors but maintaining the same hull?

Sorry a bit off topic.

There weren't really plans for six Enterprise class carriers, more that there were pencilled in longer term plans by the likes of Op-93 Long Range Objectives Group around 1957 for six CVANs to be in service by 1975.

The first was Enterprise (ordered in FY58), but the follow-ons could be any design that the Ships Characteristics Board drew up, and could be paid for with shipbuilding funds, so they could be straight repeat-Enterprises, or they could be the "small" CVAN designs like SCB 203 and SCB 211, or a full-scale design with some changes, like SCB 250 with it's four A3Ws. Towards the tail end of the 1960s, two reactor designs become viable, hence SCB 102.67, which we now know as the Nimitz class.