Navies in the 1960s

[uk 75]

The 1960s were an interesting period for the evolution of the world's navies.
Comparing the line up in 1960 with 1970 shows the kind of developments.
Only the US has substantial numbers of missile equipped surface vessels as well as three with nuclear power.
Russia begins to deploy ships armed with surface to surface missiles.
Italy is introducing missile cruisers fitted with decks aft to operate several helicopters.
By 1970 there are more air defence missile equipped escorts.
On the other hand the US Navy has only added one more nuclear ship (Truxtun). Instead of the ambitious DLGNs with Typhon two California class with Tartar are under construction.
The Royal Navy gets 8 County class with Seaslug while France gets 2 Suffren class with Masurca. The Dutch and Italians buy Terrier for their cruisers.
Tartar is bought by France and Italy while Australia, Germany and Japan add Tartar ships to their navies by 1970. The UK has its own CF299/Seadart under development.
The Soviet Union builds two helicopter cruisers, adds a missile system to one cruiser, while introducing three classes of missile ships.
Planned ships like the CVA01 or the Canadian and German Tartar equipped frigates do not get built.
Alternative 60s navies suggest themselves.
The US could have built more nuclear carriers after Enterprise instead of the JFKs.
More Terrier equipped escorts as well. ASW escorts other than Knox might have entered sooner.
The RN could have built new carriers in the late 1950s for service in the 60s. Terrier and Tartar might have been ordered as in other European navies. Or a different range of long (NIGS) and medium (Orange) SAMs might have been fitted to the County class. Upgrading to Seacat 2 instead of Seawolf might have been done.
France had to devote much resource to its SSBN force so a larger carrier with more Masurca ships did not materialise.

 

[Scott Kenny]

Alternative 60s navies suggest themselves.
The US could have built more nuclear carriers after Enterprise instead of the JFKs.
More Terrier equipped escorts as well. ASW escorts other than Knox might have entered sooner.
The RN could have built new carriers in the late 1950s for service in the 60s. Terrier and Tartar might have been ordered as in other European navies. Or a different range of long (NIGS) and medium (Orange) SAMs might have been fitted to the County class. Upgrading to Seacat 2 instead of Seawolf might have been done.
France had to devote much resource to its SSBN force so a larger carrier with more Masurca ships did not materialise.

That would have required a much more sane and affordable Enterprise design, which means bigger reactors. Not needing 8x reactors, even if they were all the same size as the Destroyer units for a single large production run, means you need far fewer pumps etc to maintain. Basically, it means the Nimitz class being the first nuclear carrier instead of Enterprise.

 

[CV12Hornet]

More Terrier equipped escorts as well. ASW escorts other than Knox might have entered sooner.

More Terrier escorts runs into the effect Typhon had on procurement of ships armed with the Three Ts, and its subsequent failure on technological grounds. The USN isn't going to procure more Terrier ships as long as Typhon is in development, and after its failure Terrier - or rather, the back-end infrastructure - is nonetheless plainly a generation behind.

 

[Dilandu]

More Terrier equipped escorts as well. ASW escorts other than Knox might have entered sooner.
The RN could have built new carriers in the late 1950s for service in the 60s. Terrier and Tartar might have been ordered as in other European navies. Or a different range of long (NIGS) and medium (Orange) SAMs might have been fitted to the County class. Upgrading to Seacat 2 instead of Seawolf might have been done.

This required more aerial threat presented - i.e. Soviet carriers to counter.

 

[Scott Kenny]

This required more aerial threat presented - i.e. Soviet carriers to counter.

Or at least even bigger land-based bomber waves to deal with.

 

[asVAL]

What if Zeus was successful? More gun cruisers?
A lineup of nuclear Montanas with Long Beach's sensors, Polaris tubes in place of one 16in turret, and a combo of Talos and Zeus-armed 8in turrets wouldve been a beast to contend with.

 

[Rule of cool]

Apparently the USS America was to be a repeat of the Enterprise and the JFK was to be powered by 4 x A3W nuclear reactors. The question then is what are their nuclear escorts? The initial 3 CGNs escorted Enterprise, the Californias were matched to Nimitz and the 4 Virginias were matched to the Ike and Vinson before the US gave the CGN game away.

I've read that the Californias and Virginias were pretty closely related and proved that nuclear surface ships could be mass produced, so maybe the US builds a 2nd Truxtan and starts the Californias earlier.

 

[uk 75]

The nuclear escorts prove a bit of a disappointment. Typhon which was intended to replace Talos/Terrier/Tartar on a new nuclear escort to follow Truxtun does not make it.
The Californias and Virginias (I like to imagine these names on Typhon DLGN) are not much of an improvement over the Leahy and Belknap conventional ships in armament terms and still rely on fleet replenishment for everything apart from fuel.
A working Typhon system could have really changed the USN. Sea Mauler would have been a similar leap in capability.
The UK had a great missile (Seadart) which could have been mated with emerging AEGIS technologies to benefit both navies
Seawolf delivers where Mauler failed albeit twenty years later but it was still much better than the Sea Sparrows or early RAMs.

 

[Scott Kenny]

Apparently the USS America was to be a repeat of the Enterprise and the JFK was to be powered by 4 x A3W nuclear reactors. The question then is what are their nuclear escorts? The initial 3 CGNs escorted Enterprise, the Californias were matched to Nimitz and the 4 Virginias were matched to the Ike and Vinson before the US gave the CGN game away.

I've read that the Californias and Virginias were pretty closely related and proved that nuclear surface ships could be mass produced, so maybe the US builds a 2nd Truxtan and starts the Californias earlier.

The nuclear cruisers proved very expensive to operate.

They also still needed food and other sundries supplied, so they were never out at sea for as long as you might expect.

 

[Rule of cool]

Nuke subs were obviously awesome from the get-go, nuke carriers took a bit longer to be accepted but nuke escorts appeared to be a luxury.

Apparently what killed the nuke escort was the AEGIS system, you couldn't have a nuke escort carrying anything other than the most advanced systems which then drove the price through the roof. In that case I'd guess that if Typhoon was viable and entered service the nuke escort concept would have died even earlier.

That said, they are cool.

 

[Dilandu]

They also still needed food and other sundries supplied, so they were never out at sea for as long as you might expect.

The general idea was not that they could operate indefinitely, the general idea was, that they could move fast for a very long time without critically shortening their range.