USS Truxtun

[uk 75]

I have always been fascinated by this ship.

USS Truxtun (CGN-35) - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

Unlike the Belknap class of which she is the nuclear variant (Bainbridge was for the Leahy class) Truxtun has gigantic lattice masts instead of the more restrained masts on Bainbridge and the later Californias.

If things had gone as planned, Truxtun would have been followed by the first Typhon equipped DLGN, discussed elsewhere on this site.

The sparse armament of Truxtun suggests that she might have been refitted with Typhon later.

The failure of the Typhon system meant that there was quite a gap before the next DLGN entered service. But as the USN also only had one nuclear carrier that was not a problem.

 

[sferrin]

Truxtun was like the Belknaps but swapped. Gun up front on the Truxtun vs aft on the Belknaps. Always thought the positioning of the Phalanx mounts was interesting.

 

[TomS]

Truxtun was like the Belknaps but swapped. Gun up front on the Truxtun vs aft on the Belknaps. Always thought the positioning of the Phalanx mounts was interesting.

To me, the question is what was going on with that long low deckhouse forward of the bridge before they fitted Phalanx on it. There were a couple of nav radar antennas there and not much else? It almost looks like they had planned to make her a double-ender with a two-ring Mk 10 forward but changed it very late in the game to place a gun forward instead. Time to do some reading...

 

[Archibald]

Good thread. I need to ask - why were the first USN nuclear cruisers one-shots : and not a class like the ones that followed them ? It is a rather expensive way of learning the pros and cons of nuclear cruisers. Why not more Long Beachs ?
Then again, Enterprise too was a one-shot and despite its flaws and standalone cost, it remained in service until 2013...

 

[A Tentative Fleet Plan]

Truxtun was like the Belknaps but swapped. Gun up front on the Truxtun vs aft on the Belknaps. Always thought the positioning of the Phalanx mounts was interesting.

To me, the question is what was going on with that long low deckhouse forward of the bridge before they fitted Phalanx on it. There were a couple of nav radar antennas there and not much else? It almost looks like they had planned to make her a double-ender with a two-ring Mk 10 forward but changed it very late in the game to place a gun forward instead. Time to do some reading...

Was it to provide volume for NTDS? The Leahys required the addition of a deckhouse amidships to provide the necessary volume IIRC.

Judging from the below layout of the Bainbridge, the forward deckhouse of the Truxtun would cover the reactor refueling hatch.

 

[JFC Fuller]

Truxtun was like the Belknaps but swapped. Gun up front on the Truxtun vs aft on the Belknaps. Always thought the positioning of the Phalanx mounts was interesting.

To me, the question is what was going on with that long low deckhouse forward of the bridge before they fitted Phalanx on it. There were a couple of nav radar antennas there and not much else? It almost looks like they had planned to make her a double-ender with a two-ring Mk 10 forward but changed it very late in the game to place a gun forward instead. Time to do some reading...

I've wondered this. It always made Truxtun look like a bit of a half-hearted effort compared to the other nuclear ship classes the USN produced, almost as if someone was told to find some extra volume so they just added the forward deckhouse and headed home early. No offence to the designers, its a purely aesthetic thing, it just doesn't look quite 'right' to me.

The MIT museum has a, presumably official, artists impression that gives a clear view of the deckhouse.

 

[A Tentative Fleet Plan]

Ryan Crierie's Flickr has the same image with a higher quality.

 

[uk 75]

Seeing the side elevation I thought at first it was like the housing for Ikara on RN frigates and stored the ASROC and Terrier rounds.

The bridge on the Truxtun and California is the standard one and not like the artists impression of the Typhon DLGN... But the space for weapons would seem to allow for two forward Typhon launchers.

 

[BlackBat242]

June 1970:

 

[TomS]

Good thread. I need to ask - why were the first USN nuclear cruisers one-shots : and not a class like the ones that followed them ? It is a rather expensive way of learning the pros and cons of nuclear cruisers. Why not more Long Beachs ?
Then again, Enterprise too was a one-shot and despite its flaws and standalone cost, it remained in service until 2013...

Long Beach was too expensive for mass production. Bainbridge was meant to be a cheaper frigate (DLGN) -- not (CGN) -- design suitable for mass production, but she turned out to be way more expensive than hoped.

Truxton is interesting. The USN was still wrestling with the cost and optimum design of DLGNs and had simply budgeted for a 10th Belknap while they resolved the issue of cheaper power plants for surface combatants (to the extent of looking at DDNs and even a DEN). Congress turned it into a DLGN. The Navy seriously considered just ordering a repeat Bainbridge but decided that the improvements of the Belknap (especially the SQS-26 bow sonar) were just too important to leave out. Yet designing a new nuclear hull for scratch for what was likely just one ship wasn't appealing, so they were stuck rearranging/modifying the Bainbridge hull to fit the big sonar electronics forward. That forced the Mk 10 to the aft position, but the need to also fit its third ammo ring deep in the hull meant it had to sit further forward than usual. So more stuff had to be shuffled.

PS: looking at the high-res pics posted, I finally realized that the T-shaped objects on that low deckhouse aren't radar antennas, they're probably CHAFROC launchers.

 

[A Tentative Fleet Plan]

Seeing the side elevation I thought at first it was like the housing for Ikara on RN frigates and stored the ASROC and Terrier rounds.

The bridge on the Truxtun and California is the standard one and not like the artists impression of the Typhon DLGN... But the space for weapons would seem to allow for two forward Typhon launchers.

SQS-26 and NTDS both took up a significant amount of volume, not to mention the three-ring Mk 10 GMLS, which further forward on the Truxtun compared to the after two-ring Mk 10 GMLS of Bainbridge due to the lack of volume aft. The SPG-59 required to make full use of the Typhon system required even more volume and weight, which is why the Typhon DLGN studies ended up displacing over 10,000 tons by the time the system was cancelled in December 1963.

The space forward of the bridge in Truxtun is taken up by the forward reactor (and it's likely that the NTDS computer room is in the deckhouse above and slightly forwards of the reactor refueling hatch). Weight distribution for Nuclear-Powered warships is awkward due to the lack of volume, and if the SQS-26, the 5"/54 (and potentially the NTDS room) was too heavy for there to be a second Mk 10 forwards, then it is likely that there are weight margins for two Mk 14s and the SPG-59 without affecting the ship's trim.

The very early 1958 BuShips steam-powered Typhon DDG study only has two Typhon MR/Mk 14 launchers total (essentially nuclear capable Mk 13s), and is close to the size of the Truxtun, with an overall length of 535ft compared to Truxtun's 564ft. The smallest of the 1961 Typhon DLGN studies, Scheme L, although it is a similar length to Truxtun (but slightly larger, I don't have an overall length, and Friedman's US Cruisers and US Destroyers give the same figure of 560ft for tow different types of length, LBP and LWL respectively) and like the earlier 1959 DDG, this is limited to two Mk 14s, with no Mk 10s.

Edit: I should add that I think Truxtun's forward deckhouse is for NTDS, primarily because the Leahys and Bainbridge required the addition of a similar sized deckhouse atop the aft superstructure (see the plans I posted of Bainbridge above, which were for her mid 1970s modernisation). Truxtun's aft superstructure may not have had the necessary volume, as the majority of it is taken up by the helicopter hangar, and the SPG-55s have one deck of deck-penetration below the antennas, not to mention Truxtun's lattice mainmast is immediately forwards of the SPG-55s, and the supports for that may take up too much space within the remaining superstructure.

I'm imagining something along the lines of taking the NTDS room as laid out on the Leahys and Bainbridge from atop aft superstructures, placing it just forwards of Truxtun's forward reactor refueling hatch, the NTDS deckhouse being rotated 90 degrees along it's base to take advantage of the increased width of Truxtun's forecastle as compared to the long and narrow aft superstructure of the Leahys and Bainbridge, which would also minimise the amount of length taken up, and then covering the reactor refueling space with a light deckhouse, to enable access between the NTDS and forward superstructure in NBC conditions.

 

[TomS]

The space forward of the bridge in Truxtun is taken up by the forward reactor

I was wondering if this might be the case. The internal arrangements of the DLGNs haven't been publicized very much but are clearly quite different from their conventional cousins.

Friedman makes a note about there being functions that can't be placed next to the reactor compartment due to excessive radiation, which is a bit alarming. Maybe berthing spaces?

 

[A Tentative Fleet Plan]

The space forward of the bridge in Truxtun is taken up by the forward reactor

I was wondering if this might be the case. The internal arrangements of the DLGNs haven't been publicized very much but are clearly quite different from their conventional cousins.

Friedman makes a note about there being functions that can't be placed next to the reactor compartment due to excessive radiation, which is a bit alarming. Maybe berthing spaces?

The rough plans of Bainbridge I posted in reply#5 show the reactor spaces, one amidships between the two superstructure blocks, and the other forward of the foremost superstructure block (granted there is an element of inference here). Given Truxtun is a repeat Bainbridge with the Belknap weapon system, I would imagine the internal layout is very similar in some cases, apart from the exceptions of a larger aft superstructure with a hangar, the aft Mk 10 Magazine being further forwards (perhaps being directly aft of the aft engine room), deletion of the forwards Mk 10 magazine, with the deckhouse placed above (interestingly the RAS points seem to be in a similar place on both the Bainbridge and Truxtun). Truxtun's SQS-26 would be much larger and heavier than Bainbridge's SQS-23 (interestingly the above rough plans seem to show that the latter received PADLOC), and would go someway to explaining why Truxtun's bow seems so empty compared to her predecessor.

 

[TomS]

Thx. Somehow I missed that sketch, which is very illuminating.

 

[NH 17]

Good thread. I need to ask - why were the first USN nuclear cruisers one-shots : and not a class like the ones that followed them ? It is a rather expensive way of learning the pros and cons of nuclear cruisers. Why not more Long Beachs ?
Then again, Enterprise too was a one-shot and despite its flaws and standalone cost, it remained in service until 2013...

Good thread. I need to ask - why were the first USN nuclear cruisers one-shots : and not a class like the ones that followed them ? It is a rather expensive way of learning the pros and cons of nuclear cruisers. Why not more Long Beachs ?
Then again, Enterprise too was a one-shot and despite its flaws and standalone cost, it remained in service until 2013...

To elaborate on the too expensive explanation given earlier, Long Beach cost $332.85 million in an age when a Coontz DLG/DDG could be had for $52 million. Then there was the Polaris program which was a priority and hugely expensive, consuming about 10% of the Navy's funds*. The costly Typhon program, gone over in another thread, was also going full bore at this time. A Baltimore/Oregon City class conversion resulted in a faster and perhaps better armed ship for far less cost.

Technology was moving quickly, and there may have been an attitude to build it into the next class, rather than repeating an existing design. That was the case with the 1968 authorized third California, cancelling it and pushing the momentum to Virginia.

Admiral Rickover pushed for 4 nuclear escorts per each CVN, something only achieved briefly with the 1974 commissioning of California, evaporating with the arrival of Nimitz in 1975. Rickover had immense influence, and even he couldn't convince Congress to achieve this goal.

*Harvey M Sapolsky, Creating the Fleet Ballistic Missile System: The Interaction of Technology and Organisation in the Development of a Major Weapon System. 1969. MIT Press; Cambridge, Mass. p. 221.

 

[Tzoli]

Does anybody have drawings of USS Truxtun? Top and side view?

 

[TomS]

Not drawings but some excellent "rigging" photos from 1989, so fairly late in her life (complete with CIWS forward and empty Harpoon racks midships).

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e7/Overhead_view_of_USS_Truxtun_%28CGN-35%29_in_January_1989.jpeg

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f3/USS_Truxtun_%28CGN-35%29_underway_in_the_Pacific_Ocean_off_San_Diego_%28USA%29_on_3_January_1989_%286450111%29.jpg

 

[Scott Kenny]

Friedman makes a note about there being functions that can't be placed next to the reactor compartment due to excessive radiation, which is a bit alarming. Maybe berthing spaces?

There are always spaces around a reactor that a too hot for people to linger in. Always.

So you try to make them usable as passageways.

Sometimes, idiots don't get the memo about "do not linger here!!!"

To elaborate on the too expensive explanation given earlier, Long Beach cost $332.85 million in an age when a Coontz DLG/DDG could be had for $52 million. Then there was the Polaris program which was a priority and hugely expensive, consuming about 10% of the Navy's funds*. The costly Typhon program, gone over in another thread, was also going full bore at this time. A Baltimore/Oregon City class conversion resulted in a faster and perhaps better armed ship for far less cost.

Point of order, that includes the entire R&D and design costs for the class including the reactors, not just construction costs of the ship proper. Buying a second Long Beach would have been around $75mil.

 

[TomS]

There are always spaces around a reactor that a too hot for people to linger in. Always.

So you try to make them usable as passageways.

Sometimes, idiots don't get the memo about "do not linger here!!!"

The one time I visited a 688, they definitely warned us not to dawdle in the passage between the front end and engineering. But there wasn't as much said about spaces forward and aft of the reactor. Friedman makes it sound like fore and aft of a destroyer reactor was still too "hot."

 

[Scott Kenny]

The one time I visited a 688, they definitely warned us not to dawdle in the passage between the front end and engineering. But there wasn't as much said about spaces forward and aft of the reactor. Friedman makes it sound like fore and aft of a destroyer reactor was still too "hot."

That sounds unlikely, but it is possible.

 

[Yellow Palace]

That sounds unlikely, but it is possible.

It's distinctly possible that different standards were applied to surface ships and submarines. It wouldn't be the first time, after all!

 

[Scott Kenny]

It's distinctly possible that different standards were applied to surface ships and submarines. It wouldn't be the first time, after all!

Except that this is Rickover Himself in charge of the project.

 

[Firefinder]

That the age question of if it was the operators selling bullshit to the lower enlisted to keep them from hanging around the reactors like they did with Steam Ships boiler rooms.

That equally high possibility.

Through in the old Tales gain a foot every retelling...

 

[Jemiba]

All I found still yet is this one, from Weyers Flottentaschenbuch 1988/89

 

[Scott Kenny]

That the age question of if it was the operators selling bullshit to the lower enlisted to keep them from hanging around the reactors like they did with Steam Ships boiler rooms.

That equally high possibility.

Through in the old Tales gain a foot every retelling...

True.

But looking at the cutaway posted by @A Tentative Fleet Plan I think the "hot" spaces would be the block amidships between the two engine rooms.

 

[Tzoli]

All I found still yet is this one, from Weyers Flottentaschenbuch 1988/89

Thx, it will help!