Following World War II there were two Iowa class battleships still on the stocks, one of them, the Kentucky, which was nearly 80% complete. During the 1950's there were various schemes for completing the Kentucky as a missile ship and over time I've carried out a few of those conversions in 1:2400 scale. In the top picture at top there's the more austere design with the after gun mount deleted and a SAM (surface-to-air missile) launcher in its place. Next from the top is a more ambitious conversion using part of the superstructure of an Albany missile cruiser but cut back so that the Kentucky still retains the two forward gun mounts. It has a long range SAM system back aft and two short range Tartar launchers along the sides of the superstructure. Then the one at bottom is a full-on conversion with the whole of the Albany superstructure and no gun mounts remaining, just SAMs fore and aft. As for the bottom picture - well that's by own scheme for a nuclear powered battleship with an Enterprise/Long Beach style superstructure and all three triple gun mounts. And no, there were no schemes for that design, just one of my little fantasy projects. All battleship hulls are from Superior Models while the Albany superstructures are from Seabattle. The "nuke" Iowa includes a Superior modern Iowa hull and the island from a modernized Enterprise.
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