USS Kentucky (BB-66)
USS[a] Kentucky (BB-66) was an uncompleted battleship originally intended to be the second ship of the Montana class. However, the urgent need for more warships at the outbreak of World War II and the U.S. Navy's experiences in the Pacific theater led it to conclude that rather than battleships larger and more heavily armed than the Iowa class, it quickly needed more fast battleships of that class to escort the new Essex-class aircraft carriers being built. As a result, hulls BB-65 and BB-66 were reordered and laid down as Iowa-class battleships in 1942.
As such, she was intended to be the sixth and final member of the Iowa-class constructed. At the time of her construction she was the second ship of the United States Navy to be named in honor of the U.S. state of Kentucky. Like her sister ship Illinois, laid down as one of the last pair of Iowa-class ahead of her, Kentucky was still under construction at the end of hostilities and became caught up in the post-war draw-down of the armed services. Her construction was suspended twice, during which times she served as a parts hulk. In the '1950s, several proposals were made to complete the ship as a guided missile battleship, abandoned primarily due to cost concerns and the rampant pace of evolving missile technology. Kentucky ultimately was sold for scrap in 1958.
As early as 1946, missile conversion projects for Kentucky and the incomplete large cruiser USS Hawaii were discussed.[23] In the early 1950s, the advances in guided missile technology led to a proposal to create a large warship armed with both guns and missiles. To this end, the incomplete Kentucky was chosen for conversion from an all gun ship into a "guided missile battleship".[24] This proposal would have been relatively conservative, and would have involved the installation of a pair of twin arm launchers for the RIM-2 Terrier surface-to-air missile (SAM) on the aft deckhouse, with a pair of antennas for the associated AN/APG-55 pulse doppler interception radar installed forward of these, and the AN/SPS-2B air search radar on a short mast.[25] Since the battleship was already approximately 73% complete (construction had been halted at the second deck),[20] installation of the missile system and associated electronics would have involved only adding the necessary equipment without any need to rebuild the ship to accommodate the system.[b] Some guided missile concepts included one or two launchers for eight Regulus II or SSM-N-2 Triton nuclear cruise missiles.[26] The guided missile battleship project was authorized in 1954, and Kentucky was renumbered from BB-66 to BBG-1, with the conversion due to be complete in 1956. However, the project was soon cancelled, with the conversion ideas transferred to a smaller platform that led to the Boston-class guided missile cruiser.[25] These partial conversions of two Baltimore-class heavy cruisers proved only partially successful in their new role, as the pace of change in cruise missile technology rendered their new weapons systems obsolete, while their remaining heavy guns proved in demand.
Another conversion project in early 1956 called for the installation of two Polaris nuclear ballistic missile launchers with a capacity for sixteen weapons.[5] Also proposed were four RIM-8 Talos SAM launchers with eighty missiles per launcher and twelve RIM-24 Tartar SAM launchers with 504 missiles. A July 1956 estimate projected completing the ship by July 1961, but the cost of the conversion ultimately forced the Navy to abandon the project.[27]
Kentucky was never completed, instead serving as a parts hulk while in the mothball fleet at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard from about 1950 to 1958.[24] Hurricane Hazel hit the area on 15 October 1954, causing Kentucky to break free from her moorings and run aground in the Delaware River.[28] In 1956, Kentucky's bow was removed and used in the repair of Wisconsin, which had been damaged in a collision with the destroyer USS Eaton on 6 May 1956.[24] Congressman William Huston Natcher attempted to block the sale of the ship by objecting to the bill in August 1957.[29] Nevertheless, Kentucky was struck from the Naval Vessel Register on 9 June 1958 and her incomplete hulk was sold for scrapping to Boston Metals Company of Baltimore, Maryland on 31 October for $1,176,666.[20][30] She was towed to their shipyard in Baltimore in February 1959.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Kentucky_(BB-66)