USS California CGN-36 and the NTU

[M. A. Rozon]

As I was trolling through a variety of websites I came upon a number with good photos of various ships that went through the New Threat Upgrade refits in the USN in the late 1980's and early 1990's.

When it came to the California class CGN's several of them had the following little nugget of information. First, both ships had ASROC removed. There is no conflict here as it is readily apparent in the photos of the ships taken after completion of their respective NTU refits. The conflict arises when it comes to the status of the SQS-26 sonar these ships were fitted with. According to several sites the SQS-26 was disabled and/or removed, with the bow domes remaining in place.

I am trying to find something to confirm or refute this in my library and elsewhere. To me it seems absurd to remove the sonar from a main battleforce/carrier group escort. Even if the standoff ASW weapons (meaning ASROC) were removed, the sonars would still be needed to protect the ships being escorted by the cruiser and to provide fire control information for the cruiser's own ASW torpedoes (AFAIK both ships retained the four torpedo tubes they were initally fitted with).

Any further information on this would be appreciated. I continue to dig.

Thanks in advance.

 

[TomS]

As I was trolling through a variety of websites I came upon a number with good photos of various ships that went through the New Threat Upgrade refits in the USN in the late 1980's and early 1990's.

When it came to the California class CGN's several of them had the following little nugget of information. First, both ships had ASROC removed. There is no conflict here as it is readily apparent in the photos of the ships taken after completion of their respective NTU refits. The conflict arises when it comes to the status of the SQS-26 sonar these ships were fitted with. According to several sites the SQS-26 was disabled and/or removed, with the bow domes remaining in place.

I am trying to find something to confirm or refute this in my library and elsewhere. To me it seems absurd to remove the sonar from a main battleforce/carrier group escort. Even if the standoff ASW weapons (meaning ASROC) were removed, the sonars would still be needed to protect the ships being escorted by the cruiser and to provide fire control information for the cruiser's own ASW torpedoes (AFAIK both ships retained the four torpedo tubes they were initally fitted with).

Any further information on this would be appreciated. I continue to dig.

Thanks in advance.

Very late reply but I stumbled across this old post yesterday and it was driving me nuts as it seemed so improbable. But it apparently was sort of true.

It looks like California at least nominally had sonar in 1994 (after the 1993 NTU upgrade) but lost it during the 1995 update before her 1996 deployment.

Navsite.de/cruise books/CGN36-94/051.htm

WESTPAC 1994 is the final WESTPAC for CA division. After our homecoming, sonar and the torpedo tubes will be placed into Inactive Equipment Maintenance and the members of CA division will go their separate ways. Good Luck in your future endeavours CA division.

Reading the rest of the cruise book, CA (the Combat Systems ASW division) was clearly screwed already. They had no Chiefs and an ensign as DivO, and were pretty salty about being put out of a job. No one even bothered to write up some bogus comments about how important their job was to the ship. I would bet the sonar was already functionally useless in 1994.

In the 1996 cruise book, there was no CA division at all. And of course the ship was totally retired by 1998.

The 1990s truly were the nadir for USN ASW capability. And for a while it seemed like there was nothing out there to use ASW against -- the Russians were not sailing much, the Chinese were very bad, and no one else even had subs (or so it seemed). How things have changed.