best upgrades for iowa world of warships

Mts 51 and 52 would have been replaced by Mk-29 eight-cell NATO Sea Sparrow missile launchers.

Mts 53, 54, 57, and 58 would have been replaced with the new mounts, providing the ship with 4 5'/54caliber guns per side and 8 total. While the upper handling rooms would have remained in the same place, the base rings would have been moved outboard by 1' to add a greater walking clearance and clearance for the spent casings to accumulate between the back of the mount (when faced outboard) and the super structure. They would have been manually operated just like the 5'/38s.

NAVSEA sent the plans for the Montana-class twin 5'/54caliber manually operated guns to the Iowa-class Program Managers at Long Beach Naval Shipyard and to Crane Indiana for construction. HY-80 would have been used to raise the decks and protect the VLS cells. Both structures would have been raised by about 1 deck to accommodate the lengths of the tubes.

They would have been arranged in 2 x 16 clusters amidships and 2 x 32 aft. Replacement of Mk-143 Tomahawk ABLs with 96 Mk-41 Mod 1 vertical launch cells.

Best upgrades for iowa world of warships