Tom,
I'm working with Model Monkey to enable him to come up with a suitable arrangement for the 1956 era WISCONSIN model you mention. As you know, I've been working on a 1:200 NEW JERSEY for the last several years. This also is a conversion of the same kit you refer to. I've done some research on this topic (IOWA Class Main Masts) and as you've noted, there is a severe lack of accurate information available on the various configs of the 4 ships masts. However, there is a pattern to the mods and what I've found is this:
The 4 ships received updates from their post-WWII tri-pod, after stack supported mast arrangements starting with MISSOURI in 1950 - This was all due to the change and upgrade to their radar/communications suites which required more stable platforms. The quadrapod (4 leg) mast was installed on the others in the 1954-55 time period - no actual data to provide here. The radar that was located on the new masts was the A/N-SPS8a height finder. Now, it gets a bit more complicated. NEW JERSEY and MISSOURI maintained this arrangement into decommission in 1957 and 1955 respectively. NEW JERSEY had her quad mast modified during her 1967-68 refit for Vietnam. It was used for communications only, no surface or air search radar was installed.
IOWA and WISCONSIN had further modifications the other two ships did not receive. Somewhere prior to 1956, both ships had a single starboard kingpost installed with 85' booms and (3) winches to provide the ship with boat handling abilities since they carried additional large liberty boats on either side of the after deckhouse. A port side kingpost was later added (again, no data on when) to the pair and sometime in 1956 the quad mast and kingposts were once again modified to a single arrangement whereby the kingposts supported the main mast with an I-beam between the k-posts in place of the lower portion of the after mast legs. This is what is shown in the 1956 BoGP for WISCONSIN - I sent you that .pdf several years ago. The service platform at that time (and thru her 1958 decommissioning) was extended forward to support the communications mast with AT-150/SRC and AS-390/SRC at the top. The A/N-SPS-8a radar remained in place during this time period. Here is a photo of the ship in 1956:
Trying to draw this up for M_M's use to convert to a 3D drawing for production will take some time, but we're working on it. I hope you realize that without actual drawings that can either be scaled or with given dimensions are non-existent at this point. One positive note here - I am making a research trip to NARA in College Park, MD the end of this month and (time permitting) will try to find any info (drawings, photos, etc) of IOWA/WISCONSIN that may apply to their 1950's configuration. As a matter of fact, it took me well over a year to draw up the correct life raft racks that we had on NEW JERSEY in the 1967-69 configuration (which were also used on the IOWAs in the 1950s) and get them photo-etched for me. I just picked them up yesterday at the post office. I had a small company in the UK make them from my CAD drawings. So, this stuff moves rather slowly. I have been working on my model since 2012, so these things can take some time.
I hope this helps,
Hank Strub
