neilmpenny

Very good point. Do you need to sink the ship anyway if it is a carrier? Render the hanger space and / or the flight deck useless and your job is done.

As Philip Guedalla one said "there is nothing quite so immobile as a grounded aircraft". I add to this to the previous, no matter how sophisticated an aircraft may be today, if it is in the middle of an ocean on empty tanks and nowhere to land it is useless.

You dont need to sink the carrier, immobilise it. And as most of you know, geting anywhere near an aircraft carrier to inflict that type of damage requires a genius in planning and execution. There are so many layers of defence it is insane to contemplate.

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Dreadnought

That is true but keep in mind that Arizona was docked and "wide open" not set in condition "w" when the bomb struck the magazine. This allowed the explosion to travel through out the ship and shattered it from the inside out also contributing to the large death toll incurred by her crew. If she was not "wide open" then the damage caused may not have been as severe thus less lives lost and she may have been salvaged. Also keep in mind she had just refuled (approx 2 mil. gallons of fuel oil) upon arrival at Pearl the day before. All of this among others contributed to her loss.

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canoe

Actually this discussion has raised an interesting question, is there any value to the U.S Navy having supersonic sea skimmers?

I know the Air Force has them, but never understood why the Navy didn't port over a version for themselves.

RustyBattleship

Ah yes, but the Carrier would only be disabled until she is repaired. I believe it was the Yorktown that took torpedo damage but intense repair crews at Pearl Harbor repaired her in time to join in the Battle of Midway. She being the third carrier tipped the scales in our favor.

Dreadnought

Turned her around in a day from the damage incurred at the Battle of the Coral Sea in order to go to Midway the following day if Im correct..now thats efficiency.

dalem

A very important, cool, and oft-overlooked part of the story of the Battle of Midway.

I'd love to see an OSHA report on that repair job though.

-dale

TopHatter

If these dates are correct, she arrived at Pearl Harbor on May 27 and departed on May 30.

Given that she had to be refueled and replenished in addition to repairing things like this damage, that's an incredible feat of damage repair:

From what I've read, certain repairs were not even considered, like her boilers, and so she steamed to the Battle of Midway with a flank speed of 30 knots.

It's also likely that during the entire trip back to Pearl Harbor, her crew was repairing what they could and cleaning up everything in sight so that the heavy repair crews at Pearl could "hit the ground running".

AFAIK the repair surveyors were onboard ship before the drydock had even finished draining.

USS Yorktown's CO Elliot Buckmaster made this battle report to Nimitz:

http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USN/...cv5-Coral.html

And a detailed damage report from the main bomb hit is here:

http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USN/...l.html#pageHA1

Gun Grape

What supersonic sea skimmer ASMs does the AF have?

Anon

The problem with intercepting 16" shells is that an Iowa has 1300 of them aboard.

Whatever defensive system one was using, an Iowa(or any large magazine gun based system) could simply shoot it out of ammo, and then kill it. Not to mention that in salvos of 9 it would be extremely difficult(probably impossible) to get every shell from a given salvo.

This is the same problem a Kirov would run into against a Burke max loaded with SM-2s. Coming in closely spaced waves of 8, it would not take long for the Burke to overwhelm and mission kill a Kirov at all.

Anon

You'd get a lot of deflections/riccochets as the incoming rounds hit the case hardened ogive of the 16" shell.

Some of the APDSDU rounds would no doubt penetrate, but again....coming in waves of 9 with a mag capacity of 1300, shooting down 16" shells is a losing game. Just a matter of how long it takes to lose...

Dreadnought

Noty to mention the price tag on those missles against the price of a dumb 16" shells.

Figure 1 missle costing anywhere between 250,000-1,000,000 a pop against a shell costing approximately 1,000-1,500 a pop you do the math and also figure the BB has approximately 800-1000 of them aboard. Not only can she out gun you (destroy your ****) but make your military budget poor at the same time to boot. So not only effecting your weaponry but your military's budget at the same time . Now thats effectivness.

PubFather

One thing that concerns me (just a tad) about using the SM2 as an AsuW weapon is that you would need to salvo fire it as you outline in order to "mission" kill large vessels. I know that the Burke might still have some ESSMs - but doesnt that leave the Burke damn short of SAMs if (for eg) an SSK is lurking around with a few Klubs in its tubes?

I know its all v hypothetical, just a thought...

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Anon

It is doubtful a single US DDG would be engaging a single Kirov, so this would all be part of a larger fleet action, but yeah, after said action odds are a lot of magazines would be close to dry.

Expat Canuck

Haha I thought so too, I love that show and still have it recorded off TV from 1985 on VHS, mind you the sound quality has gone downhill in a bad way.

Shipwreck

Intercepting an incoming 16-inch Mark-8 AP bullet with 20mm APDS rounds (no matter whether they are Mark-149 or Mark-244) is indeed a losing game, not necessarily for the reasons exposed by Sniper Boy though.

1. The 20mm APDS round would most definitely penetrate the ballistic cap (windshield) of the AP bullet from over 1,500 yards (assuming it can hit in the first place), but this would be much too late in the game for the damaged windshield to significantly alter the trajectory of the incoming bullet.

2. Once the incoming bullet gets within 1,000-1,500 yards of the ship, its ballistic momentum is likely to carry it to the target even if hit repeatedly by 20mm APDS rounds.

3. To damage the bursting charge and/or the BDF of an incoming 16-inch Mark-8 bullet, a projectile would have to penetrate both the AP cap and the shell body, which is asking way too much from a 20mm APDS (no matter whether Mark-149 or Mark-244) even under the relatively favorable obliquities involved.

Below is an outline of the 16-inch Mark-8 Mod.6 AP bullet, showing the BDF and burster cavity at the very bottom.

PS : the Iowas never had a magazine capacity of 1,300 x 16-inch.

Attached Images

16-inch Mark-8 AP Bullet.jpg (21.3 KB, 75 views)

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