The first step was to cut nuclear cruisers - these creatures have long infuriated sailors with their inadequate cost and eternal concerns about their radiation safety. At the same time, the nuclear-powered ships had no real advantages, except for the senseless "unlimited autonomy in terms of fuel reserves." Firstly, the autonomy of the ship is determined not only by the fuel reserves, and secondly, when operating as part of a squadron, any difference between a nuclear-powered ship and a ship with a conventional power plant disappears.
"Long Beach", "Bainbridge", "Trakstan" - the old troughs were sent for recycling without regret. The same fate awaited the more modern "California" and "South Caroline" - despite their seemingly normal age (20-25 years), their fighting qualities were completely depreciated by the beginning of the 90s. Modernization is recognized as hopeless - for scrap!
But the most offensive thing was to part with the Virginias. Four fantastic designs with nuclear reactors and powerful weapons capable of circling the globe 7 times without stopping and shooting the enemy with Tomahawks and long-range anti-aircraft missiles anywhere in the world. All four are very young: Texas was only 15; the oldest, Mississippi, was barely 19 years old. At the same time, the resource of the cruisers was designed for 35 years - until 2015!
However, neither a young age, nor a "nuclear heart", nor a ready-made proposal for the modernization and installation of the Aegis system did not save the atomic Virginias from a bitter fate: in the 90s they all ended up in a landfill.
Having shredded their nuclear cruisers, the Americans did not calm down, and continued with renewed vigor to cleanse the Augean Stables of their fleet: there was a huge amount of junk on the balance sheet, which, despite regular modernization, could no longer cope properly with the tasks assigned to it.
18 escort cruisers of the Legi and Belknap class (the oldest was over 30, the youngest was in his early 20s), 46 anti-submarine frigates of the Knox class - all for scrapping! Some frigates were lucky, they were sold to foreign fleets, where they serve to this day. The rest lay on the seabed with punched sides (shot during the exercises) or were simply cut up at the docks for scrap.
O! What is it? Missile destroyers Charles F. Adams, twenty-three in service. Year of construction? Early 60s. The conversation is short - Scrapped! Together with the Adams, their peers - 10 Farragut-class missile destroyers - were excluded from the fleet.
The turn of honored veterans has come. Within a short time, 7 aircraft carriers left the US Navy. Six of them are old ships of the Midway and Forrestal class, and one more is the fairly new aircraft carrier America (Kitty Hawk class). At the time of decommissioning "America" was only 30 years old - sheer nonsense by the standards of aircraft carrier ships, which usually serve for half a century.
The reason for the amazing longevity of aircraft carriers is simple: their main and only weapon, the air wing, is independently renewed every ten to fifteen years without any changes in the design of the ship itself. Generations of fighters and bombers change, but the carrier platform remains the same (not counting the local work on replacing radars, self-defense systems or installing new air conditioners in personnel compartments).
Therefore, the old aircraft carriers "Midway", laid down during the Second World War, were not much inferior to their modern counterparts - the same F / A-18 "Hornet" multipurpose fighters were based on their decks. The aircraft carrier "Midway" served 47 years, and was decommissioned immediately after the victorious return from the Gulf War (1991).
The Forrestols lived no less a long life - all four ships were scrapped between 1993 and 1998, when they were already 40 years old.
The only unlucky one was the aircraft carrier America. The super-ship with a gross displacement of 80,000 tons has become the innocent victim of the US budget cuts. Despite its relatively young age, preserved resource and high combat effectiveness, "America" was forever excluded from the US Navy.
The aircraft carrier had been rusting for nine years in a landfill, and finally, in 2005, it was decided to sink it. Despite numerous protests about the inadmissibility of such a “scrapping” of the ship that “bears the name of the nation”, on May 14, 2005, “America” was taken out to sea with holds full of explosives and … “Ship explosion”, Aivazovsky, oil painting, Feodosia art gallery.
Having butchered the aircraft carriers, the death conveyor turned towards the battleships. Four whoppers with a total displacement of 60,000 tons, armed to the teeth with 406 mm cannons and Tomahawk cruise missiles, now your time has come!
The Iowa-class battleships have served under the Stars and Stripes for half a century, but despite their venerable age, even in the 1990s they retained their incredible potential. In the 80s, modern anti-aircraft systems and a full set of electronic systems were installed on the battleships. The possibility of installing computers for the Aegis combat information and control system and vertical launchers with hundreds of cruise missiles was discussed. A versatile strike ship, chained in an impenetrable shell of 300 mm thick steel - the Iowa's armor belt was not penetrated by any modern anti-ship missiles. In fact, battleships built in 1943, even after half a century, remained one of the most formidable warships in the world!
Fortunately, the pink dreams of American admirals did not come true: Congress did not allocate funds for the modernization and extension of the life of battleships. All four Iowas went together to rust in the Ship Graveyard. A few years later, an agreement was reached to turn the battleships into museums, at the moment they can be seen in the eternal anchorages in Pearl Harbor, Philadelphia, Norfolk and Los Angeles.
Despite the well-deserved fears associated with the "resurrection" of American battleships, most experts agree that this is unlikely. Even a limited upgrade to the Iowa in the 1980s cost as much as building four new Aegis cruisers. One can only guess how much the transformation of the Iowa into modern missile and artillery battleships with the Aegis system will cost - apparently, it is easier to build a new nuclear aircraft carrier.
Having written off 117 ships: nuclear missile cruisers, frigates, destroyers, battleships and aircraft carriers, the Americans did not calm down - there was still a lot of work ahead. First of all, it was necessary to put in order the "destroyer forces": the appearance of Aegis destroyers of the Orly Burke type instantly devalued the still "fresh" destroyers of the Spruance class - despite the general design principles and completely unified mechanisms and weapons, the absence of the Aegis BIUS "Did not leave" Spruens "any chance of further survival. Thirty-five * ships of this type were scrapped (as an option, they were sunk as targets).
"Spruance" is a special series of US Navy destroyers, similar in function to Soviet large anti-submarine ships. The main advantage of the Spruance is its unprecedented standardization and unification with ships of other classes, as well as its enormous modernization potential. The main disadvantage of the "Spruence" is the lack of zonal air defense, the destroyer was focused exclusively on performing anti-submarine and strike functions as part of the AUG. This killed him.
As a result, the American fleet lost 35 destroyers. Along with the Spruence, in the 1990s, 15 more modern frigates of the Oliver H. Perry class left the US Navy. Some of them were sold to Turkey and Egypt, some were cut into metal. The reason for the write-off is unsatisfactory performance at an overestimated cost of operation.
No less large-scale shocks happened in the American submarine fleet: in the period 1995-1998. 11 multipurpose nuclear submarines of the Los Angeles type (and in Russian - “Los”) were decommissioned. All of them are new - at the time of cutting, most of them were only 15 years old!
The Americans classify Los Angeles as "fast attack submarines", which in reality means "submarine hunters." The main tasks of the Losy are to provide cover for carrier groupings and areas of deployment of strategic missile-carrying submarines, and to combat enemy submarines. Elks are known for their reliability and low noise levels. They are very mobile (underwater speed up to 35 knots), have a modest size and serious armament, including 12 Tomahawk missiles. The atomic Los Angeles is still the backbone of the US Navy's submarine forces.
Together with 11 new boats, the sailors got rid of their predecessors - 37 multipurpose nuclear submarines of the Stagen type (built in the early 70s), and also removed from combat duty 12 strategic submarine missile carriers of the Benjamin Franklin type (all cut into metal) …
The events described above took place in the period 1990-1999, when, with the weakening of the threat from the Soviet Union, the Americans decided to reduce their naval arsenals. According to my conservative estimate, at that time, the US Navy lost 227 warships: large and small, obsolete and still quite modern.
The world's largest fleet
According to dry statistics, in 1989 the displacement of all ships of the Soviet Navy was 17% higher than the displacement of the American Navy. It is difficult to say by what method of calculation this figure was obtained, but it is even visually noticeable how powerful the Soviet Navy was.
Of course, it is highly incorrect to assess the power of the fleet based on the total displacement. The Russian Navy also included a lot of outdated equipment:
- patrol ships pr. 35 and pr. 159 (were built in the early 60s);
- post-war destroyers of project 56;
- old missile cruisers pr. 58 and pr. 1134;
- obsolete BOD pr. 1134A (the same age as the American cruisers of the "Belknap" type);
- "singing frigates" pr. 61 (analogues of destroyers of the "Charles F. Adams" type);
- artillery cruisers pr. 68-bis (greetings from the 1950s!);
- minesweepers pr. 254 (the most massive type of minesweeper in the world, built from 1948 to 1960);
- ships of the measuring complex "Siberia", "Sakhalin", "Chukotka" (former ore carriers, built in 1958)
- diesel submarine pr. 641 (built in the 60s);
- first generation nuclear submarines, etc.
The maintenance of all this rubbish required a lot of material resources, while by the end of the 80s, he could not solve any of the tasks assigned to the fleet. The only intelligible explanation for the phenomenon of the operation of hundreds of useless ships is the inflation of the staff, and, as a result, the increase in the number of admiral's posts. It is not hard to guess that all these ships were “breathing on fire” and were getting ready to be scrapped, regardless of the political and economic situation in the country.
As for the sad history of Soviet aircraft-carrying cruisers, the untimely death of TAVKRs was programmed even at their birth. For an unclear reason, no one bothered with the construction of the appropriate coastal infrastructure for their basing - TAVKRY stood all their lives in the roadstead, spending "idle" the precious resource of their boilers and generators. As a result, they have developed a resource three times faster than planned. The ships were senselessly ditched by their own hands. Very sorry.
The final point in their careers was set by perestroika: in 1991, the main carrier-based aircraft of the Russian Navy, the Yak-38, was decommissioned, while there was no adequate replacement for it. The supersonic "vertical" Yak-141 was too "raw" to be put into mass production, and there was no question of putting the Su-33 fighter on the short deck of TAVKRs.
In view of the foregoing, three prospects opened up before the Soviet aircraft-carrying cruisers: the Chinese naval museum, the Indian light aircraft carrier, or go to South Korea for scrap.
Among the cruel losses of the Russian Navy in the 90s, it is certainly worth noting the large reconnaissance ship SSV-33 "Ural" and the ship of the measuring complex "Marshal Nedelin" - unique oceanic reconnaissance aircraft, saturated to the limit with the most accurate electronics, radars and space communications systems.
Marshal Nedelin served only seven years, but in his short life he did a lot of useful things: he carried out telemetric measurements during test launches of ICBMs, established communication with spacecraft, participated in the rescue of the Salyut-7 orbital station, and even took part in a brazen filming American naval base Diego Garcia (Indian Ocean). In 1991, the ship stood up to the wall of Dalzavod for a planned overhaul, from where it never returned: the electronic filling of the ship was taken to nonferrous metal reception points, and Marshal Nedelin was soon taken to India for cutting.
Fortunately, the sailors managed to retain the second ship of this type, Marshal Krylov, which is still used to monitor spacecraft flights and record telemetry during test launches of intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Special communication vessel - 33 "Ural"
SSV-33 "Ural" is a stillborn project of a large reconnaissance ship, project 1941 (what a terrible number!) With a nuclear power plant. With a total displacement of 36,000 tons, it was the largest reconnaissance ship in history. Time has shown that Ural is purely a utopia, a dubious project without any purpose or meaning.
In theory, everything looked perfect - a giant nuclear ship could "walk" along the US coast for months, recording all radio communications of interest at any frequencies, or, conversely, patrol near American missile ranges, studying the behavior of multiple ICBM warheads in the final section of the trajectory.
In practice, everything turned out to be much more complicated: like everything too big, the Ural turned out to be unviable - too expensive, complicated and unreliable. The super-ship never made it to the American missile test site in Kwajalein Atoll. After two fires and a series of serious problems with the nuclear installation and fragile electronic stuffing, Ural stood on the “barrels” in Strelok Bay, as it turned out, forever. In 2008, progress began in the direction of its disposal.
Many unpleasant events happened in the 90s in the domestic fleet: it makes no sense or desire to list the rest of the ships sold, cut or dismantled on the stocks. Unfinished aircraft carriers Ulyanovsk and Varyag; planned but not implemented series of modernized BODs of pr. 1155.1, mothballed heavy atomic "Orlans", new generation destroyer 21956, from which only a dream remained …
Stop! It is in this place that the difference between the "reduction" of the American fleet and the "modernization" of the domestic one becomes visible. In all seriousness, the Americans wrote off several hundred, sometimes the newest ships in the 90s, however, during the same time, they built instead of 100 even newer and more formidable ships. However, this is a completely different story.
Hero Gallery:
(A. S. Pushkin)
