The old man remembered how Mussolini's footsteps thundered over the flat timpani of its decks. He remembered the shots and the furious shouts of the gun servants in the battle at Calabria. Remembered the breaker from the HMS Upholder periscope. He remembered a pillar of water mixed with oil that shot up from his side on July 28, 1941. Then it seemed he was coming to an end.
However, he survived. But I could not even imagine what fate awaits in old age.
The Giuseppe Garibaldi is a Duca della Abruzzi-class light cruiser launched in 1936. Unlike many of his peers, he survived the war safely and was left in the Italian fleet. In the mid-50s, the cruiser suddenly disappeared, hiding in the docks of the La Spezia arsenal. Four years later, a monster crawled out from there, in which only the name and armor remained from the previous ship.
In the aft part, where there used to be rails with rows of horned mines, a strange design appeared. Silo covers for Polaris ballistic missiles.
Despite the successful tests, "Garibaldi" was left without nuclear weapons on board. That, did not cancel the possibility of its transformation into a "ship of the apocalypse." At any moment, the silos were ready to receive strategic missiles.
Refusing to hand over the Polaris for a number of political reasons, the Yankees offered the Italians the Terrier naval anti-aircraft missile system.
127-ton launcher, five American radars and 72 anti-aircraft missiles weighing one and a half tons each. Giuseppe Garibaldi became the first missile cruiser in Europe.
In addition to the Polaris and Terriers, the upgraded ship bristled with 12 barrels of artillery pieces. Universal anti-aircraft guns with radar guidance, caliber 76 and 135 mm.
Crew - 600+ people.
Maximum speed 30 knots.
Full displacement after modernization was 11 thousand tons. This is 2.5 times less than that of the modern nuclear-powered cruiser Peter the Great.
Grozny
Favorite cruiser of Nikita Khrushchev, who opened a new magnificent era in the history of the Russian fleet. It was these ships that allowed the Soviet Navy to declare itself in the oceans.
With this kid had to be reckoned with, "Grozny" had the potential to kill an entire squadron with its missiles. Moreover, unlike his bulky predecessors, he still had a chance to hold out for some time in a battle against the navies of NATO countries. The cruiser had rockets for all occasions.
Khrushchev did not like outdated and excessively large "galoshes", which were massively built in the post-war period. And this dislike was entirely justified. None of the past projects meant anything against the backdrop of a new era missile cruiser.
The design of this ship was carried out under the guise of a destroyer. And who could know how to correctly classify "Grozny"? Before him, no one in the world had built such ships. In size, it really matched a large destroyer.
On trials in 1962, the discrepancy between its size and capabilities was revealed. In front of the General Secretary's eyes, the rocket ship sank the target with the first salvo. We decided to classify "Grozny" as a cruiser.
Even the naked eye can see how overloaded he is with weapons. Two launchers for P-35 missiles, eight products in a salvo, two of them with nuclear warheads. There are eight more missiles in the cellars for a second salvo.
In the bow there is a shipborne air defense system "Volna" with two rotating magazines for anti-aircraft ammunition.
Two general detection radars "Angara".
Anti-aircraft fire control post "Yatagan", representing an intricate combination of five bulky parabolic antennas.
And also, ten other radio technical posts for receiving data from external means of the central control, fire control and conducting electronic reconnaissance in the ocean.
Universal artillery (2x2 76 mm), torpedoes, a helipad, later - six-barreled machine guns.
Speed - no other modern ship has such a speed.
34 knots on steam boilers.
Crew - three hundred officers, sailors and foremen.
How did the Soviet designers manage to place such a number of systems and weapons with a full displacement of 5, 5 thousand tons (half that of the American destroyer Arlie Burke)?
Yes, just like that. No fancy. The Soviet designers knew that just so many weapons could fit freely on a ship with a displacement of 5, 5 thousand tons.
In the past, they could easily accommodate artillery and mine-torpedo weapons of a similar mass in a corps with a displacement of 7-8 thousand tons (for example, the KRL pr. 26-bis "Maxim Gorky"). But now they no longer need an armored carapace, which is why the cruiser "shrank" to the size of a destroyer or a modern frigate.
Most armed destroyer
USS Hull (DD-945) is the world's only destroyer with 203 mm artillery.
By the early 1970s, WWII relic cruisers were already on their way. At a time when the Vietnam War once again demonstrated the importance of close fire support for amphibious assault forces and army units fighting in the coastal zone. In the first three years of the war alone (1965-68), heavy cruisers and battleships of the US Navy fired 1 million 100 thousand shells along the coast.
The solution to the problem was seen in the creation of a new, moderately compact and highly effective large-caliber cannon for arming existing destroyers.
The designers dusted off the blueprints of the old Des Moines and built on the basis of its 8 '' automated cannons a fully automatic Mark-71 installation.
Caliber 203 mm.
Fire control system based on radar data.
Automated ammo rack - 75 rounds.
The practical rate of fire is one shot every 5 seconds.
The mass of the high-explosive fragmentation projectile is 118 kg.
The effective firing range is about 30 kilometers.
The destroyer Hull was chosen as the first experimental "platform" to accommodate the Mark-71. A modest, unremarkable ship of the F. Sherman ". The last post-war project of the US Navy torpedo-artillery destroyer, combining all the best from the "Fletchers" and "Girings" of the war years. Traditionally large for American destroyers (4000 tons) and excellent by the standards of the 1950s. armament with the same perfect MSA.
At the time of the events described, the "Shermans" were still young in body, but already old in soul. Realizing the uselessness of such destroyers in modern combat, they began to actively rebuild them into missile destroyers.
But the most fortunate of all was the Hull, whose 5-inch bow was replaced with a 203 mm super-cannon.
Count's hunt
He could walk twice the distance than any of his TKR peers.
Because of the unbearable noise from the diesel engines at full speed, the officers in the Deutschland's wardroom communicated with notes.
But the main feature of the German "pocket battleships" was their weapons. The ship, similar in size to the Washingtonians, was armed with 283 mm artillery. This is not counting another eight six-inch machines and batteries of anti-aircraft "Flak" caliber 88 or 105 mm!
Each of its two main-caliber turrets weighed 600 tons.
In terms of armor penetration and the power of their 300 kg of shells, the German pickpockets had absolute superiority over all the "contract cruisers" of the 1930s, which were standardly armed with six- and eight-inch cannons. The difference in mass of shells is 3-6 times!
In terms of their characteristics, the magnificent 28 cm SK C / 28 cannons were close to those of battleships. At least 283 mm ammunition could already pose a real threat to highly protected ships.
It was thanks to her super-weapon that "Admiral Graf von Spee" scattered three British cruisers like puppies in the battle at La Plata. Including, completely disarmed and disabled the heavy cruiser Exeter.
The Germans managed to create a perfectly armed naval artillery platform.
The only thing that could not be ensured within the allotted displacement is security. The constructive protection of the "pocket battleship" could not protect it even from being hit by 152 mm shells, let alone other, much more serious threats of that time. And the protection scheme itself, the thickness of the decks and belts looks like an unfortunate joke against the background of heavy cruisers similar in displacement from other countries.
Modern fleet
Now the price of victory has become more important than the victory itself. And, to be honest, we haven't seen victories in the navy for seven decades.
The main thing in peacetime is not to break your own budget. Hence, all sorts of cost-cutting initiatives spelled out in the design of modern warships. All frigates and destroyers of our day are deliberately underutilized.
Weapons are not needed in large quantities. Speed is not important. Constructive protection has not been thought about for the past 50 years.
Modern technology makes life easier for designers. The most bulky computer weighs 1,000 times less than the barrel of an eight-inch WWII cannon. Compact missiles, high-performance diesels and turbines, and a multiply reduced crew.
But there were times when the question "life or death?" stood with an edge. Then the creators of military equipment fought not for every ruble, but for centimeters of metacentric height, which promised the possibility of deploying additional weapons. They fought to the last in order to gain at least some advantage over the enemy.
A real competition for designers, in which international restrictions and the need to build ships within strictly specified limits were taken into account. With an eternal lack of funds. In the conditions of a lack of information, calculations "by hand" and an imperfect technological base of that time.
Just as true art is born in cramped conditions, from the desire to violate prohibitions. This is how incredible, super-armed ships were born. Whose firepower was disproportionate to their modest size.
