The Orlan's hull is only 8% shorter than that of the Iowa. Despite the double difference in displacement, both giants are almost identical in size.
"Iowa" is wider midships (33 m), however, its hull narrows sharply towards the extremities; the lines of the high-speed battleship resemble a "bottle" in shape. In contrast, the width of the nuclear-powered cruiser remains unchanged (28 m) throughout almost the entire length of the hull.
The colossal difference in displacement is dictated by only three additional meters of draft. At full displacement, the Iowa hull sank 11 m into the water.
The full displacement of "Orlan" corresponds to a draft of 8 meters. The figure 10.3 m found in the sources includes the “drop-shaped” protrusion of the sonar and does not matter in this issue.
The main mystery of this story is not how deeply the ship sinks with increasing displacement.
The atomic supercruiser pr. 1144 should not have the same displacement at all.
If "Orlan" was built on the basis of the "Iowa" hull (after all, the dimensions are identical, only less draft), then it would have turned out to be smaller and lighter by several thousand tons.
In other words. Purely hypothetical. If the Iowa building had been built using the technologies of the end of the twentieth century, and inside there were installed mass-size models of Orlan machines and mechanisms, then no 26 thousand tons would have come close.
Paradox
The battleship was very heavy, its rest mass was 59,000 tons. And this is not surprising.
First, he carried an armored carapace.
The Iowa citadel was 140 meters long. Imagine a football field, framed by 8-meter walls of 30-centimeter steel. From above it was still covered with a “cover” 22 centimeters thick (this is the total thickness of the battleship's armored decks). Plus, there was a continuation of the citadel aft, traverse bulkheads, tower barbets, super-protected wheelhouse and other masterpieces of fortification.
In total, the entire booking was almost 20 thousand tons (300 railway cars with metal)!
Artillery with ammunition - 6, 2 thousand tons.
Two echelons of the power plant, taking into account the 12 turbo and diesel generators of the battleship - 5 thousand tons.
The total fuel supply is over 8 thousand tons.
Equipment and systems - 800 tons.
A few thousand more tons were spent to accommodate the crew of 2,800 people. and various supplies (food, engine oil, water supply for boilers, etc.).
The “dry residue” of about 16 thousand tons is the battleship's hull itself.
Why is it so heavy?
Well, first of all, it's big.
Second, the Iowa hull would have little resemblance to the cans of modern ships. Its skin was so thick (from 16 mm to 37 mm in the KVL area) that it could be mistaken for armor. For comparison, missile cruisers built at the end of the twentieth century have an outer skin that is only 8-10 mm thick. And the thickness of their deck flooring is usually even less.
Internal, considered unarmored, bulkheads had a thickness of 16 mm and were made of STS steel, similar in quality to homogeneous armor.
No aluminum or light alloy inserts in the superstructure. Everywhere, from all sides, there was only a cold shine of steel.
The power set of the battleship was designed for the installation of powerful (and heavy) armor plates. That did not take long to affect the mass and strength of the frames.
As a result, the hull of a modern cruiser, identical in size to the Iowa hull, should be lighter and clearly weigh less than 16 thousand tons. How much? No data are available for Orlan.
We will modestly reduce this figure by 12% (2000 tons).
14 thousand tons. The mass of structures of the atomic “Orlan” body is seen as such. At least, this would have turned out a body similar in size to “Iowa” in all these circumstances. Less thickness of the outer skin and bulkheads (at least 2 times), less by 20 m in length, smaller dimensions of the underwater part (due to lower draft).
The full displacement of the "Orlan" is about 26 thousand tons.
26 - 14 = 12.
What were 12 thousand tons of payload spent on?
No armor. What is sometimes called "local reservation" (protection of reactors and launchers "Granit") is an insignificant part that is not able to somehow influence the result. 200-300 tons - by weight are less than 1% of the TARKR's displacement, within the statistical error.
Orlan's main armament:
20 anti-ship missiles “Granit” (starting weight 7 tons). 96 S-300 anti-aircraft missiles (launch weight about 2 tons). Total - 300 tons.
For comparison: the mass of weapons and ammunition "Iowa" was 20 times more (6200 tons).
You can scrupulously count the remaining combat systems ("Daggers", SAM "Dagger", etc.), but this does not come close to covering the 20-fold difference in the mass of weapons of the TARKR and the battleship.
The launch mass of the "Dagger" rocket (165 kg) is equivalent in mass to only four rounds of the universal five-inch (20-gun battery on board the battleship fired thousands of such rounds at the enemy).
The mass of the launchers is negligible against the background of 16 '' guns, where one barrel weighed 100 tons (of course, without the breech, cradle, guidance drives and ammunition supply mechanisms).
By the way … Modern launchers are located UNDER the deck, while the towers and guns of the battleship were located OVER. It is easy to imagine how this reduces the “overhead” weight and the need for compensating ballast. At least if the missile silos were really located below the towers …
It's all too obvious.
Even if we assume that each mine with auxiliary reinforcement has three times the mass of the rocket (exorbitant value), then the mass of all weapons and ammunition of the Orlan will hardly reach two thousand tons.
Unlike WWII battle ships, where the load item allocated for armament exceeded 10% of the total displacement of the ship, for a missile cruiser it will hardly be within 5-7%.
Power point
Here you can cry or laugh, but the steam boilers and turbines of the decrepit battleship provided almost twice the power of the nuclear reactors of the Orlan. The fast battleship of the WWII era had 254 thousand hp on the shafts, while the nuclear cruiser “only” 140 thousand.
As indicated above, the two echelons of the power plant, together with a stock of fuel oil, which provided the battleship with a cruising range of 15 thousand miles, weighed about 13 thousand tons.
Even without understanding nuclear technologies and believing that carbon dioxide is split in the reactor, we can definitely say that the reactor is not fueled with fuel oil. Hence - minus 8000 tons.
The mechanisms of the power plant of the battleship (filled with working fluids) weighed 5 thousand tons.
The power of Orlan's turbines is almost half that. He has only two turbines (GTZA) - instead of four from “Iowa”. The number of shafts and propellers has been reduced by the same factor.
Don't forget about the 40-year age difference between the ships. If the specific power of the mechanisms (kg / h.p.) Is the same, it means that all this time technical progress has been in one place.
Instead of eight steam boilers, there are two OK-650 pressurized water reactors, similar to those installed on modest-sized multipurpose submarines. Radiation protection does not weigh as much as it is portrayed in science fiction films.
Someone will remember about reserve boilers on fuel oil (1000 miles at a speed of 17 knots). In this calculation, they can be neglected. Neither in terms of their power, nor in terms of mass, nor in terms of fuel reserves (15 times less than that of Iowa), they do not mean anything against the background of the main power plants of the ships.
Iowa's load item allocated for the power plant and fuel was 22% of the total in / and battleship.
In “Orlan” (taking into account all factors), it should be much less. There is no fuel. Once 40 years have passed and the power of the power plant mechanisms has decreased by half, then they have become twice as lighter (logical, right?).
2500-3000 tons or 10-12% of the total in / and the cruiser.
What's the bottom line?
Having estimated the approximate mass of all weapons, ammunition and mechanisms of the Orlan's power plant, we are still marking time within 5 thousand tons.
What were the remaining 7 thousand spent on?
You point to electronics and radars. But how heavy does electronics have to be, even when protected by military standards? In order to write off 100 missing freight cars (7000 tons) on it without any charge. This is madness.
We know that the S-300 anti-aircraft missile system, together with the launcher, command post and radars, is placed on just a few mobile chassis. It would be strange if its naval counterpart, the S-300FM, demanded some incredible "engine rooms" and other nonsense, which is often found in discussions about naval weapons, for its work.
By the way, there is no need to worry about the launchers and missiles themselves: a significant load item has already been allocated for them in the "weapons" section.
The crew was reduced by 4, 5 times (600 instead of 2800 sailors).
A technological chasm of 40 years lay between the ships. Each nail, generator or electric motor weighs lighter than an old battleship. By the way, 900 electric motors were used as part of the Iowa mechanisms, its electrical network was no less complex than that of a modern TARKR.
No matter how we try to explain the paradox, a heavy nuclear cruiser is lighter by several thousand tons. At least, this could be a ship corresponding to the dimensions of the “Iowa”, with all the indicated changes in the load items.
And yet, there is an explanation. Please pay attention to the picture.
Unfortunately, in history there was no case when the battleship and the "Orlan" were moored opposite each other. But if that happened, you would see everything with the naked eye.
The board of the atomic giant rises 11 meters out of the water. The stem is even higher, there is a height of 16 meters (about a five-storey building). From there, it is difficult to jump into the water, while avoiding injury.
The deeply planted “Iowa” has a depth midship of only 5 meters. Its body, like an iceberg, is almost completely hidden under water.
Where the battleship has a navigating bridge, the upper deck of the cruiser is just beginning. The missile silo covers are higher than the battleship's turrets!
As if made of a light "cork", the nuclear cruiser sways on the waves. Out of 59 meters of its height (from keel to klotik), only 8 meters are under water. The ratio of the freeboard to the draft is 1, 4 (for comparison: for a battleship this value is 0, 45).
The exceptional freeboard means extra thousands of tons of metal structures, this is the upper weight, this is additional ballast. This is the disappeared displacement that we were so desperately looking for at the beginning of the article.
Actually, this obvious fact confirms the correctness of our guesses, about the insignificant mass of weapons and mechanisms modern ship. If radars, missiles and reactors really weighed, like guns and mechanisms of WWII ships, then we would not have dreamed of any freeboard height. The missile cruiser would look like a squat battle ship.
From the point of view of the designers of the WWII era, the Orlan's hull belongs to a real battleship - even larger in displacement than the Iowa! Which, due to chronic underload, almost entirely sticks out of the water.
Nobody calls to fill the "Orlan" with thousands of tons of weapons and armor, so that he plunged into the water right up to the deck. There are no mistakes here. The cruiser was deliberately designed to rise above the water as much as possible.
My calculation only shows what immense reserves are hidden in the designs of modern ships. With no other requirements, designers can afford everything: super high sides, fancy bulwarks and superstructures. Where the wind used to blow and a cramped elevator occasionally came, delivering the spotters to the upper control tower, now you can freely walk along the decks, looking at the waves from the height of a 16-storey building.
Amazingly high sides are a common feature of all modern ships. The next picture shows the Zamvolt and the battleship Nevada at the same scale.
Those who write about how “Zamvolt” will bury their noses in water simply do not understand the comic nature of the situation. At SUCH height of the side, the destroyer may not pay attention to the waves at all.
The thick-skinned beauty “Iowa” has never had problems with seaworthiness either. Thanks to its mass, it, like a sword, cut the water walls, without even trying to climb them. As they say, the hippopotamus does not see well, but this is no longer his problem.
In general, with the increase in the height of the sides, the situation on the upper deck has become much more comfortable.
