"Unequal battle. The ship heels ours. Save our human souls!" - Vladimir Vysotsky sang.
Nowadays, the history of the heeling ship has acquired special significance. A lot of experts have appeared on the Internet, concerned about the stability and the magnitude of the metacentric height of the new American destroyer.
“Zamvolt” really looks unusual. But maritime history knows examples of ships with a much more paradoxical design. Which, at first glance, could not keep on an even keel at all.
Japanese battleship pagodas
The ships of the sons of Amaterasu were distinguished by their own unique flavor.
The main "decoration" of all Japanese battleships was an extremely high superstructure, in which foreigners saw the features of classic Shinto pagodas. The tallest was the "pagoda" of the battleship "Fuso", it rose 40 meters high - like a modern twelve-story building!
Outwardly similar to a disorderly heap of bridges and military posts, in reality, the "pagoda" was erected strictly according to feng shui. Each level was designed for a specific task: a navigating bridge with excellent visibility for the commander and helmsmen, a navigational bridge, observation platforms, artillery rangefinder posts - for main, medium and universal caliber guns.
This structural element can be considered a brilliant find, if it were not for a combat ship, which, like any other floating craft, had to meet the stability requirements. Those. to be able to withstand external disturbances causing it to roll or trim, and return to a state of equilibrium after the end of the disturbing effect.
In addition to the 40-meter "pagoda", the battle ship "Fuso" carried on its mighty shoulders SIX main-caliber towers - bulky rotating structures, whose frontal plates were 28 centimeters thick. Each tower weighed 620 tons - all six in total weighed four times more than the composite superstructure of the destroyer Zamvolt. Apart from 12 thousand tons of armor and dozens of smaller caliber guns. Estimate the scale!
In the end, "Fuso" nevertheless turned over. This did not happen before the battleship mutilated by the bombs received a pair of torpedoes during the battle in the Surigao Strait (1944).
Nuclear cruiser "Long Beach"
After launching in 1959, the Long Beach cruiser banked heavily and capsized and made a round-the-world voyage. He served for thirty years, went through the Vietnam War, and in 1991 covered the battleship Missouri during the shelling of Iraq.
He was known and feared: Vietnamese pilots were forbidden to fly closer than 100 km to the coastline so as not to be hit by the anti-aircraft systems of the Long Beach cruiser. According to the Americans themselves, the cruiser still managed to shoot down a couple of MiGs. In addition to providing air defense, the cruiser was used as a command post, coordinating the actions of aviation groups with its powerful radars.
Long Beach was infrequent in European waters, spending most of its service in the Pacific. The Pacific Fleet sailors were well aware of its enchanting silhouette. Alas, all expectations were in vain. Despite storms and fighting, Long Beach never toppled under the weight of its monstrous superstructure.
Its presence was explained not by the dementia of the designers, but by the need to place the antennas of the Hughes SCANFAR experimental radar complex. Like Zamvolt, that cruiser was a demonstrator of new technologies that were 20-30 years ahead of their time.
In the late 1980s, there were plans to transform Long Beach into a strike cruiser similar to the Soviet Orlan. However, having fallen under the influence of the Russian-American arms reduction programs, the legendary cruiser went, as a result, to a junkyard.
Albany modernization
The cruiser Long Beach had an equally awkward-looking colleague named Albany.
This WWII ship is famous for having undergone gender reassignment surgery. Built as a heavy artillery cruiser, Albany was selected as an experimental platform for the deployment of missile weapons. During modernization at the end of the 50s. he lost all the towers, guns and superstructure, which took the form of a tall tower.
Instead, they installed five missile systems and 12 advanced radars, making Albany the most heavily armed missile cruiser in history.
The bizarre look of the cruiser Albany did not go unnoticed. Those standing on the navigating bridge described the chilling fear when the 17-thousand-ton colossus heeled around the bends. And then it also reluctantly returned to an even keel.
Subtle figures of people testify to the true dimensions of radars and missiles
The main problem was the inadequate size of computers and the bulkiness of 60-year-old radars. Another nuisance was the irrational layout of the premises and compartments, originally designed for the installation of artillery weapons. Plus, armored decks that are completely useless in their existing form, weighing over a thousand tons, but, due to the changed layout, are no longer able to cover the most important compartments of the ship.
Trying to somehow reduce the "upper weight" and maintain stability, the Yankees built a superstructure of light alloys, at the same time laying two thousand tons of lead in the fuel tanks along the keel. This markedly reduced the cruising range, but the seaworthiness of the Albany still left much to be desired.
However, the cruiser did not capsize. Albany served in a new guise for 18 long years, serving as the flagship of the Sixth Fleet.
Fire from all barrels!
Epilogue
“Rhino fed,” “the big cupboard falls louder,” and other sarcastic comments do not reflect the situation. It is at least unreasonable to draw quick conclusions based only on the appearance. How large or small the stability margin of a ship is, can only be said by "the calculation of the harsh nuts and steel."
Stability and seaworthiness depend on many parameters: the size of the ship, the ratio of the length and width of the hull, the shape of the contours in the underwater part, the ratio of the "upper weight" and the ballast reserve, the side height, the depth of the draft, the distribution of weights inside the hull and superstructure …
Nevertheless, based on the above examples and the laws of incomprehensible eternal logic, it can be noted that "Zamwalt", with all the desire, clearly does not fall into the "risk group". All known technical facts indicate that the destroyer is "more adequate" than its famous predecessors.
The pyramid of the superstructure in the aggregate size does not exceed the "box" of the cruiser "Long Beach", while the "Zamvolt" objectively should have an advantage due to the placement of weapons below deck and the absence of huge radar boxes for target illumination, set at max. high altitude above the water surface.
Due to the strong blockage of the sides, the Zamvolt structure is concentrated around the center of mass, which also has a positive effect on its stability in comparison with the ridiculous “box” and turret of cruisers of the past.
Finally, the destroyer is shorter, wider and more stocky, which means it is a priori more stable. The dimensions of "Zamvolt" are 183 x 24.5 m versus 200 … 220 meters with the standard hull width of American cruisers of that era of 21.3 m.
As for the example of the Japanese battleship, the Fuso is undoubtedly a masterpiece of naval engineering. A direct comparison with the “Zamvolt” is hardly appropriate - the battleship is three times its displacement. But the scale is amazing: only the turrets of the main caliber weighed four times more than the entire superstructure of the Zamvolta (the most bulky element of a modern destroyer, weighing 920 tons). I consider it unnecessary to talk about the 40-meter Pagoda again.
The creators of "Zamvolt" know all this better than we do. It is no coincidence that, having received an official refusal to install a complete set of radars, they made changes to the design of the third destroyer of the series. Instead of lightweight (and expensive) composites, the destroyer Lyndon Johnson's superstructure will be made of conventional structural steel.
Add-in "Zamvolta"
The battleship "Fuso" capsizes! Joke. Only tests of the system of counter-flooding of the compartments (1941)
