Published articles on ship armor are written by non-specialists who are unfamiliar with the concepts of metacentric height, stability, and center of gravity of a ship. As a result, all conclusions are far from reality. We'll hang thousands of tons of armor and sail. Keel up.
It is said that the armor belt will withstand a missile hit. Anyone who says this does not understand that ancient ships had an armor belt in the form of a narrow “strip” along the waterline. If you lift it higher, the ship will immediately capsize. Therefore, it is impossible to protect the entire board. Impossible!
An armored belt with a thickness of 100 mm and a height of 5 meters with a hundred-meter length of the citadel would weigh almost 400 tons! And this is only from one side. Armor lovers believe that the armor plates hang in the air. This is not the case. An armored ship will need a more durable and, therefore, heavy power set: stringers and frames. The result is a battleship-sized behemoth. To move such a carcass is still a problem, the battleship will need atomic power units of colossal power.
Once the French built such a ship, with solid side protection, and named it "Dupuis de Lom". Despite the attempts of would-be shipbuilders, this “de Lom” was barely crawling under the weight of its own weight. Three steam engines could not provide even a 20-knot speed, the cruiser showed only 19.7 knots on a measured mile. How far could he have gone?
Its entire side, from the underwater part to the upper deck, was protected by 100 mm armor, which was attached over a double plating with a thickness of 20 mm. So that “Dupuis de Lom” would not tip over, its armor was made of special low-density steel, the recipe for which has been lost by now, aha-ahaha …
May the reader forgive me for such a beginning. But, you see, the joke is funny.
Masterpieces of Marine Engineering
Despite the protests of modern specialists, history knows many examples of super-protected warships. Whose armored over the entire area of the side was perfectly combined with adequate size, powerful armament and high speed. A simple example is the Russian “Izmail”.
But the most interesting is "Dupuis de Lom". French armored cruiser of the late 19th century, whose constructive “findings” could be useful in the creation of modern ships.
As you may have guessed, everything that is written at the beginning of the article is a lie. The Dupuis de Lom was one of the fastest cruisers of its era. Even faster than the Aurora built a decade later.
But the main feature of “de Loma” was its phenomenal, even for that era, security. THE ENTIRE BOARD - from the stem to the sternpost, from the underwater part to the upper deck, was covered with 100-mm armor plates, under which a thick (twice as thick as modern ships) skin of mild structural steel was hidden.
The fantastic appearance of the cruiser was complemented by a sloping stem and two massive battle superstructure towers. The shape of the stem was not dictated by the requirements of the "stealth" technology, but a banal desire to reduce the weight of the bow, while eliminating the danger of damage to the deck by powder gases when firing the bow turret of the main battery. The feed had a similar shape.
The main problem of the Dupuis de Loma was not the armor, but the technological level of 1888, when this first-class ship was laid down.
13 boilers and three steam engines produced only 13 thousand hp with difficulty. For comparison: a typical destroyer of our time has up to 100,000 hp on its shafts.
If, as an experiment, to throw out the rusty junk and equip the “de Lom” with highly efficient diesel engines and gas turbines with modern electric transmission, then it would certainly have overcome the 30-knot line.
For similar reasons, the cruiser had poor seaworthiness and lacked stability. He swayed heavily in a storm, heeled unpleasantly on turns and reluctantly returned to an even keel. Alas, its creators did not know about active roll stabilizers. In 1897, they guessed to equip the cruiser with bilge keels, which significantly improved its stability. But due to the too weak power plant, the speed of "de Loma" dropped to 18 knots.
The next drawback was the defects of the armor plates. However, these are the problems of shipbuilders of the 19th century.
"Dupuis de Lom" was the pride of the French navy, it was actively used for diplomatic purposes, demonstrating the technological power and capabilities of France. Visited Germany, Spain, Russia. Unfortunately, the service life of ships of the armor and steam era was short-lived. A decade later, “de Lom” became obsolete and, due to the rapid deterioration of the mechanisms, was put into reserve.
Remaining the only ship of its project, “de Lom” turned out to be excessively steep, roads and roads for its tasks. Still, at the end of the 19th century, the power plant with a capacity of 13 thousand hp. and eight turrets with 194 and 164 mm guns seemed an unthinkable luxury for a cruiser-class ship.
The main thing that interests us in this story: French engineers using antediluvian technologies of the 19th century. managed to build a ship with solid side protection, keeping within 6700 tons of displacement. For all its incredible protection, the cruiser "de Lom" was 1.5 times smaller than the destroyer! If such a ship were to be found in modern combat, it would be completely invulnerable to modern missiles and air attack weapons.
Now there will be objections to the lack of horizontal protection. The only 30-mm armored deck "de Loma" was in the depths of the hull, below the level of the overhead line.
The creators of the cruiser simply did not see a particular need to install an armored deck system. Do not forget that they had their own "headache" with the placement of eight gun turrets (two of which had 200 mm walls). Unlike modern compact UVPs, these multi-ton structures towered ABOVE the upper deck, worsening the already poor stability.
The problems with the hull set could be solved in an obvious way: by including armor elements in the hull power set, like the armored capsule of the legendary Il-2. Saving weight on frames and cladding - hundreds and even thousands of tons. The complexity of the work is offset by the power of modern technology. By the way, this technique was successfully used by the Japanese during the construction of their cruisers in the 1920s, who did not know about modern composites, CAD software packages, plasma cutting, promising welding methods and industrial installations that allow bending steel sheets at any angle, forming double surfaces curvature.
The cruiser "Dupuis de Lom" is fully consistent with the idea of the appearance of a highly protected warship of the XXI century. An armored "box" swaying on the waves, which wanted to sneeze at the debris of downed missiles, all kinds of gliding bombs, "Harpoons", "Exocets" and Chinese counterfeits, which proliferated around the world in tens of thousands of pieces.
On the upper deck there are only protected watertight missile silo covers and two or four short-range anti-aircraft complexes ("Kortik" / "Falanx").
The only noticeable detail is the squat superstructure tower, with flat antennas placed on its walls, made using the PAR technology.
A modern ship is capable of performing most tasks without radar. All "Harpoons" and "Calibers" are guided EXCLUSIVELY according to external target designation data. The loss of the entire radar station will not in any way affect the capabilities of anti-submarine defense. The connection is extremely resistant to damage: you can look back at Zamvolt and use the antennas that are retractable from the body. Finally, a satellite phone in the pocket of every officer.
With the development of anti-aircraft missiles with active seeker that do not require external illumination, it became possible to shoot missiles on homing, according to data from other ships or the radar of an onboard helicopter. The possibility of direct participation in the air defense / missile defense system of ships and the guidance of anti-aircraft missiles was originally incorporated in modern AWACS aircraft (E-2 mod. D) or F-35 fighters.
On October 24, 2014, during the exercise, a massive attack of low-flying subsonic and supersonic targets, imitating the corresponding anti-ship missiles, was successfully repelled using SM-6 missiles. At the same time, a successful interception of the GQM-163A supersonic training target (corresponding in characteristics and flight profile to the P-270 Mosquito missile and the BQM-74 subsonic training target) was performed. Both targets were intercepted while flying at ultra-low altitude with over-the-horizon launches of the SM-6. The carrier ship itself did not see training targets beyond the radio horizon. and intercepted them using the SM-6 active homing heads.
A damaged, but not surrendered destroyer can still be used as a floating arsenal. Agree, it is much better to have an extra fifty missiles and other weapons in the warrant than a pile of burnt debris on the ocean floor.
Finally, nothing prevents him from defusing his ammunition to the end, covering the enemy with a flock of "Caliber".
