The clock is 15:30, the time of the year is May, the Atlantic is overboard.
The beginning of the romantic comedy was overshadowed by the fresh breath of the “Furious Fifties”. A depressing landscape blown by the cold Antarctic wind. Flooring of low thunderclouds. Water rolls, thundering against the cheekbone of the ship, fountains of spray and flying pieces of sea foam.
Argentine ships cut the ocean with the bow with the intention of going around the Falklands and taking the British "in the pincers". An aircraft carrier group headed by "Ventizisco de Mayo" was advancing from the north. From the south - a strike force from General Belgrano and two destroyers. And it is difficult to say, meeting with which of the detachments seemed to be a great misfortune.
“Belgrano” was frankly old, but now, every minute he became more and more dangerous. In their youth, such cruisers fired 100 rounds per minute with the main caliber. The meeting with Her Majesty's frigates promised to be short: the cruiser would have killed them all like cardboard boxes.
Fifty years BC
The light cruiser "Brooklyn" had a length of 185 meters, a crew of 1000 people and a total displacement of over 12 thousand tons. The "lightness" of this boar was not in its size, but in the size of the main caliber. Six inches (152 mm), which is completely undignified for a cruiser.
Launching the cruiser "Helena"
Brooklyn owes its appearance to the London Maritime Agreement (1930), which divided all cruisers into “light” (category A) with a gun caliber of up to 155 mm and “heavy” (category B) with a main caliber over 155 mm. At the same time, the building rights of the latter were tightened, forcing the leading naval powers to start building well-balanced cruisers with six-inch guns.
Despite the standardization of the main characteristics, the same main caliber and belonging to the same era, cruisers differed greatly in characteristics and sizes. At first, the Japanese took the lead with their five-tower "Mogami". Unaware that Mogami was an oriental ploy, the Americans rushed to create their own counterpart. It was only with the beginning of the war that the Japanese quickly replaced the three-gun turrets with two-gun turrets with 203-mm cannons, instantly transferring the Mogami to the category of heavy cruisers.
And “Brooklyn” remained the only light cruiser in the world with a record firing performance.
Five towers with three guns each, in total - fifteen guns with an automatic sliding bolt. To save space and speed up the supply of ammunition to the guns, a three-level ring store was used inside the barbets of the main battery turrets. For their phenomenal rate of fire and density of fire, “Brooklyn” received the nickname “six-inch machine guns” in the Navy.
Less is not always worse. Lagging behind the Washingtonians in terms of ammunition power (a two-fold difference in mass between 6 'and 8' shells), the Brooklyn-class LKRs were considered ideal ships for night artillery duels. Where in a short time it was required to “feed” the enemy with the maximum amount of hot metal.
Universal caliber “Brooklyn” consisted of eight 127 mm guns. Anti-aircraft weapons have evolved continuously; by the middle of the war it consisted of 4 quadruple and 4 paired Bofors submachine guns and 28 rapid-fire small-caliber Erlikons.
Unlike its European and Japanese peers, “Brooklyn” did not carry either torpedo or anti-submarine weapons. A purely artillery ship, the ASW missions were entirely assigned to the escort destroyers.
To ensure the work of the air group, on board there were two powder catapults, a crane and an under-deck hangar for four seaplanes. The stock of aviation gasoline was 23 tons.
Despite their "lightness", these cruisers had good armor protection for their class. The meek, but strong waist armor of the citadel stretched from 61 to 103 shp., Having a thickness of 127 mm (82 mm on the lower edge). The belt had a height of 4, 2 meters and was installed on top of a 16 mm thick "mild steel" sheathing.
Ammunition protection was carried out according to an unusual scheme. Three-tier shops were covered with 152 mm thick barbets. The ammunition cellar of the main battery bow towers was covered by an underwater 50-mm belt. The cellars of the aft towers were protected by a 120 mm thick longitudinal bulkhead. The outer traverses of the cellars were 95 mm thick.
The horizontal protection consisted of a 50mm main armored deck.
The best protection was provided by the frontal plates of the GK towers with a thickness of 165 mm. The walls were 38-76 mm thick.
The power plant consisted of eight Babcock & Wilksos water-tube boilers and four Parsons jet tubes with a total capacity of 100,000 hp, which provided the cruisers with a speed of 32.5 knots.
Like all American ships, the Brooklyn was highly autonomous and well suited for operations in the ocean. With a full reserve of oil (2,200 tons), the cruiser was capable of sailing 10,000 miles at a cruising speed of 15 knots.
It is curious that the total capacity of the onboard power station "Brooklyn" (3600 kW) was twice the required power of weapons and mechanisms. As if someone planned to arm the cruiser with a "railgun" in 1935. Joke. In combat conditions, the Yankees quickly realized the meaninglessness of this decision and limited the power (two turbine generators instead of four + two standby diesel generators).
The regular crew of the cruiser consisted of 868 sailors, but in combat conditions their number usually exceeded a thousand. Thanks to the presence of a solid deck instead of a short forecastle, it was possible to provide sufficiently high standards of habitability for the crew. The officers were accommodated in single and double cabins, the cockpits were also not too crowded. Each sailor had a stationary bunk and a locker for personal belongings. The cruiser had a well-equipped medical unit with an X-ray room on board.
"St. Louis" in the Solomon Islands, 1943
Nine cruisers of this type (seven original “Brooklyn” and two modernized LKR, classified as subtype “St. Louis”) earned 68 battle stars during the war years. All took an active part in the battles in the Pacific and European theaters of operations. All received serious "wounds" from the actions of the enemy, but were again returned to duty. Not a single cruiser was lost in battle.
Notable episodes of their fighting career include:
- detonation of ammunition on the cruiser "Boise" in the battle at Cape Esperance (complete destruction of the bow, 107 dead);
- kamikaze attack on the cruiser "Nashville" (the blast wave and shrapnel killed 133 people on the upper deck, however, the ship's structure did not receive any serious damage and he continued to carry out the assigned task);
- Hit of a German guided bomb "Fritz-X" in the forward turret of "Savannah" (coast of Italy, 1943). The bomb pierced a 50 mm slab, flew through the entire structure of the tower and the barbet and exploded in the cellar, knocking out the bottom. It took half an hour to extinguish the resulting fire. Despite serious injuries and the loss of almost 200 people of her crew, the Savannah was able to limp to Malta, from where, after ersatz repairs, she left on her own for major repairs in the United States.
But the most famous story is connected with the cruiser "Phoenix". Having happily survived Pearl Harbor, he still found his refuge on the seabed. Under the flag of a foreign country.
LKR "Phoenix" during the attack on Pearl Harbor
The clock is 15:50. May 1982 is on the calendar. South Atlantic
… The meeting with Her Majesty's frigates promised to be short: “Belgrano” would have killed them all like cardboard boxes.
The British had nothing to delay the cruiser. No powerful anti-ship missiles, no decent artillery. What did the British 114 mm "pukalki" (one per ship) mean against the power of a WWII artillery cruiser?
The Britons could not even apply the old proven method - launching anti-aircraft missiles at a surface target, in line of sight, due to the lack of suitable air defense systems (for the entire squadron there were only five destroyers with "Sea Dart").
Deck "Sea Harriers" also did not guarantee success. As the experience of the war years has shown, a cruiser of this type cannot be disabled by hitting the usual 500-lb. aerial bombs. The situation was complicated by the fact that in 1968 "Belgrano" underwent modernization with the installation of two surface-to-air missile systems "Sea Cat". At the same time, he still carried strong anti-aircraft artillery from Bofors and Erlikons.
Just one hit from a six-inch cannon could disable any British ship (especially the one that burned out from an unexploded anti-ship missile). A six-inch projectile is no joke: a 59-kg "blank" flying at two speeds of sound. When it explodes, a crater is formed in the ground, as deep as a person's height.
An additional threat was created by the Belgrano escort. Two destroyers (formerly American "Allen M. Sumner" of the war years), rearmed with anti-ship missiles "Exocet".
There was only one possible option. Behind the stern of the General Belgrano, an invisible shadow, the nuclear submarine Conquerror, glided throughout the day.
On May 4, 1982 at 15:57, the Conquerror submarine fired a three-torpedo salvo, becoming the first nuclear submarine in history to sink a ship in real combat conditions.
The explosion of the first torpedo tore off the nose of the Belgrano, the second made a 20-meter hole in the port side. The cruiser went under water, taking with it 323 people from the 1093s who were on board.
It is curious that the reason for the death of the cruiser was the unguided British torpedoes Mark VIII of the 1927 model. Despite the presence of modern "Tigerfish" torpedoes, the submarine commander chose an old proven weapon. And it brought victory. Great shot, sir! Of the three torpedoes fired, two hit the cruiser, the third left a dent in the side of the destroyer Ippolito Bouchard (fuse misfire).
The cruiser was sunk outside the British declared 200-mile zone of the DB. However, any insinuations about the legality of the use of weapons end in nothing. The meaning of the 200-mile "war zone" was to prevent losses among civilian aircraft and ships of third countries. From a military point of view, this was pure convention. An example of this is the sunken Belgrano. The opposite example is the Argentine military aircraft operating from air bases on the continent.
One thing is certain - the Conkerror's shot predetermined the outcome of the war, forcing the Argentine fleet to return to bases and not leave until the end of the war.
