The comments of casual visitors to the "Fleet" section often do not please with originality. Readers get stuck on a couple of well-known cases, forgetting to analyze the whole picture. And then, on the basis of this, they make completely wrong conclusions. It even becomes a shame for the shipbuilders of the past, whose great creations in an instant are written into incapable and useless trash.
Crushing volleys
Hood and Invincible are usually cited as examples of the death of large and well-protected ships from artillery fire. Just a couple of successful volleys, and the sea giants went to the bottom, not even having time to properly take revenge on the enemy.
The example of the Invincible loses its obviousness upon acquaintance with the complete statistics of the Battle of Jutland. The British lost three battle cruisers (Invincible, Indifatigable, Queen Mary), the Kaiser's fleet lost one (Lutzov).
Why did the stars side with the Germans? What explains the threefold difference in the number of losses?
The explanation must be sought not in horoscopes, but in the construction of ships. Left - German paintwork of the type "Derflinger". On the right is the British Invincible. And don't ask stupid questions.
All three British losses were caused by detonation, with the complete loss of crews and ships.
LKR "Lyuttsov" received 24 powerful hits with large-caliber shells (305, 343 and 381 mm) and slowly sank into the night. The destroyers managed to remove 90% of its crew.
So it turned out that the British, having relied on speed and firepower (the best defense is attack), ended up on the seabed. The German battlecruisers were able to withstand more hits and, as a result, destroy the enemy.
It is noteworthy that not a single superdreadnought died in the grandiose meat grinder of Jutland. Slower, but much better protected battleships, no matter how hard they tried, could not destroy each other. The British "Worspite" received 13 hits from 280-mm shells of the Germans (equivalent to 305 mm), and the total number of holes he had from fragments of nearby explosions and shells of a smaller caliber was 150. Despite the hells of shooting, "Worspite" remained in the ranks, and the losses of its crew amounted to 14 killed, 16 wounded (out of 1100 on board). He will still give the heat to the Germans in the Second World War.
Worspite damage
As for the battle cruiser Hood, there is nothing wrong with its death. Battle cruiser of the early 20s. clashed with a later generation fast battle ship. The 76 mm deck could not withstand the blow of the 380 mm yubersnad.
Death from above
Aircraft bombed battleships a lot and often. And only once did she manage to "stick" a heavy ship and put it to the bottom. This ship was the Italian Roma.
It is much less known that two bombs hit “Roma”. The second blow fell in the area of the engine room, where the ammunition cellars detonated from the start of the fire. Why didn't the “macaroni” put out the fire? There is no consensus. According to one version, the demoralized crew left their combat posts. For the Italians, the war had already ended - the battleship was going to surrender to Malta.
The third little-known fact: on the same day “Fritz” got into the same type “Littorio”. The battleship shuddered and … exploded. He safely reached Malta, from where he went to Egypt.
The third was already mentioned in the article “Worspight”, which was hit by a pair of “Fritzes” (direct hit and explosion of 300 kg of explosives at the side). The explosions did not add to his beauty, “Worspight” lost its course. The only good news was that the irrecoverable losses among the crew were 9 sailors (0.8%). Six months later, the repaired battleship was the first to open fire on the fortifications in Normandy.
Superbomb Fritz X - equivalent to 460mm art. projectile. With a length of over three meters, it had a mass of 1362 kg. The wall thickness in the ogival part is 15 cm of steel. Explosive weight - 300 kg. Thanks to radio correction, "Fritz", falling from a height of 6 km, developed a transonic speed (280 m / s) and was able to get into a moving ship.
During the bombardment of La Spezia, two armor-piercing bombs dropped by the Flying Fortresses hit the LK Vittorio Veneto moored at the wall. According to their characteristics, these “blanks” corresponded to the German “Fritz” (weight one ton, discharge height 4-6 km). The attack had no effect. The battleship was repaired after a month.
In total, for the entire war, the Italian LK "Roma" became the only and, in many ways, accidental victim of bomber aviation. The exception confirmed the general rule: it is almost impossible to destroy a large highly protected ship with an aerial bomb.
"But what about Tirpitz, Marat and Arizona?" - skeptics will indignantly exclaim. And they will be wrong.
All the examples given are so disgusting that recalling them gives the exact opposite result.
"Hyuuga" - a battle cruiser brought to the reserve of the 4th category by the end of the war, received 10+ direct hits and many close explosions during the bombing of the Kure naval base in July 1945. Sank in shallow water from numerous leaks in its hull.
"Ise" July 24, 1945 received five hits. Four days later, during the 9-hour bombardment of Kure, eleven lb 1,000 were hit on the battleship. bombs dropped by multipurpose fighters "Corsair". The ship sank to the bottom in exhaustion.
"Harunu" he suffered the fate of “Hyuga” and “Ise”. Nine hits from aerial bombs.
"Tirpitz"ravaged by underwater mines and dozens of British air raids, it was eventually filled with 5-ton Tallboy bombs. All less exotic means were ineffective against "Tirpitz".
"Arizona" … The horizontal booking of the 1915 dreadnought was not difficult for an 800-kg bomb, converted from a 356 mm armor-piercing projectile. Moreover, “Arizona” became the only one of Pearl Harbor's battleships sunk in this way.
"Marat" … There is not a single parameter by which it can be seriously compared with the battleships of the later period. Breaking through the 30 mm deck - das ist nikht bezonders.
All of them were sunk in the bases. All, except "Tirpitz", were rusty buckets built at the beginning of the century. By the time of their death, Japanese ships were wounded in battles and left hundreds of thousands of fiery miles astern.
And still, an impressive amount of ammunition had to be used to destroy them. Under normal conditions, on the high seas, with the presence of modern air defense, it would be impossible to repeat these results.
The only chance is to crash the hull below the waterline.
Torpedo collapse
During World War II, battleships were hit by torpedoes 24 times (despite the fact that “they did not fight and stayed in the bases throughout the war”).
And only twice in the entire war, a single torpedo was able to cause serious damage. The jammed steering wheel of the “Bismarck” and the bent propeller shafts of the LK “Richelieu”. However, the details of the incident in Dakar remain a mystery. A French battleship and a British aircraft carrier were anchored. In the morning the British raised the squadron and attacked the Richelieu. On the night before the torpedo attack, they scattered 15 depth charges around the battleship, and, probably, the explosion of the torpedo warhead initiated the detonation of the charges lying at the bottom. The effect of the explosion was further enhanced by the shallow depth of the bay.
Only a couple of cases, of which one is clearly inadequate, against the background of dozens of naval battles of the World War. And then the "eksperty" on the example of "Bismarck" will prove the bankruptcy of large warships. Of course, they simply do not know about other cases.
Of the 24 episodes mentioned, 13 ended in shipwreck. Death always came from two reasons. First: the lack of anti-torpedo protection (“Congo”, “Fuso”, “Barham”, “Royal Oak”, “Repals”, “Oklahoma”, “Nevada”, “California”, “V. Virginia”). All these were dreadnoughts of the First World War, the creators of which did not suspect about the rapid evolution of submarines and torpedo bombers.
The reader will probably ask how “Nevada”, “California” and “V. Virginia”that have been refurbished and returned to service? Without going into long details, we note that those victims of Pearl Harbor received serious injuries and lay on the ground (ran aground). The diver sent for examination “V. Virginia”(7 torpedo hits) went through the hole without noticing the battleship's hull. According to legend, the hopeless ship was restored only due to the fact that the former commander of the battleship was among the command of the base.
This is where the lyrical digression ends, and again there are tough statistics.
The second group of battleships died from a completely wild number of torpedoes fired into them. Scharnhorst - 11 hits. "Musashi" - 20. For the sinking of the Japanese giants it was necessary to use entire air armies. According to the testimony of the participants in those events, the position of “Musashi” became hopeless only after the sixth torpedo hit. And that was only because the attacks continued, and the capabilities of its PTZ and counter-flooding system were practically exhausted. Hordes of planes sank Musashi for 9 hours. And he resisted to the last and continued to crawl under his own power. Great ship.
The destruction of the Prince of Wales aircraft (3 torpedoes) stands apart. The weakest battle ship of the late period had clearly insufficient PTZ, for which he paid. To top it all off, the explosion of the second torpedo bent the propeller shaft. Rotating, he “stirred up” the entire stern part, accelerating the flow of water.
At the same time, little-known incidents with Littorio, Vittorio Veneto, North Caroline, Yamato (meeting with the Skate submarine in 1943) demonstrated the obvious. A large and durable ship with a developed PTZ cannot be disabled by hitting one or two torpedoes. The consequence will be only a slight decrease in combat effectiveness, and upon returning to the base - short-term repairs (from several weeks to a couple of months).
Against the background of such statistics, the example of damage to the "Bismarck" looks unconvincing.
Epilogue. The author sincerely hopes that this material was interesting to everyone who is fond of the naval theme. These facts give a fundamentally different shade to the stories about “Bismarck and whatnot” and “the ingloriously lost Yamato”. The main conclusion will be as follows: incredible efforts were required to neutralize large, well-protected ships.
Problems occasionally arose for those whose design did not fully take into account the threats of the new era. Those that were built later turned out to be practically indestructible by conventional means.
Tests of the counter-flooding system of the battleship "Fuso", naval base Kure, April 1941
