The high-precision missile "Exocet" flies 300 meters per second, having a mass at the start of 600 kg, of which 165 are in the warhead.
The projectile speed of a 15-inch cannon at a distance of 9000 meters reached 570 m / s, and the mass was exactly equal to its mass at the time of the shot. 879 kilograms.
The bullet is stupid, but the armor-piercing shell is even worse. 97% of its mass was a solid steel ingot. What a threat the 22 kg of shellite, hidden in the bottom of this outlandish ammunition, posed did not matter. The main cause of the destruction was the kinetic energy of the "flop" flying at two speeds of sound.
140 million joules of speed and fire!
In terms of firing accuracy at given distances, naval artillery was hardly inferior to high-precision missiles of our time. Specifically for this gun (British cannon BL 15 "/ 42 Mark I), a precedent is known when the battleship" Worspeight "hit the Italian" Giulio Cesare "from a distance of 24 kilometers (" shot at Calabria ").
The last of the British battleships, Vanguard, inherited these wonderful weapons from the unfinished battlecruisers of the Glories class: the twin turrets lay idle for a quarter of a century until they were used in the construction of a new super battleship.
Another forty years will pass, and the British will bite their elbows, regretting the monster sent for scrapping. In 1982, "Vanguard" could practically single-handedly "put things in order" in the distant Falkland Islands. If there were a battleship there, the Brits would not have had to drive strategic bombers from Ascension Island and fire 8,000 shells along the coast from their pitiful 114 mm "bunches", which were the artillery weapons of destroyers and frigates of that era.
The Vanguard's mighty guns would have razed all Argentine defenses to the ground, sowing uncontrollable panic among the soldiers. The Gurkha battalion and the Scottish riflemen had only to land and spend the night on the cold island in order to accept the surrender of the Argentine garrison in the morning.
For such purposes, the British have developed a whole line of high-explosive 381 mm shells containing from 59 to 101 kg of explosives (maybe more than in the warhead of the Exocet missile). It is worth noting that, unlike modern ships, whose strike weapons are several dozen missiles, the battleship's ammunition consisted of 100 rounds for each of the eight guns!
The Vanguard itself and its crew did not risk anything. The ancient battleship turned out to be perfectly adapted to the realities of that war. Super missiles "Exocet", which hit the ships in the most radio-contrasting place (hull, just above the waterline), would have run into the most protected part of the battleship. The outer 35-centimeter armor belt, against which plastic warheads would crack like empty nuts. Still would! The Vanguard was designed to withstand monstrous armor-piercing ingots like the ones that flew out of its barrels.
Tinted armored all around
Yes, everything could be different … Moreover, the maintenance and conservation of the ancient battleship for two decades would have cost a penny, in comparison with the destroyer Sheffield, which burned down from an unexploded missile.
I would not like to turn an article about such an interesting ship into an alternative farce, so let's turn to the main topic of the question. To what extent did the last of the battleships correspond to the title of “crown of evolution” for ships of this class?
Technique for victories
"Vanguard" captivates with its simplicity and seriousness of intentions, as under the conditions of wartime. Without overly sophisticated movements and meaningless technical records. Where it was possible to save money, they saved. Moreover, all the simplifications - forced or conceived on purpose, went only to the benefit of the battleship.
However, the construction time of the battleship played a significant role in this. "Vanguard" was commissioned only in 1946. Its design embodied the entire combat experience of both world wars, coupled with the latest technological advances (automation, radar, etc.).
They laugh at him that he has towers from battlecruisers of the First World War. But if you figure out what a few millimeters and percentages mean, expressing mass and firing range, when dozens of interchangeable barrels for this caliber are stored in warehouses. You can shoot until it turns blue, there will be no problems with spare parts. The creators of Vanguard received these guns practically for free, from another era. Despite the fact that progress in the field of naval artillery did not advance much in the two decades between the world wars, and the British 381 mm cannon itself was a wonderful weapon for all time
The old towers have been modernized after all. The 229 mm frontal part was replaced by a new 343 mm plate. The roof was also reinforced, where the thickness of the armor increased from 114 to 152 mm. There is no need to even hope that some pathetic 500-pound bomb will be able to overcome such an obstacle. And even if it is 1000 pounds …
It is better to pay attention to such little-known facts, thanks to which Vanguard could be considered an ideal battleship in terms of price / performance / quality ratio.
For example, the British abandoned the requirement to ensure shooting in the nose at a zero elevation angle of the main caliber barrels. What seemed important completely lost its meaning by the mid-40s. And the battleship only benefited.
The significant rise of the hull at the stem made Vanguard the king of stormy latitudes. British lane at 30 knots in any weather, but it is even more surprising that its bow and fire control devices remained "dry". The first to talk about this feature were the Americans, who noted the better seaworthiness of the Vanguard in comparison with the Iowa during their joint maneuvers in the Atlantic.
Launching "Vanguard" on the water
And here is another little-known fact: "Vanguard" was the only battleship of its kind, adapted to operate in any climatic conditions - from the tropics to the polar seas. All of its crew quarters and combat posts received steam heating, along with standard air conditioning systems. The most demanding for temperature conditions were compartments with high-precision equipment installed in them (electronics, analog computers).
3000 tons. It was this displacement reserve that was spent on anti-splinter armor! Along with its predecessors (LK type "King George V") "Vanguard" did not have a conning tower. Instead of an "officer's hideout" with half-meter steel walls, all the armor was evenly spent on numerous anti-fragmentation bulkheads (25 … 50 mm), which protected all combat posts in the superstructure.
Smooth, straight, as if carved out of granite, the wall forming the front part of the Vanguard superstructure was … a metal wall, 7.5 centimeters thick (like the width of the head of a railroad rail!).
What seemed dubious from the point of view of classic naval duels (a single “stray” shell could “decapitate” a ship, killing all senior officers), was a brilliant find in the era of aviation and air attack. Even if you “cover” the battleship with a hail of 500-lb. bombs, then most of the combat posts in the superstructure will remain in their own interests. As well as the two hundred sailors who were at their posts.
Other surprising facts about the world's last battleship?
Vanguard had 22 radars. At least that many radar stations should have been installed according to the project.
It is a pleasure to list them.
Two radars "Type 274" fire control main battery (bow and stern).
Four American command and control centers of the "Mark-37" air defense system, placed according to the "rhombus" scheme (with two-coordinate British "Type 275" radars, which determined the range and elevation angle of the target).
Each of the eleven anti-aircraft installations "Bofors" had to have its own fire control post, equipped with radar "Type 262". Naturally, this was not done in peacetime. The only one who received its own control system on a gyro-stabilized platform with a radar located on it, working in tandem with an analog computer, was the STAAG anti-aircraft gun on the roof of the second main battery tower.
Further. General detection radar "Type 960" (at the top of the mainmast). Radar for tracking the horizon "Type 277" (on the spreader of the foremast). Additional radar for target designation "Type 293" (on the foremast), as well as a pair of navigation radars "Type 268" and "Type 930".
Of course, all this was imperfect: the signals of the radars clashed with each other, clogging the frequencies and bouncing off the superstructures. Nevertheless, the achieved level of technology is impressive …
With the passage of time, the battleship's radio-electronic equipment has been continuously developing and evolving: new transponders of "friend or foe" systems, radiation detectors, antennas of communication systems and jamming have appeared.
Anti-aircraft armament "Vanguard". How “aviation defeated battleships”, tell someone else. Anti-aircraft battery "Vanguard" consisted of 10 six-barreled installations "Bofors" (power drive, cage power), one double-barreled anti-aircraft gun STAAG (barrels from "Bofors", own control system) and 11 single-barreled machine guns "Bofors" Mk. VII.
A total of 73 barrels of 40 mm caliber. With the most advanced fire control systems at that time.
The British prudently refused to use small-caliber "Erlikons".
The author deliberately did not mention the "long-range air defense" of the battleship, which consisted of 16 twin universal 133 mm guns. It is worth admitting that the British sailors were left without long-range air defense, tk. this system turned out to be an extremely unfortunate choice.
However, any universal weapons (even those that fired projectiles with radar fuses) were of little value in an era when aircraft speeds were already very close to the speed of sound. But the American 127 mm "station wagons" had at least a relatively high rate of fire (12-15 rounds / min.), While British guns with separate loading in practice fired only 7-8 rounds per minute.
A consoling factor was only the enormous power of 133 mm guns, whose shells in mass were close to shells of six-inch cannons (36, 5 kg versus 50), which ensured sufficient efficiency in naval combat (after all, "Vanguard", like all battleships of the Anglo-Saxons, did not have an average caliber), and also had a greater reach in height. In addition, such a weapon could be very useful in shelling the coast.
Anti-torpedo protection. Another interesting point.
The British calmly assessed the threat and came to obvious conclusions. The anti-torpedo protection of the King George V-class battleships turned out to be a complete trash. Moreover, any, even the most advanced PTZ, does not guarantee protection from torpedoes. Underwater explosions, like hammer blows, crush the hull of the ship, causing extensive flooding and damage to mechanisms from strong shocks and vibrations.
“Vanguard” did not become a record holder in the field of PTZ. his defense, as a whole, repeated the scheme used on battleships of the "King George V" class. The width of the PTZ reached 4.75 m, decreasing in the area of the main turrets aft to the "ridiculous" 2, 6 … 3 m. The only thing that could save the British sailors was that all the longitudinal bulkheads that were part of the PTZ system were extended up to the middle deck. This was to increase the expansion zone of the gases, reducing the destructive effect of the explosion.
But this is not the main thing. “Vanguard” is a champion in systems of ensuring combat stability and struggle for survivability.
A developed pumping and counter-flooding system that absorbed all the experience of the war years, six independent power and damage control posts, four 480 kW turbogenerators and four 450 kW diesel generators, located in eight compartments dispersed along the entire length of the ship. For comparison, the American “Iowa” had only two emergency diesel generators of 250 kW each (for the sake of justice, the “American women” had two echelons of power plants and eight main turbine generators).
Further: alternation of boiler and turbine compartments in a “checkerboard pattern”, separation of lines of internal and external shafts from 10, 2 to 15, 7 meters, remote hydraulic control of steam pipeline valves, ensuring the operation of turbines even in the event of complete (!) Flooding of the turbine compartments …
They won't sink this battleship
- from the movie "Sea Battle"
Epilogue
It would be extremely inappropriate to make a direct comparison of Vanguard with Tirpitz or Littorio. Wrong level of knowledge and technology. It is almost five years older than the Yamato and 50 meters longer than the American South Dakota.
If he found himself in the situation in which the heroes of previous years died (the sinking of the Bismarck or the heroic death of the Yamato), he would have scattered his opponents like puppies and left with a 30-knot passage into safe waters.
Along with the Iowa, the British Vanguard is the recognized crown of evolution for the entire specified class of ships. But, unlike the high-speed battleships of the US Navy, bursting with American vanity and prosperity, this ship turned out to be a ferocious fighter, whose design is fully adequate to the tasks facing it.
"Vengrad" is being completed afloat
The helicopter is on board! (1947)
