On April 7, 1945, a funeral procession consisting of a battleship, a light cruiser and eight destroyers was moving in the East China Sea. The Japanese led to the slaughter of their pride - a ship that bore the name of the nation. The inimitable Yamato. The largest non-aerial combat ship in human history.
70 thousand tons of armor steel, mechanisms and weapons. The main caliber of the superlinkor is 460 mm. The thickness of the armor belt is 410 mm. 75% of the deck area was covered with armor plates 200 mm thick; the remaining quarter was 227 mm thick. The magnificent PTZ and the huge dimensions of the ship itself guaranteed the preservation of combat effectiveness even after 6 torpedo hits into the underwater part of the hull. "Yamato" seemed absolutely invulnerable and unsinkable warrior, capable of crushing any enemy and go as far as there was enough fuel and ammunition on board.
But that time, everything turned out differently: two hundred American planes tore apart the superlinker in two hours. Having received about 10 hits from aircraft torpedoes and 13 bombs (usually this phrase is spoken quickly, without any attention to torpedoes), "Yamato" fell on its side and disappeared in a fiery whirlwind. The explosion of the ammunition load of the Japanese battleship became one of the most powerful explosions of the pre-nuclear era (estimated yield 0.5 kt). From the battleship's crew, 3,000 people died. The Americans lost 10 aircraft and 12 pilots in that battle.
This is usually followed by grimaces and thoughtful conclusions about how "old piston airplanes" destroyed the pride of the Japanese Empire. If the slow-moving Avengers with primitive bombs and torpedoes were able to achieve such colossal success, what are the capabilities of modern supersonic aviation equipped with high-precision weapons?
Metaphysical experiment. Weapon selection
On April 7, 2014, a funeral procession consisting of a battleship, a light cruiser and eight destroyers was moving in the East China Sea. The Japanese led to the slaughter of their pride - a ship that bore the name of the nation. Far ahead, behind the storm front, was the enemy - the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Nimitz with two squadrons of Super Hornet fighter-bombers and a squadron of the latest F-35Cs. Captain Jeff Ruth received an unambiguous order: to sink the Japanese battleship in the shortest time with the least losses. And "Nimitz" boldly moved towards its victim …
The deck pilots greeted with delight the news of the forthcoming beating of an unarmed Japanese ship. But first, it was necessary to make a choice - what ammunition to hang under the wings of the Super Hornets to solve such a simple and obvious task. Indeed, what could be easier than sinking an old battleship? Their grandfathers did it in two hours, which means they can do it even faster.
- Johnny, what do we have?
- Harpoon anti-ship missiles!
- Useless. Plastic anti-ship missiles cannot penetrate a 40-centimeter armored side.
- HARM anti-radar missiles!
- Not that. See more.
- Maybe let's try Mavrik?
- Warhead 126 pounds … Are you laughing?
- There are armor-piercing modifications with a heavy 300-pound warhead.
- This is all nonsense. Johnny, look for normal bombs.
- Cassette?
- No!!!
Shelving - £ 1,000 unguided bombs Mk. 83
- Found! "Payway" with laser guidance.
- Draw out the heavier ones by £ 2,000.
- Sir, we have no such bombs. Deck pilots are careful not to use ammunition weighing more than 1000 pounds, otherwise stabilization problems may arise during takeoff from a catapult. And if the pilots fail to find the target (which happens very often, especially when working in the "air watch" format), expensive bombs will have to be dropped into the sea - landing with such suspensions is prohibited.
- Okay, let's have some.
- 500-pound "Payway-2".
- Listen, Johnny, why don't we have torpedoes?
A dumb scene.
… Supersonic "Super Hornets" hollowed out the battleship for 10 hours, until they destroyed the entire superstructure and the upper deck. However, damage above the waterline did not pose a mortal threat to the huge, well-protected ship. "Yamato" was still kept on an even keel, kept its course and controllability. The turrets of the main caliber functioned, reliably wrapped in 650 mm armor plates.
Convinced of the futility of bombing strikes, the Yankees changed their tactics. Now the planes tried to drop bombs into the water, as close as possible to the side of the battleship, gradually "opening" the side with close explosions along the waterline. The tactics bore fruit - a roll gradually appeared, the battleship slowed down - obviously, extensive flooding of the compartments began. However, the Japanese continuously straightened the roll by counter-flooding the compartments on the opposite side.
This game promised to drag on for a long time. Having pretty much depleted its ammunition, the deck wing returned to the ship. The "Strike Needles" from Okinawa were called in to help, armed with special 5000-lb. concrete-piercing bombs GBU-28. The body of these bombs is made from the barrels of the decommissioned 203 mm M110 howitzers, filled from the inside with TNT. Dropped from a height of 8000 m, such a blank is capable of piercing six meters of concrete floors.
From the very first call, the Strike Needle operator managed to achieve a direct hit. The battleship shuddered from the impact of a 2-ton bomb: GBU-28 pierced the main armored deck and rushed down, crushing the lower decks, until it detonated in the ammunition cellar. In the next instant, a burial pillar of fire shot up at the spot where the Yamato had been.
From funny to serious
Yes, it would look something like the sinking of a battleship by modern aviation. The only reliable way is to use special bombs of extra large caliber (the so-called "bunker destroyers"). At the same time, the F-15E heavy fighter-bomber remains the only carrier capable of lifting GBU-28 ammunition. Conventional "light" fighters are not suitable for carrying such "toys".
To achieve the desired effect, "bunker-basters" must be dropped from a height of several thousand meters, which makes the bomber an ideal target for enemy anti-aircraft systems. The use of GBU-28 is possible only after the complete suppression of the air defense system.
In the example considered above, modern fighter-bombers attacked a defenseless ship of the Second World War, the Yamato anti-aircraft guns could not pose a threat to aircraft rushing at high altitude. But if the Yamato is equipped with modern weapons, incl. SAM with the "Aegis" system (the possibility of such metamorphoses was proved in practice during the modernization of American battleships of the "Iowa" type), it would turn into an unsinkable fortress.
Strike Needles and Super Hornets would not have dared to rise above the radio horizon. First, they needed to suppress the battleship's air defenses with volleys of anti-ship missiles and anti-radar missiles. The fuss with the sinking of the Yamato would have dragged on for a whole day.
TBF Avenger, 1942
F / A-18E Super Hornet, 2000
So why can't modern aviation repeat the triumph of half a century ago? Why did the "low-speed piston aircraft" cut the superlinker "to look like a nut" in less than three hours, while the supersonic jet aircraft require many times more effort and time?
The answer is simple - "low-speed piston aircraft" had one important advantage. They could use torpedo weapons!
The harsh truth is that the Yamato was not sunk by bombers. Simple bombs could not inflict fatal damage on the battleship. The main contribution to the sinking of the super battleship was made by torpedo aircraft. More than 10 powerful blows below the waterline with a capacity of 270 kg of torpex each caused catastrophic flooding and predetermined the imminent death of the ship.
The torpedo has always been a terrible weapon. An underwater explosion in its destructive power is several times superior to a surface explosion (with a similar explosive charge). After all, water is an incompressible medium. The shock wave and the resulting explosion products do not dissipate in space, but with their power hit the ship, crushing its hull and leaving gaping holes with an area of 50 square meters or more. meters!
It was found that through a hole with an area of 1 sq. m at a depth of 6 m below the waterline, 11 cubic meters of water flows into the hull every second. This is critical damage: if no action is taken, the ship will die within minutes.
Modern "intelligent" guidance systems allow even more sophisticated attack algorithms to be implemented. Instead of a blunt blow to the side of the warhead, it is blown up during the passage of the torpedo under the bottom of the ship. As a result, the explosion interrupts the keel and breaks the ship, like a match, in half!
So why are there no anti-ship torpedoes in the arsenal of modern aviation?
And it won't!
There is only one reason - a sharp increase in air defense systems, which makes it impossible to deliver aircraft torpedoes to the target.
The torpedo is a powerful but very specific weapon. The first problem is relative slowness. The speed of conventional torpedoes does not exceed 40-50 knots *. Therefore, they must be delivered as close to the target as possible so that the torpedo has a chance to detect and overtake the enemy ship. As a rule, the effective launch range of modern torpedoes does not exceed 10 miles. Approaching such a distance to a ship equipped with the S-300F or Aegis anti-aircraft system is a mortal risk for the carrier aircraft. On the verge of suicide.
* In order to avoid various insinuations around the legendary rocket torpedo "Shkval" (speed - 200 knots), it is worth considering that it was launched from a submarine with the utmost accuracy: an extra 1 ° trim caused the inertial control system of the missile to fail and the attack was disrupted. Dumping the Shkval from the plane is out of the question. In addition, the high-speed rocket torpedo did not have homing - a miss of a hundred meters was compensated for by the power of the nuclear warhead. This monster was created in case of a general nuclear "apocalypse" and has nothing to do with our further conversation about ships and aircraft torpedoes.
By the beginning of the XXI century, aircraft torpedo weapons survived only in the form of small-sized anti-submarine torpedoes. A submarine, unlike a surface ship, does not have air defense and cannot provide decent resistance to a torpedo aircraft. The photo shows the launch of a 324 mm Mk.50 torpedo from the Poseidon anti-submarine aircraft
The second problem of an aviation torpedo is the need to switch from air to water, whose densities differ by a factor of 800. Colliding with water at high speed is equivalent to hitting concrete. In order to avoid the destruction of the torpedo, it should be launched according to a special scheme so that at the moment of impact on the water its speed does not exceed 100 m / s. And the closer the speed gets to the specified limit value, the more stringent the requirements for the torpedo drop trajectory become. The drop height, carrier speed, dive angle, the design of the torpedo itself - all this should ensure entry into the water at a certain angle.
How difficult this problem is, the Argentines were able to convince themselves who tried to use the IA-58 Pukara turboprop attack aircraft as a torpedo bomber (Falklands War, 1982). The warehouses had some stock of old American Mk.13 torpedoes, and it was decided to try to use this chance to attack British ships. According to the results of numerous experiments, it was found that the torpedo must be thrown at a speed of no more than 200 knots (360 km / h) from a height of no more than 15 meters. The angle of entry of the torpedo into the water should be 20 °. The slightest deviation from the indicated values made the work in vain - the wreckage of the torpedo ricocheted from the water or immediately sank to the bottom.
It is not hard to imagine what an airplane will turn into if it dares to fly up to a modern ship in compliance with all the above requirements. It will be just a holiday for the S-300, Daggers, Stenders, Aster-15/30 and other similar systems!
There is another way to avoid many of the difficulties in the transition from air to aquatic environment. We are talking about high-altitude bombing with a brake parachute. In this case, the speed of the carrier and the height of the drop are not strictly limited - in any case, the torpedo is neatly landed on the parachute. The only condition: to deploy the parachute, a height reserve of several hundred meters is required. As a result, the "anti-aircraft gunner's day" will repeat - the plane will be shot down several times before it approaches the target.
And the torpedo slowly descending from the heavens will be riddled with Daggers, Goalkeepers, RIM-116, Daggers, ESSM, Bushmasters, Osa-M, AK-630, etc. etc.
The PAT-52 jet torpedo was designed to equip the Tu-14 and Il-28.
Nowadays, the use of such weapons is excluded.
Attempts to use other methods of braking instead of a parachute, which make it possible to quickly extinguish the speed and quickly burrow into the salutary waves, are obviously futile. The reactive brake stage (booster) will not completely solve the problem of the carrier's vulnerability. Secondly, motor braking is a very energy-intensive method. The system will turn out to be so cumbersome and complex that it will make it impossible to use it with conventional fighter-bombers.
Aircraft torpedoes are a thing of the past. Modern aviation will never repeat the feats of the past, when "clumsy piston aircraft" sank huge ships in a few hours.
Even in the days of primitive anti-aircraft guns and "Erlikons" with manual guidance, the life of torpedo pilots was short
