The history of atomic killers of the Los Angeles type began in 1906, when a family of emigrants from the Russian Empire - Abraham, Rachel and their six-year-old son Haim - entered the hall of the Immigration Service of Ellis Island (New Jersey). Malets was not a miss - when he grew up, he entered the Naval Academy and became a four-star admiral of the US Navy. In total, Hyman Rikover served in the navy for 63 years and would have served more if he had not been caught taking a bribe of 67 thousand dollars (Rikover himself completely denied it, stating that this "nonsense" did not affect his decisions in any way).
In 1979, after a major accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant, Hyman Rikover was called as an expert to Congress to testify. The question sounded prosaic: “One hundred nuclear submarines of the US Navy are moving in the depths of the oceans - and not a single accident with the reactor core in 20 years. And here a new nuclear power plant standing on the shore collapsed. Maybe Admiral Rickover knows some magic word?
The aged admiral's answer was simple: there are no secrets, you just need to work with people. Personally communicate with each specialist, immediately remove fools from work with the reactor and expel from the fleet. All high ranks who, for some reason, interfere with training personnel in accordance with these principles and sabotage the implementation of my instructions, declare a merciless war and also expel them from the fleet. Ruthlessly "gnaw" contractors and engineers. Safety and reliability are the main areas of work, otherwise even the most powerful and modern submarines will be drowned in packs in peacetime.
Admiral Rickover's principles (safety and reliability above all) formed the basis of Project Los Angeles, the largest series in the history of the nuclear submarine fleet, consisting of 62 multipurpose nuclear submarines. The Los Angeles (or Elk - the nickname for boats in the Soviet fleet) were designed to fight enemy surface ships and submarines, and provide cover for carrier groupings and strategic missile submarine deployment areas. Covert mining, reconnaissance, special operations.
If we take as a basis only tabular characteristics: “speed”, “immersion depth”, “number of torpedo tubes”, then against the background of domestic “Typhoons”, “Anteyevs” and “Shchuk”, “Los Angeles” looks like a mediocre trough. A single-body steel coffin, divided into three compartments - any hole would be fatal for him. For comparison, the sturdy hull of the Russian multipurpose nuclear submarine pr. 971 "Shchuka-B" is divided into six sealed compartments. And the giant Project 941 Akula missile carrier has 19 of them!
A total of four torpedo tubes located at an angle to the center plane of the hull. As a result, the "Elk" cannot shoot at full speed, otherwise the torpedo will simply be broken by the oncoming stream of water. For comparison, the "Shchuka-B" has 8 bow torpedo tubes and is capable of using its weapons in the entire range of operating depths and speeds.
The working depth of Los Angeles is only 250 meters. A quarter of a kilometer - is it really not enough? For comparison, the working depth of the "Shchuka-B" is 500 meters, the maximum depth is 600!
Boat speed. Surprisingly, here the American is not so bad - in the submerged position "Los" is capable of accelerating to 35 knots. The result is more than decent, only six knots less than that of the incredible Soviet Lyra (Project 705). And this is without the use of titanium vessels and terrible reactors with metal coolants!
On the other hand, a high maximum speed has never been the most important parameter of a submarine - already at 25 knots of acoustics, boats cease to hear anything due to the noise of the incoming water and the submarine becomes "deaf", and at 30 knots the boat rumbles so that it heard at the other end of the ocean. High speed is a useful but not very important quality.
The main weapon of any submarine is stealth. This parameter contains the whole raison d'être of the submarine fleet. Stealth is primarily determined by the submarine's own noise level. The self-noise level of the Los Angeles-class nuclear submarine did not just meet international standards. The Los Angeles-class submarine itself set world standards.
There were several reasons for the exceptional low noise level of the Losy:
- single-body design. The area of the wetted surface decreased, and, as a consequence, the noise from friction against the water when the boat was moving.
- quality of manufacture of screws. By the way, the manufacturing quality of the propellers of the third-generation Soviet nuclear submarines also increased (and their noise level decreased) after the detective story with the purchase of high-precision metal-cutting machines from Toshiba. Having learned about the secret deal between the USSR and Japan, America threw such a scandal that poor Toshiba almost lost access to the American market. Late! The Shchuki-B with new propellers has already entered the vastness of the World Ocean.
- some specific points, such as the rational placement of equipment inside the boat, depreciation of turbines and power equipment. The loops of the reactor have a high degree of natural circulation of the coolant - this made it possible to abandon the use of high-capacity pumps, and, consequently, to reduce the noise level of Los Angeles.
It is not enough for a submarine to be fast and stealthy - in order to successfully complete tasks, it is necessary to have a concrete idea of the environment, learn how to navigate in the water column, find and identify surface and underwater targets. For a long time, the only means of external detection were a periscope and a sonar post with an analyzer in the form of an acoustic sailor's ear. Well, also a gyrocompass showing where the North is under this damn water.
Things are much more interesting for Los Angeles. American engineers played all-in - all equipment, including torpedo tubes, were dismantled from the bow of the boat. As a result, the entire nose of the hull is occupied by a spherical antenna of the AN / BQS-13 sonar station with a diameter of 4.6 meters. Also, the submarine's sonar complex includes a conformal side-scan antenna, consisting of 102 hydrophones, an active high-frequency sonar for detecting natural obstacles (underwater rocks, ice fields on the water surface, mines, etc.), as well as two towed passive antennas of length 790 and 930 meters (taking into account the length of the cable).
Other means of collecting information include: sound speed measurement equipment at various depths (an essential tool for accurately determining the distance to the target), AN / BPS-15 radar and AN / WLR-9 electronic reconnaissance system (for work on the surface), periscope general view (type 8) and attack periscope (type 15).
However, no cool sensors and sonars helped the San Francisco nuclear submarine - on January 8, 2005, a boat sailing at 30 knots (≈55 km / h) crashed into an underwater rock. One sailor was killed, 23 more were injured, and the chic antenna in the bow was smashed to smithereens.
The weakness of the Los Angeles torpedo armament is to some extent compensated for by a wide range of ammunition - a total of 26 Mk.48 remote-controlled torpedoes (caliber 533 mm, weight ≈ 1600 kg), SUB-Harpoon anti-ship missiles, SUBROC anti-submarine torpedo missiles, cruise missiles Tomahawk and Captor smart mines.
To increase combat effectiveness, in the bow of each Los Angeles, starting from the 32nd boat, they began to install 12 more vertical launch silos for storing and launching Tomahawks. In addition, some of the submarines are equipped with a Dry Deck Shelter container for storing combat swimmers' equipment.
The modernization was carried out not for show, but based on real combat experience - the Los Angeles are regularly involved in striking coastal targets. "Elks" in blood to the very horns - in the lists of destroyed targets Iraq, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Libya …
The last 23 boats were built according to the redesigned "Superior Los Angeles". Submarines of this type were specially adapted for operations in high latitudes under the ice dome of the Arctic. The conning rudders were dismantled from the boats, replacing them with retractable rudders in the bow. The screw was enclosed in a profiled annular nozzle, which further reduced the noise level. The electronic "stuffing" of the boat has undergone partial modernization.
The last boat in the Los Angeles series, called the Cheyenne, was built in 1996. At the time when the last boats of the series were completed, the first 17 units, having served the due date, were already being scrapped. The Elks still form the backbone of the US submarine fleet, with 42 submarines of this type still in service in 2013.
Returning to our initial conversation - what did the Americans do after all - a worthless tin "tub" with understated characteristics or a highly effective submarine combat complex?
Purely from the point of view of reliability, Los Angeles has set a still unbeaten record - for 37 years of active operation on 62 boats of this type, not a single serious accident with damage to the reactor core was recorded. Hyman Rickover's traditions are still alive today.
With regard to combat characteristics, the creators of "Elks" can be a little praised. The Americans managed to build a generally successful ship with an emphasis on the most important characteristics (stealth and detection means). The boat was undoubtedly the best in the world in 1976, but by the mid-1980s, with the appearance of the first Project 971 Shchuka-B multipurpose nuclear submarines in the USSR Navy, the American submarine fleet was again in a “catching up” position. Realizing some inferiority of "Elk" in front of "Pike-B", in the United States began the development of the "SeaWolf" project - a formidable submarine at a price of $ 3 billion dollars apiece (in total, they mastered the construction of three SeaWolves).
In general, the conversation about boats such as Los Angeles is not so much a conversation about technology as a conversation about the crews of these submarines. Man is the measure of everything. It is thanks to the preparation and careful maintenance of the equipment that the American sailors managed not to lose a single boat of this type for 37 years.
