The nuclear tests at Bikini Atoll have clearly demonstrated the importance of the fleet in modern nuclear war. A huge squadron of 95 ships was completely destroyed by two explosions of plutonium bombs, similar to the ammunition dropped on Nagasaki. Despite the "sensational" statements of reporters that many ships, especially highly protected battleships and cruisers, remained afloat and kept quite presentable appearance from a distance, the terrible conclusion was extremely obvious for the sailors: the ships were lost!
The hot flash of the Able explosion caused large fires, and the monstrous column of water from the explosion of the Baker knocked over and smeared the battleship Arkansas along the bottom of the lagoon. A boiling tsunami swept through the anchorage and threw all the light ships ashore, filling their remains with radioactive sand. The shock wave crushed the superstructures of the battleships, smashed all the instruments and mechanisms inside. Strong shocks broke the tightness of the hulls, and streams of deadly radiation killed all laboratory animals under the armored decks.
Without communication and navigation systems, with broken sights and disfigured combat posts on the upper deck, deformed guns and a dead crew, the most powerful and protected battleships turned into floating charred coffins.
If so, military experts reasoned, then why all the armored decks and armored belts? Why take such unprecedented measures to ensure the security of modern warships? The fleet will inevitably die in a nuclear conflict.
The last time serious armor was seen on Soviet cruisers of Project 68-bis (built between 1948 and 1959), about the same time, light British cruisers of the Minotaur-class were completed, although their booking was largely conditional. On American ships, heavy booking disappeared even earlier - in 1949 the last heavy artillery cruisers of the Des Moines entered the Navy.
As an exception, modern strike aircraft carriers could be called - their colossal displacement allows the installation of such "excesses" as armored decks and vertical armor protection. In any case, the 45 mm flight deck of the Kitty Hawk aircraft carrier cannot be compared to the 127 mm armored deck of the Japanese battleship Nagato or its 300 mm thick main belt!
According to unconfirmed reports, local booking is present on some heavy nuclear cruisers of Project 1144 (code "Orlan") - figures up to 100 mm in the area of the reactor compartment are named. In any case, such information cannot be publicly available, all our reflections are based only on estimates and assumptions.
Domestic shipbuilders proceeded in their calculations not only from the conditions of a world nuclear war. In 1952, shocking results were obtained from tests of the KS-1 Kometa anti-ship missile - a two-ton blank at transonic speed pierced the insides of the Krasny Kavkaz cruiser, and the subsequent explosion of the warhead literally tore the ship in half.
We will never know the exact place of impact of the "Kometa" - there is still debate about whether the main 100-mm armor belt of the "Krasny Kavkaz" was pierced or the missile passed below. There are testimonies of witnesses that this was far from the first test - before its death, the old cruiser served as a target for "Comets" with an inert warhead. "Comets" pierced the cruiser through and through, while traces of their stabilizers remained on the internal bulkheads!
An accurate assessment of this episode is hampered by a mass of errors: the cruiser Krasny Kavkaz was small (displacement 9 thousand tons) and worn out (launched in 1916), and the Kometa was large and heavy. In addition, the ship was stationary, and its technical condition after previous missile firing remains unknown.
Well, regardless of whether thick armor was pierced, anti-ship missiles showed their high combat capabilities - this became an important argument for rejecting heavy armor. But the "Krasny Kavkaz" was shot in vain - the former flagship of the Black Sea Fleet, who had 64 military campaigns on his account, had more rights to get up on the eternal joke than the famous submarine K-21.
Universal killer
The lack of serious constructive protection spurred the designers to create an effective anti-ship missile, combining modest dimensions and sufficient capabilities to defeat any modern naval targets. It was obvious that there was no reservation on the ships, and in the near future there would not appear, therefore, there was no need for increased armor penetration of the missile warheads.
Why do we need armor-piercing warheads, high-speed detachable warheads and other tricks, if the thickness of the deck flooring, the main transverse and longitudinal bulkheads of the large anti-submarine ships of Project 61 was only 4 mm. Moreover, it was by no means steel, but an aluminum-magnesium alloy! Things were not in the best way abroad: the British destroyer Sheffield burned up from an unexploded missile, the overloaded aluminum hull of the cruiser Ticonderoga cracked without any enemy intervention.
In view of all of the above facts, light materials, up to fiberglass and plastic, were widely used in the design of small-sized anti-ship missiles. The "semi-armor-piercing" warhead was carried out with a minimum margin of safety and, in some cases, was equipped with a delayed fuse. Armor penetration of the French subsonic ASM "Exocet" is estimated from various sources from 40 to 90 mm of steel armor - such a wide range is explained by the lack of reliable information on its use against highly protected targets.
The development of microelectronics played into the hands of missile developers - the mass of missile homing heads decreased, and previously impossible flight modes at ultra-low altitude were opened. This significantly increased the survivability of anti-ship missiles and increased their combat capabilities, without any significant interference in the design of the missile, its power plant and aerodynamics.
Unlike the Soviet monsters - the supersonic anti-ship Mosquitoes, Granites and Basalts, the West relied on standardization, i.e. an increase in the number of anti-ship missiles and their carriers. “Let the missiles be subsonic, but they fly at the enemy in batches from all sides” - this is probably what the logic of the creators of “Harpoons” and “Exosets” looked like.
The same applies to the distance: the best seeker is able to view a target at a distance of no more than 50 km, this is the limit for modern technologies (in this case, we do not take into account the capabilities of the onboard electronics of the giant 7-ton Granit anti-ship missiles, these are weapons of a completely different level, prices and opportunities).
With the detection range of the enemy, the situation is even more interesting: in the absence of any external target designation means, an ordinary destroyer may not notice the enemy squadron, which is 20 miles away. Radar at such a distance becomes useless - enemy ships are located beyond the radio horizon.
Indicative is the real sea battle between the cruiser of the US Navy "Yorktown" and the Libyan MRK, which took place in 1986. A small rocket ship approached Yorktown in a silent shadow - alas, the Libyans had been issued by their own radar: Yorktown's sensitive radio equipment detected the operation of the enemy radar and the Harpoons flew in the direction of the threat. The battle went on at a distance of only a couple of tens of miles.
Similar events were repeated off the coast of Abkhazia in 2008 - a missile battle between the Mirage MRK and Georgian boats was also going on at a short distance - about 20 km.
Small-sized anti-ship missiles were originally designed for a firing range of no more than one hundred kilometers (much depends on the carrier - if a missile is thrown from a great height, it will fly away in 200-300 km). All this had a major impact on the size of the missiles and, ultimately, on their cost and flexibility of use. The rocket is just a consumable, not an expensive "toy" that has been rusting on deck for years in anticipation of a world war.
The creation of small anti-ship missiles, among which the most famous are the French Exocet, the American Harpoon missile and the Russian X-35 Uranium complex, the designers were led by a fortunate combination of circumstances - first of all, the absence of heavy armor on modern ships.
What would happen if the "dreadnoughts" continued to surf the seas? It seems to me that the answer is simple: designers of rocket weapons in any case would find an adequate solution, of course, all this will lead to an increase in the weight and size of the weapon and its carriers, i.e. ultimately, to the next round of the eternal "shell-armor" race.
Harpoon
Among all the small-sized anti-ship missiles, the American Harpoon anti-ship missile has gained particular popularity. There is nothing in the technical characteristics of this system to attract attention: *
Conventional subsonic anti-ship missiles of aircraft, ship and ground, as well as designed for launch from submarines … stop! this already sounds unusual - the system has 4 different carriers and can be launched from any position: from the surface, from sky-high heights and even from under water.
The list of carriers for the Harpoon anti-ship missile system sounds like an anecdote, first of all, they are struck by their incredible variety and the imagination of designers who tried to hang the rocket wherever possible and impossible:
First of all, the aircraft version of the "Harpoon" AGM-84. At various times, the carriers of anti-ship missiles were:
- aircraft of the basic naval aviation P-3 "Orion" and P-8 "Poseidon", - tactical bombers FB-111, - carrier-based anti-submarine aircraft S-3 "Viking"
- deck attack aircraft A-6 "Intruder" and A-7 "Corsair", - carrier-based fighter-bomber F / A-18 "Hornet", - and even B-52 strategic bombers.
No less common are the shipborne RGM-84 "Harpoon". Over the past 40 years, almost all ships of the naval forces of NATO countries have been carriers of "Harpoons" - the designers took into account almost all the nuances and wishes of sailors, which made it possible to equip even outdated destroyers and frigates of the early 60s - the "firstborns" of the missile era with Harpoons.
The basic launcher is the Mk.141 - a light aluminum rack with fiberglass transport and launch containers (2 or 4 TPK) mounted on it at an angle of 35 °. The missiles stored in the TPK do not require special maintenance and are ready to launch. The resource of each TPK is designed for 15 launches.
The second most popular option was the Mk.13 launcher - the Harpoons were stored in the One-Armed Bandit's under-deck loading drum, along with anti-aircraft missiles.
The third option is the Mk.11 Tartar launcher, developed back in the 50s. The engineers were able to reconcile the work of two different systems, and the Harpoons got into the rusty charging drums on all the outdated destroyers.
The fourth option - the sailors had a desire to equip the old anti-submarine frigates of the Knox class with "Harpoons". The decision was not long in coming - a pair of anti-ship missiles were hidden in the cells of the ASROC anti-submarine system launcher.
The fifth option is not quite marine. 4 transport and launch containers with "Harpoons" were installed on a four-axle chassis. The result is a coastal anti-ship missile system.
The most interesting is the underwater variant of the UGM-84 Sub-Harpoon. The complex is designed to launch submarines from torpedo tubes running at a depth of up to 60 m. For such an exotic application, the developers had to create a new sealed transport and launch container made of aluminum and fiberglass, equipped with additional stabilizers to stabilize the missile's movement in the underwater sector.
What conclusion follows from this instructive story? Forty years ago, US specialists managed to create a unified and effective naval weapons system. The Americans took advantage of a fortunate coincidence, as a result, a light, small-sized rocket with all the ensuing advantages (and disadvantages). Could this experience be applicable in its pure form for the Soviet Navy? Unlikely. The Soviet Union had a completely different doctrine of the use of the fleet. But, for sure, so much interesting unification experience can be useful when creating future weapons.
