I bring to the attention of our readers a small naval investigation. The question is: Are conventional air bombs capable of causing significant damage to a highly protected battleship-class ship?
What may be unclear here - many will be surprised - aviation has long proved its effectiveness: in the twentieth century, planes sank thousands of ships of various classes, among which were such invulnerable monsters as Roma, Yamato, Musashi, Repals, Prince of Wales ", as well as 5 battleships during the Pearl Harbor pogrom (although the" California "," Nevada "and" West Virginia "were subsequently returned to service, there is every reason to believe that their damage was fatal, the ships sank near the coast).
And here a curious nuance arises - almost all of these battleships were destroyed by torpedo hits (Oklahoma - 5 hits, West Virginia - 7, Yamato - 13 torpedoes). The only exception is the Italian battleship "Roma", which died under exceptional circumstances - it was hit by two heavy guided bombs "Fritz-X", dropped from a great height, they pierced the battleship through and through.
However, this is a fairly logical result - battleships and dreadnoughts always sank only with extensive damage to the underwater part of the hull below the main armor belt. The hit of shells and aerial bombs on the surface of battleships led to various consequences, but almost never ended in the death of ships.
Of course, all of the above facts are true only for highly protected superdreadnoughts - light and heavy cruisers, and even more so destroyers, were destroyed by missiles and aerial bombs, like cans. Aviation pounced on its victims with a fiery tornado and in a matter of minutes let them sink to the bottom. The list of those killed in this way is huge: the cruisers "Konigsberg", "Dorsetshire" and "Cornwell", hundreds of aircraft carriers, destroyers, transport ships, six British ships during the Falklands conflict, Libyan small missile ships and Iranian frigates … But the fact remains: neither one of the large, well-protected battleships could not be sunk by conventional aerial bombs.
This is especially interesting given that for the past 50 years, bombs and anti-ship missiles (whose warheads are no different from air bombs) have been the only means of aviation in the fight against ships. Really, the designers made a deep mistake by canceling the reservation? Indeed, according to dry statistics, the thick armor of battleships can reliably protect against any modern means of attack. Well, let's try to figure it out.
"Marat". Volleys to immortality.
In fact, there is a case of the death of a battleship from a conventional aerial bomb. To do this, you do not need to go far to the Pacific Ocean, the precedent happened much closer - right at the wall of Srednyaya harbor in Kronstadt.
On September 23, 1941, the battleship of the Red Banner Baltic Fleet "Marat" was seriously damaged there - the Ju-87 dive bombers dropped two bombs weighing 500 kg on it (according to other sources - 1000 kg). One of them pierced through 3 armored decks and exploded in the cellar of the main caliber tower, causing the entire ammunition load to detonate. The explosion interrupted the battleship's hull, almost completely tearing off the bow. The bow superstructure, along with all the combat posts, instruments, anti-aircraft artillery, the conning tower and the people who were there, collapsed into the water on the starboard side. The bow chimney fell down there, along with the casings of the armored grates. The explosion killed 326 people, including the commander, commissar and some officers. By the morning of the next day, the battleship had received 10,000 tons of water, most of its rooms below the middle deck were flooded. "Marat" landed on the ground next to the quay wall; about 3 meters of the side remained above the water.
Then there was the heroic salvation of the ship - "Marat" turned into a non-self-propelled artillery battery and soon again opened fire on the enemy from the aft towers. But, the essence is quite obvious: as in the case of the battleships in Pearl Harbor, "Marat" would inevitably die if it received such damage on the high seas.
Of course, the case with "Marat" cannot serve as a real example of the death of a battleship from an aerial bomb. By the time of its launching in 1911, the Marat was perhaps the weakest battleship in the world, and, despite the comprehensive modernization in the 1920s, by the beginning of World War II it was a combat ship with limited capabilities.
The upper armored deck, 37.5 mm thick, did not at all meet the security requirements of those years. On the lower decks, the situation was no better: the thickness of the middle armored deck was 19-25 mm, the lower armored deck was 12 mm (50 mm above the cellars). It is not surprising that German bombs pierced such "armor" as a sheet of foil. For comparison: the armored deck of the battleship "Roma" is 112 mm (!), Which, by the way, did not save it from more powerful aviation ammunition.
And yet, three armor plates 37 mm + 25 mm + 50 mm could not withstand the hit of a conventional aerial bomb dropped from a height of several hundred meters, and this is a reason to think …
Filled up Lyalya
The alarming howl of sirens in the Alten Fjord, thick smoke spreads over the bitter cold water - the British once again got the Tirpitz. Barely recovering from the attack of the mini-submarines, the German super-battleship was hit again, this time from the air.
In the early frosty morning of April 3, 1944, 30 Wildcat fighters swept like a whirlwind over the German base, firing at the battleship and coastal anti-aircraft batteries from heavy machine guns, behind them, from behind the gloomy cliffs of the Alten Fjord, 19 Barracuda carrier-based bombers appeared, dropped on the Tirpitz »Hail of bombs.
The second wave of vehicles appeared over the target an hour later - again 19 "Barracudas" covered three dozen fighters "Corsair" and "Wilkat". During the raid, German anti-aircraft gunners fired very badly - the British lost only two Barracudas and one Corsair. It should be noted that the Barracuda deck bomber, which was outdated by that time, had simply disgusting flight characteristics: the horizontal speed barely exceeded 350 km / h, the rate of climb was only 4 m / s, the ceiling was 5 kilometers.
Operation Wolfram resulted in 15 hits on Tirpitz. British naval pilots used several types of ammunition - mainly 227 kg armor-piercing, fragmentation and even depth charges. But the main element of the entire operation were special 726 kg armor-piercing bombs (the poor characteristics of the Barracuda bomber no longer allowed) - only 10 pieces, of which three hit the target. According to the plan, armor-piercing bombs should have been dropped from a height of 1000 meters, but the pilots overdid it, and, in order to get there for sure, dropped to 400 meters - as a result, the bombs could not pick up the required speed, and nevertheless …
"Tirpitz" was simply disfigured, 122 German sailors were killed, more than 300 were injured. Most of the bombs pierced the 50 mm armor plates of the upper deck like cardboard, destroying all the rooms below it. The main armor deck, 80 mm thick, withstood the blows, but this did little to help the battleship. "Tirpitz" lost all command and rangefinder posts in the bow, searchlight platforms and anti-aircraft guns were destroyed, bulkheads were crumpled and deformed, pipelines were broken, the battleship's superstructures turned into flaming ruins. One of the 726 kg bombs pierced the boule under the armor belt, turning the side inside out in the IX and X watertight compartments. As an indirect damage, seawater began to flow: from the explosions, cemented cracks opened in the underwater part of the hull - the result of a previous mine attack.
In August 1944, British aviation again raided the fascist reptile, this time one of 726 kg of bombs pierced the upper and main armored decks (a total of 130 mm of steel!) meat radio room, just below destroyed the electrical distribution board of the towers of the main caliber, but, unfortunately, did not explode.
In the end, what remained of the once formidable battleship was finally finished off by four-engine Lancaster bombers with monstrous Tallboy bombs. A smooth streamlined ammunition weighing 5454 kg, stuffed with 1724 kg of explosives, pierced through the ship along with the water column under it, and exploded on impact on the bottom. With a terrible hydraulic shock, the Tirpitz broke the bottom. A few more close hits - and the pride of the Kriegsmarine was tipped up keel like a burnt rusty bucket. Of course, the destruction of the battleship "Tallboy" is a very strange combat technique, but long before the use of these giants, a superlinker with a displacement of 53 thousand tons completely lost its combat effectiveness from a dozen conventional aerial bombs.
The assessment of the Tirpitz's combat career is controversial - on the one hand, the battleship by its mere presence in the North terrified the British Admiralty, on the other hand, huge funds were spent on its maintenance and security, and the corps of the formidable battleship itself served as a rusty target for shooting throughout the war. British machine guns - it seems that the British simply mocked him, constantly sending exotic killers to Goliath, who regularly incapacitated him.
Nowadays
What conclusions can be drawn from all these stories? To say that heavy armor does not protect the ship at all would be outright hypocrisy. Most often it protects. But only what is directly under the armor.
All weapons, electronics, equipment and systems located on the upper deck, in the event of an attack by conventional bombs or widespread anti-ship missiles "Harpoon", "Exocet", the Chinese C-802 will turn into burning rubble - the battleship will practically lose its combat effectiveness.
For example, a long-lived battleship of the "Iowa" type. At all times, there was something on its upper, unprotected deck to burn and even explode. In former times, these were dozens of small-caliber artillery installations and 12 light-armored universal-caliber towers.
After modernization in the 80s, the range of combustible materials on the upper deck of the Iowa expanded significantly - as many as 32 Tomahawks in 8 ABL installations (an armored casing protected them only from small-caliber bullets), 16 Harpoon missiles exposed to all winds, 4 with nothing unprotected anti-aircraft gun "Falanx", and, of course, vulnerable radars, navigation and communication systems - without them, a modern ship will lose the lion's share of its capabilities.
The speed of 726 kg of the British armor-piercing bomb hardly exceeded 500 km / h, modern missiles "Harpoon" or "Exocet" fly twice as fast, while it is naive to believe that the same "Harpoon" is made of Chinese plastic, it still has penetrating semi-armor-piercing warhead. An anti-ship missile, like a sea urchin's needle, will pierce deeply into the weakly protected superstructure structures and turn everything there. I didn't even mention the Russian Mosquitoes or the promising Caliber anti-ship missiles attacking the target at three speeds of sound.
Various opuses periodically appear on the Internet on the topic: what if the ancient "Iowa" goes to the modern "Ticonderoga" - who will win? Dear authors forget that the battleship was created directly for sea combat with a surface enemy, and a small missile cruiser was created exclusively for escort tasks.
Already by the 60s of the twentieth century, booking on ships almost completely disappeared. 130 tons of Kevlar protection on the URO destroyer "Arlie Burke" will protect the ship only from small fragments and machine-gun bullets. On the other hand, the Aegis destroyer was not created for sea battles with surface ships (even the Harpoon anti-ship missile ship is missing in the last sub-series), because the main threat hides under water and hangs like a sword of Damocles in the air - and it is against these threats that the Arleigh Burke's weapons are oriented. Despite its modest displacement (from 6 to 10 thousand tons), the Aegis destroyer copes with its tasks. And for strikes against surface targets there is an aircraft carrier, whose aircraft are capable of examining 100 thousand square kilometers of the ocean surface in an hour.
Sometimes the results of the Falklands War are cited as evidence of the failure of modern ships. The British then lost a civilian container ship, two small frigates (full displacement of 3200 tons), two equally tiny destroyers (4500 tons) and an old landing vessel "Sir Gallahed" (5700 tons) with two 40 mm cannons from the Second World War.
War losses are inevitable. But the creation of a ship with heavy armor will dramatically increase its cost, and the construction of a battleship with a total displacement of 50,000 tons was in those years an unrealistic project for Great Britain. It was easier for the British to lose those 6 "pellets" than to mount armor on every Royal Navy ship. In addition, losses could be reduced by installing at least basic Falanx self-defense systems. Alas, British sailors had to fire rifles and pistols at the slow and clumsy Skyhawk attack aircraft of the Argentine Air Force. And the requisitioned container ship did not even have jamming systems. This is such self-defense.
