Oh, tell me, do you see in the first rays of the sun that in the middle of the battle we walked in the evening lightning. Our blue striped flag with a scattering of stars, red-white fire from the barricades will reappear! Like a thunderous roll that cuts the sky into thousands of mirror fragments. Like a hammer striking a red-hot nail, the American navy is powerful and beautiful. Its annual budget is 155 billion dollars, and the number of large warships of the 1st rank (aircraft carriers, missile destroyers, nuclear submarines) is greater than in all other fleets of the world combined!
Invincible AUG, Aegis Missile Defense Patrol and Multifunctional Amphibious Group. Find the right angles - the two-minute commercial should reflect as much information about the US Navy as possible. The video sequence should include the latest technical innovations - littoral warships, a story about the work of special operations forces and a submarine that emerges in the ice … Do not forget to insert a sentimental fragment about rescuing a black kid in a natural disaster zone. At the end - a few static shots. All with disturbing and exciting music.
Stop! Cut!
But what is left behind the frames of "The World's Best Fleet"?
The American Navy is the funniest navy in the world. The largest and most expensive. But at the same time, it is the most stupid and ineffective (cost / result) among the naval forces of other developed countries. The fact that the Yankees have a rare talent for making terrible, inexplicable from the point of view of logic, miscalculations became clear back in the years of the Second World War. They did not notice the flashes and thunderous rumbles of 203-mm guns from a distance of 20 miles (the nighttime pogrom off Savo Island, better known as the "second Pearl Harbor") - the Japanese went around the island counterclockwise, shooting one by one the sleeping cruisers of the US Navy. Or they allowed the "concrete battleship" Corregidor to surrender to a 10-fold inferior enemy. They let a squadron of Japanese battleships and TKR enter the landing zone in the Philippines - that time, only a miracle saved the Yankees from an imminent disaster. With such fantastic military leadership skills, only innate prudence, advanced scientific innovations and multiple numerical superiority were able to ensure America's victory in the Pacific Ocean.
Norfolk. The world's largest naval base.
17 kilometers of berths lined with ships
During the Cold War, the situation became more complicated - the lack of a clear front line and a rapidly changing environment led to a number of comical and tragic incidents with US Navy ships.
American sailors came under fire from Israeli and Iraqi aviation, their ships were boarded by DPRK special forces, blown up by Iranian mines and pushed out of the territorial waters of the USSR by rough kicks. They were fired upon by their own allies and undermined by Arab ragamuffins in leaky boats with bags of improvised explosives.
It is not a shame to fall in an unequal battle. It is a shame when, after many hours of chase, the North Korean assault group that had landed on board the Pueblo found teletypes in the radio room, continuing to knock out secret radio messages. The Yankees not only did not destroy the secret equipment, but did not even try to turn it off! Not to mention such an obvious decision how to sink your ship in the face of superior enemy forces - the idea of being in the cold January water was alien to the American consciousness. Why risk your own life for some kind of national security? Let the Koreans look at encryption machines - what's the big deal?
USS Pueblo (AGER-2) at the waterfront in Pyongyang. Our days
Here is such a ship the valiant American Moremans "presented" to the enemy!
Upon arrival in North Korean Wonsan, KW-7 encryption machines were immediately dismantled and taken to Moscow. Using the secret legacy of the Pueblo, Soviet cryptographers were able to decipher more than 1 million US Navy messages.
Special thanks go to the aircraft carrier Enterprise - it was located 500 miles to the south and was ordered to immediately raise aircraft and smash all the North Korean pelvis trying to approach the American reconnaissance aircraft. The Yankees had more than an hour left before the Pueblo was boarded - the Enterprise had every chance of saving the US Navy from disgrace. Alas, Commander Kent L. Lee threw up his hands and said that after a difficult transoceanic crossing, half of his aircraft were not capable of combat - and it would take him at least an hour and a half to form a strike group. So do it yourself …
It is not a shame to fall under "friendly fire" - this happens often in the confusion of battle. It's a shame when the Aegis military information super-system, on the development of which billions were spent, classifies the huge slow Airbus as a "fighter" and boldly points missiles at it. 290 passengers on IranAir Flight 655 went to fish feed. After that, the officers of the cruiser "Vincennes" were awarded for "courage and composure displayed in combat conditions."
It is not a shame when the flagship of the mine-sweeping forces in the Persian Gulf - the Tripoli helicopter carrier with a squadron of modern MH-53E helicopter-minesweepers - is blown up by bottom mines. Mines are insidious. It's a shame when the missile cruiser Princeton is blown up by mines and then, for long hours, not a single American ship dared to approach the cruiser dying before our eyes. Only the Canadian frigate Athabascan had the courage and skill, which managed to safely overcome the minefield and deliver an emergency consignment and materials for emergency hull repairs to the Princeton.
Shipyard specialists examine the damaged hull of the Tripoli helicopter carrier
The cruiser "Princeton", cracked in half by an explosion. "Glued" back for $ 100 million
The incidents with the bombing of Tripoli and Princeton had great consequences: the command of the Navy and the ILC immediately abandoned plans to conduct an amphibious operation on the coast of Kuwait.
Don't be ashamed when an ally shoots you in the back. Lies and betrayal are eternal vices that have existed since the creation of the world. But what happened off the coast of Palestine on June 8, 1967, turned into some kind of surreal farce with a crimson tint.
Fierce fighting raged in the Sinai desert, and the USS Liberty, an electronic intelligence ship, quietly patrolled international waters 25 miles northwest of El Arish. From here no shots and screams of the dying could be heard, sailors free from watch enjoyed the Mediterranean sun and made bets: in how many days will the Israeli army break into Cairo? But the Israeli reconnaissance planes are circling over them somehow unnecessarily. It's not good …
- Calm down, Jimmy, they see our flag, white stars and the inscription GTR-5. They know who we are.
At first, the Liberty came under a heavy attack from the Israeli Air Force Mirages. Having shot all the ammunition of the guns and NAR, the fighters disappeared. They were replaced by the Meisters with napalm. Torpedo boats followed. Israeli sailors shot at point-blank range "Liberty" with machine guns and stuck a torpedo into the side of the unfortunate scout. And then, as if nothing had happened, they approached the side of the flaming Liberty and offered their help. It is still unclear whether it was a deliberate attack or a tragic mistake. Israel grudgingly apologized and paid compensation to the families of 34 victims. The Americans pretended that nothing had happened.
34 dead, 173 injured. One of the most devastating attacks on an American ship since the end of WWII
In continuation of the "mine theme" - in April 1988 in the Persian Gulf an American missile frigate USS Samuel B. Roberts was blown up by a mine.
It is not a shame to be blown up on a modern bottom mine. It is a shame to blow up on a contact mine, model 1908. It's not just embarrassing, it's funny. Modern ships must be able to cope with such threats, sonar detects such mines in the water column at a distance of several miles. The main thing is not to sleep at the combat post.
However, it would be unfair to place all the blame on the sonar station operator. On frigates of the "Oliver H. Perry" type, the underkeeping GAS AN / SQS-56 was installed. What this sonar was, says a simple fact - the use of the SQS-56 instead of the "real" SQS-53, which were put on cruisers and destroyers, allowed to save 600 tons of displacement. In addition, the SQS-56 was high-frequency and proved to be of little use for finding sea mines.
Frigate USS Samuel B. Roberts (FFG-58) at full speed!
The fact that the frigates "Oliver H. Perry" are unworkable steel coffins, the American sailors guessed for a long time. A discounted escort ship project built in a series of 50 units. They were supposed to be used to cover transatlantic convoys in the event of the outbreak of a nuclear-free Third World War. Alas, as practice has shown, the hopes of the command of the Navy were in vain. Too modest dimensions for a ship in the ocean zone, a single-shaft design of a power plant, simplified detection means, a single-beam launcher Mk.13 (nicknamed the "one-armed bandit" in the Navy), an open air defense circuit, the absence of anti-submarine rocket torpedoes … Avaricious pays twice - "Perry" turned out to be categorically incapable perform their assigned tasks or simply defend themselves against primitive means of attack.
Mine damage. 4 sailors were shell-shocked. The damage is estimated at $ 89 million.
Damaged Roberts returns home
This was well demonstrated by another incident in the Persian Gulf: in 1987, the frigate USS Stark was shot at by an Iraqi Mirage aircraft. The Yankees tell the sad story of the treacherous attack and resent the insidiousness of Saddam Hussein, who was considered a friendly regime at the time, as opposed to Iranian religious fanatics. At the same time, somehow forgetting that we are talking about the newest warship built in 1984, which came to the Tanker War zone clearly not to admire the sea sunsets.
The Yankees there was a minute from the moment the Mirage sighting radar was detected - and about two more minutes of the missiles' flight time. At that moment, the frigate was in combat readiness number 3 - all the ship's systems were in readiness for battle, the crew was at combat posts. The crew immediately began preparing to repel the attack, tried to use the SBROC jamming system, but did not have time … Both missiles pierced the ship, killing 37 sailors. Only complete calm and the absence of a repetition of enemy attacks made it possible to save the frigate and tow it to the nearest port in Bahrain.
As for the frigate "Samuel B. Roberts" that was blown up by a mine, several more mines were destroyed in the area of its detonation. The marking unambiguously pointed to Iran. At that time, the Yankees did not wipe themselves off and decided to conduct a retaliatory "action of retaliation" - Operation Praying Mantis ("Praying Mantis") became the largest military operation of the US Navy since World War II. For a whole day, the carrier strike group led by the nuclear-powered Enterprise fought bravely with two Iranian frigates with a displacement of 1,500 tons each (60 times less than that of the aircraft carrier Enterprise!), Three boats and two oil platforms.
Not to say that the result was impressive: the Americans managed to sink one missile boat and the frigate "Sahand", having planted three "Harpoon" anti-ship missiles and four 454-kg guided bombs into the unfortunate pelvis. The second frigate could not be sunk: the damaged "Sabalan" crawled to its native shores. In retaliation, Iranian boats fired grenade launchers at the American supply ship Willie Tide, and at the same time a couple of neutral tankers - the British York Marine and Panamanian Scan Bay. US Marines boarded two oil platforms and vandalized them. The cruiser "Wainwright" tried to shoot at the Iranian "Phantom", but could not shoot down the fighter. In the late afternoon, an AH-1 SiCobra helicopter crashed, killing both crew members.
And the mines? The mines remained. According to the US Navy, the Chinese fleet currently has about 80,000 sea mines. Iran has about 2-3 thousand of them. In total, up to a quarter of a million of these deadly traps can be in service with all countries of the world!
In 2012, the US Navy organized the largest exercise in the Persian Gulf. Ships from 34 Allied countries, including a squadron of 8 American minesweepers, learned to look for exposed minefields. 3,000 sailors, specialized radars, sonars, minesweeping helicopters - in 11 days the "best fleet" and its allies were able to find only half of the 29 planned minefields in the clear water. The Americans themselves confirm the following: in the event of the start of real hostilities with a strong enemy, vast areas of the World Ocean may turn out to be impassable for "the best fleet".
The captured "Pueblo", the shot "Stark", the downed civilian airliner, the strange incident with the scout "Liberty", the undermined "Samuel B. Roberts", "Princeton" and "Tripoli" … The Soviet TFR "Selfless" pushed the American cruiser Yorktown out of Soviet territorial waters, knocking the American's left side and the entire stern part along with the Harpoon missile launcher. So much so that the commander of the Yorktown, Philip Duer, was dismissed for the passivity of his actions and the loss of initiative in conditions close to combat.
This is the kind of "dark matter" hiding behind a beautiful video about "the best fleet". Despite all the brilliance and splendor of the polished decks, the Yankees perform very badly in a combat situation.
Some funny technical features of the US Navy and the incredible adventures of American sailors in the new millennium will be the topic for the next story.
