Volumes and masses
Let's start with the fact that we recall the previously mentioned statement that modern destroyers and cruisers are the descendants of the artillery destroyers of the Second World War, and not battleships. And they never had anti-cannon armor. Moreover, never in the history of the fleet have there been ships with advanced anti-cannon armor and a displacement of less than 5,000 tons. For example, the famous leader "Tashkent" with a total displacement of 4175 tons and a length of 133 meters (what is not a modern frigate?) Had only local anti-fragmentation armor with a thickness of 8 mm.
The first missile cruiser of the USSR Navy was originally supposed to become a destroyer, and even the project number 58 had from the "destroyer" row. The same applies to the first BOD of the Soviet fleet - Project 61. From these two ships went all the other BOD and KR, up to the very last - type 1164. Naturally, they did not carry any armor and it was not planned.
However, despite the bad "mine-bearing" heredity, no one has yet decided to revive the booking in serious volumes. Only local protection of some systems is applied, nothing more.
The first major constraint is the increase in space that needs to be booked if this important science is to be revived. It is not at all masses and loads that are the bottleneck of modern ships - according to these items, the reserves are significant. Modern ships need large volumes to accommodate weapons and equipment. And these volumes in comparison with the armored ships of the Second World War have grown significantly. And, despite the qualitative improvement of missile technology from primitive samples of the 50s to the most modern, the volumes allocated for missile weapons are not decreasing. Any attempt to stretch the armor over these volumes leads to such a thinning of the armor that it turns into foil.
The growth in volumes after WWII was rapid. To demonstrate this phenomenon, we will cite the fundamental work on the Soviet Navy "Soviet Navy 1945-1991", V. P. Kuzin and V. I. Nikolsky, p. 447: “… the appearance of rocket weapons and radio electronic means did not have a fundamental impact on the design problems of such ships as AVK, DK, TSC, MPK, TKA and a number of others. At the same time, the appearance of multipurpose ships of the KR, EM and SKR classes began to change rapidly under their influence. Equipping them with rocket weapons and electronic means required a new approach to the issues of their general location. On these ships, while maintaining the relative mass of ammunition at the same level, the volume of ammunition storage has increased by 2.5-3 times compared to ships built in the 50s. So, for example, the specific volume of the cellars of 130-mm artillery ammunition was only 5.5 m3 / t, and the cellars of anti-aircraft missiles were already more than 15 m3 / t."
The table clearly shows how the volume of the item "payload" is constantly growing, from project to project, from 14% of the hull volume for the destroyer pr. 30-bis, to 32.4% for the cruiser of project 1134. At the same time, there is a slight decrease in the volume of the power plant …
Further V. P. Kuzin and V. I. Nikolsky write: “In the same period, the space required for the deployment of control posts for weapons and armament complexes increased. As a result, the relative volume of rooms occupied by the payload increased by 1.5-2 times and amounted to 30-40% of the total volume of the hull with the superstructure…. With a significant increase in the specific volume of the payload, there was a sharp increase in the volume of the ship's hull, and, consequently, its relative weight also increased from 42-43% to 52-57%. In the end, all this led to the fact that the height of the side and the size of the superstructures began to increase rapidly. At the same time, the missile cellars, due to the large dimensions of the missiles, not only did not fit below the waterline level, which was previously an indispensable condition for the location of the artillery cellars, but in some cases went to the upper deck. This led to the fact that more than 40% of the ship's length was occupied by explosive rooms."
From the above quote, it becomes clear why a very noticeable increase in the payload volume does not lead to a decrease in the proportion of the body volume. It would seem that superstructures should grow. But the hulls themselves also became more voluminous than those of artillery ships, which led to the preservation of the relative share of the hull volume at the same level.
The author also carried out his own calculations for a number of ships.
The table contains ships of different eras and classes. The results obtained are all the more revealing.
The increase in the volume of weapons on modern missile ships is clearly noticeable - more than 2 times. If the "Algeria" has 2645 m3 of armament, then on absolutely the same size "Slava" it is already twice as large - 5,740 m3. Despite the fact that the weight of the weapons fell by more than 2 times. The ratio of the mass of weapons to its volume is strikingly close for all ships "before the rocket" era - even the 68 bis have this figure of 493.1 kg / m3, almost exactly like the Algeria with its 490.1 kg / m3.
The decrease in the volume allocated for the power plant is almost negligible. But on modern ships, completely new types of equipment appeared, which simply were not on the ships of the WWII era. These are hydroacoustics, radio electronics, electronic warfare equipment. For example, on the Slava-type RRC, the single room of the towed GAS occupies 300 m3 or 10 meters of the hull length. Along with the advent of new energy-intensive equipment, there is also an increase in the number and capacity of electric generators, which also require ever larger volumes. At the TKR "Algeri" the total power of the generators was 1400 kW, at the LKR "Brooklyn" it was already 2200 kW, and at the relatively modern BOD 1134B it reaches 5600 kW.
Missile cruiser "Admiral Golovko" disarmed at the Mine Wall, 2002. The niches of the cellars of the P-35 anti-ship missiles, volumetric and located in the superstructure, are clearly visible. In the future, such bulky ammunition premises on missile ships were not made, however, the volume of missile weapons did not decrease to the volume of artillery installations. Photo:
The obvious underload of modern ships is also visible. With the same length and width, they have a noticeably lower displacement and draft. Designers have clearly not used up the load reserves in full. It is quite possible to load the Slava RRC with an additional 1,500 tons, if this does not negatively affect the characteristics of its stability. This is quite possible, because many ships are upgraded during operation and receive additional load. For example, the displacement of the "Brooklyn" -type LKR varied in a very wide range during service, while maintaining the original dimensions of the hull.
As can be seen from the table, during the operation of the Brooklyn-type paintwork systems, from 500 to almost 1000 tons of additional load were loaded, which, of course, affected both draft and stability. Metacentric height "Brooklyn" is 1.5 times less than that of the modern BOD pr. 1134B, which clearly indicates the reserves of the latter to increase the "upper weight". During the development of the project, the Arlie Burke-class destroyers received an additional load of 1200 tons, sinking 0.3 meters and becoming only 2 meters long.
Cold War battleships
The assertion that the development of armored ships was cut short with the passage into the past of the WWII era is not entirely true. There is a class of armored combat ships, the construction of which was carried out in the 70s and later. We are talking about armored boats and river artillery ships. These small ships are a clear example of how a relatively modern ship, even without acquiring qualitatively new weapons, lost the protective qualities of armor. And it is on the example of such boats that the influence of objective factors can be seen.
The strongest BKA in the Soviet Navy was the boat of project 191. This was the apogee of the development of the armored boat. He absorbed all the experience of this class of ships during the Second World War. And the experience of this kind in the Soviet fleet was unique and great. The construction of these ships began in 1947. Then a big break followed, and finally, in 1967, a qualitatively new descendant appeared - the Project 1204 armored boat.
The boat of project 1204, with practically unchanged dimensions, became noticeably more massive, changed the 85 mm gun of the T-34-85 tank to a very weak gun of the PT-76 tank, and became twice as bad in armor thickness. And if we also consider the area of the hull, covered with armor, it will become obvious that the project 1204 has become not twice, but several times weaker than the boat of the project 191.
Why did this happen? Are the designers really mediocre or pests? (by the way, project 191 and 1204 have the same chief designer). Or has the project 1204 boat acquired a voluminous but light rocket weapon, hydroacoustics or radio electronics?
We read A. V. Platonov "Soviet monitors, gunboats and armored boats": "But you have to pay for everything, the same here: the relatively powerful weapons and protection were sacrificed, first of all, habitability. …. So where do the claims to harsh living conditions come from, which were expressed by almost the very first when discussing the concept of a new artillery boat? And from the border guards. It was they who, having received the boats of the project 191M and using them as patrol and sentinels, fully experienced all the delights of living in tiny rooms, where it was far from everywhere it was possible to simply stand up at full height."
Why are the boats mentioned here? Exclusively in order to show that the rejection of armor or its degradation may be associated with the emergence of new objective reasons, and not the reason for the stupidity or mediocrity of naval strategists or designers. Armored boats are so small warships that just the requirement to improve habitability (even without the introduction of bulky missile systems and equipment) immediately led to a drop in the level of security.
Further more. The USSR built a series of IACs of project 1208, which could not be compared with pre-war monitors in terms of the degree of protection and power of weapons. In the same place, at A. V. Platonov said in this regard: “… All of this is partly understandable: practically all modern military shipbuilding is faced with the fact that the many times increased required volumes for the placement of modern weapons and technical equipment literally“squeezed”their combat posts out of the corps. This led to the widespread appearance of elongated forecastles and bulky multi-tiered superstructures, occupying almost the entire area of the upper deck, and we had to put up with this."
Note that we are talking about "squeezing" up combat posts, and not about the creation of some new areas. This suggests that in the era of armor, and today - the designers of the ships have no unclaimed reserves. All resources are used to the maximum, and it will not be possible to delete certain volumes just like that. In a modern ship, there are no "unnecessary" volumes that can be easily sacrificed for the sake of improving other characteristics. Therefore, any "cutting" of superstructures or reduction of the size of the hull will certainly affect something important.
