How much combat damage can Modern Warships take?

How much combat damage can Modern Warships take?

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How much combat damage can Modern Warships take?

#warships #warship #navy

Original content: DVIDS Site Public Domain use:
Video by Alex Kaldeway and Petty Officer 2nd Class Andre Richard and Video by Petty Officer 3rd Class Demitrius Williams

[_Matsimus_]

Sorry about the mic audio guys, its broken and haven't been able to get a new one yet. Sorry about that!! Have a great day!!

[antonleimbach]

I spent 6 years in the USN. So much depends on a ships Damage Control systems and personal. A great book to read about the differences between WWII navies is called “Shattered Sword”. The Royal Navy and the USN both invest heavily in damage control and this pays off when a ship is hit by a missile or torpedo.

[Lonewolfmike]

An interesting little fact about American aircraft carriers during WW2, if they knew planes were coming in to attack them, and they had enough warning, they would empty the fuel lines in the ship for the aircraft and fill them with CO2 to lessen the chance of fire if the ship was hit.

[LDSG_A_Team]

Kinda curious how much it matters in the modern day. Active protection seems like the only option because modern antiship weapons are just so OP.

[pilotactor]

I met 3 of those Argentinian pilots. Gentle, humble and kind. They often returned to do the same run a second time( unheard of) Truly extraordinary pilots.

[joevicmeneses]

A prime example of this was during RIMPAC 2022; when the USS Buchanan a "Charles F. Adams" class DDG was selected as a target for the exercise, absorbing 3 Hellfire, 3 Harpoon, a 2, 400 lb, laser guided bomb but stubbornly still afloat. But a Navy EOD team was sent to scuttle her with a 200 lb explosive charge place in what was left of the bow & sank her. That ship was built around 1959, serve with distinction from 1962-1991.

[chi-weishen]

1:50 The ship's name was Yamato. Yamamoto Isoroku was an admiral.

[thomasborgsmidt]

Matsimus makes another point: Damage ABOVE the waterline is generally managable; but UNDER the waterline - that is where the expensive stuff is. I can tell, that the Huitfeldt class is getting the antisubmarine ability upgraded.
One should also remember, that ships (frigates and above) have a helicopter on board with the primary task of killing submarines - their torpedoes are generally small; but submarines take very little hull damage as they have no reserve boyancy.
In a surface ship the pumping capacity is huge and can keep up with rather large water ingress at bay.

The ferry Danmark once hit the rocks in Rødby (not that captains fault - he maneuvered to avoid a collision because his collegue had propelled up). Tore a 80 meter gash in the outer hull of a 110 meter ferry.
The chief immediately cut the engines -which saved the engines from running in sand - had to be cleaned up no way, but the engines were back in service later on.
The other thing chief did was to revers the trim pumps to bilge pumps.
Skipper sat the ship aground.
Chief and Skipper got a bottle of whisky from the management.
Passengers could walk off after on a juryrigged gangway. Cars took a bit longer.

But people don't realise how resilient ships are.

[apathtrampledbydeer]

No one here going to mention the sinking of the SS Deathstar with a single unguided proton torpedo?
Just also remembered when the Norvegian warship hit a commercial vessel and the cheeky crew of the commercial vessel added a killmark afterwards.

[BHuang]

My take is a ship is as good as the crew. Even though a heavily armed and armoured warship should be durable enough to withstand some punishment on paper, it won't matter if the crew isn't well-versed in damage control. The sinking of the Moskva is a great example of a modern warship sinking because of several factors including a lack of damage control.

[diligentone-six]

Even with the most Advanced Weapons and Defensive systems, there will always be this one lucky Missile that delivers a massive blow.

[stormiewutzke]

I built boats and ships. We build them to take a beating. Steel is sort of a special material because it responds to heat. Fire is going to change all of the structure characteristics. In a building we have fire proofing but you can't put much in a ship.

I'm a welding inspector and get deeper than most into things. I can help with some basic questions if you want. I check my replies.

[blipp]

On the two occasions I was on exercises which included serials sinking old ships, the ships were prepped for the purpose.
This involved removal of all contaminants and flamables (Marine pollution regs).
Welding up of the hatches to increase watertight integrity. Adding tons of buoyant material to aid the vessel in staying afloat.
Remember the purpose of the exercise is test crews and weapon systems, not sink a ship.
Typically the last engagement would involve a sub launched torpedo, a ship killer. The back up if the ship was still afloat being EOD.
Can't guarantee this was a the case for sinkex serial in Rimpac 22, but would be surprised if not.

[AdurianJ]

A Perry class did take two Exocets and survive.
USS Stark

Another took a naval mine hit.
USS Samuel B Roberts

[JohnDoe-pviu]

My Father was a 24 year Chief Petty Officer in the US Navy. He took every crazy assignment that he could get for the additional pay(s). This was 1950-1974, before Regan got the Military Services some proper pay scales and with a family of 5, it took the added 'Sea Pay', 'Hazardous Duty pay' etc., to make a decent living.
I was born at GTMO Naval Base, Cuba in the 1960s. After I came along, my parents decided that they wanted to live stateside and buy a house before my father retired. A position was going to be open (at the old Charleston, SC Navy base) for a CPO to teach firefighting and the Instructor would draw hazardous duty pay for it. My father was a trained shipboard firefighter but had to serve for 3 months on the USS John F Kennedy, before he qualified for the teaching position. After the USS Forestall was heavily damaged from a huge fire, the Navy made carrier damage control service experience mandatory before you could be a firefighting instructor. Dad did the short tour on JFK and got the job. (It's funny the number of old Sailors I've talked to who remember that Chief who sometimes brought his kid to the base, when they recertified on Shipboard firefighting in Charleston).
These ships being sunk are a great thing. Many people say that they hate to see a historic ship get destroyed like that but those ships are being sunk to protect serviceman. They are providing the information needed to keep building better (harder to sink) ships and making Sailors as safe as possible.
Great Video about a very misunderstood topic. Ya'll Take Care and be safe, John

[panpiper]

My thoughts on armor for warships: You want enough surface armor on the exterior of the ship to break up an impactor and force a detonation. You then want a compartment behind that armor that does not house a mission critical component. Then interior of that compartment you want enough armor to resist the blast effect of whatever is happening inside that exterior compartment. A similar approach should be taken with armor versus torpedoes, though there while huge damage probably should be nonetheless expected, the most critical thing to assure is that the blast not break the spine of the ship.

[RT-mmrq]

The SINKEX using the USS America ( CV 66 ), the largest target of its type are still classified. Rumor has it that it absorbed so much ordanance that they just scuttled it because of cost.

As a side note I was in Virginia when the Marshal Ustinov, same class as the recently sunk Moskva, came to visit the Norfolk naval base. Although I did not have the opportunity to tour the ship those who did noticed fewer water tight doors and less fire fighting equipment when compared to US Navy ships.

[Theo-evyu]

I think something that bears mentioning is how the super carrier, USS America (CV 66), was used as the target for four weeks of live fire testing and remained afloat after the testing. The ship was sunk after she was deliberately scuttled instead of by the effects of any ordnance used in the testing. For the super carriers at least, they have so much mass and so many water tight compartments that the amount of ordnance needed to actually sink such ships would be quite enormous.

[lightspeedvictory]

The USS Stark incident is of great example of this. She took two Exocet missiles in the Persian Gulf in the 1980’s (yes one of them failed to detonate, but it still left a trail of burning rocket fuel) but she was saved, repaired and remained operational until her decommissioning in 1999. Then there was the USS Cole which took that suicide bomb in 2000. Had a massive hole blown into her side but again, she was saved, repaired, and remains in operation to this day.

One thing about most modern warships is that they contain most of their weapons in silos/magazines located below decks, which in the worst case scenario can be flooded with sea water. As for the Zumwalt class, IIRC their missile silos are designed to, among other things, act as a sort of explosive reactive armor. And one thing that the U.S. Navy is working on is a form of electronic armor, which uses magnetic fields to rip apart shaped charge warheads to help boost ship survivability.

As for submarine launched torpedoes, they don’t physically strike the target anymore like they did back during the World Wars. Instead, they detonate underneath the hull of the target, creating a sort of bubble which obviously can’t support the ship, resulting in the keel or spine of the ship breaking, effectively cutting the target in two so to speak. This concept was recently expanded upon by the U.S. military with its QUICKSINK program. They took a JDAM smart bomb, modified it with a hardened nose mounted optical seeker and programmed it to punch through the deck of a target vessel and detonate right above the keel, resulting in a similar effect to sun launched torpedoes. In the live fire exercise where they tested it, they sank an oil tanker with a single bomb

You say that about the Battleship movie but think about it from the perspective of a battleship museum. I’m a tour guide aboard the USS Wisconsin (BB-64) and that movie opened up a can of worms regarding myths and misconceptions about battleships

[Re.Configured]

I saw a video of the new Quicksink JDAM being tested on a cargo ship. It basically programs the JDAM to land in the water and detonate under the ship... the entire cargo ship was already under the water by the time the displaced water from the explosion settled. It was quite impressive to see a ship sink in mere seconds.