Are the US Navy Carrier Fleets Obsolete?

Even without them, wrecking the electronics and sighting systems above the armor with conventional means is still going to leave the battleship totally blind.

 

I did read it. The Iowa’s are Cold War era battleships. They were extensively modified during the Cold War.

 

I like how you had to put the caveat on there of the detonation being ten miles away. Not intellectually dishonest or anything.

 

They added things, sure. Missiles, RADAR, and other systems.

But none of which made any changes in how the ships operate!

Look at your modern car, and consider the changes since 1920.

Sure, you have power steering. Does that mean if the power steering pump goes out, you can not steer your car? If your cigarette lighter and stereo go out, can you still drive your car?

Those are additions, not critical areas of the ship that are required to function. They just make her more effective.

And I love how you keep simply spinning over and over in place, asking the same question all over again and ignoring any information given to you.

Oh, and all of those sprayers would still work. Once again, super-simple technology. What, do you think those are some kind of super-special sprayers that would collapse if a "nuclear shockwave" hit them?

Sprayers, nozzles hooked up to pipes, connected to a pump. Technology so simple even the ancient Romans had it.

You really do not get military equipment to much, do you?

And BTW, military electronics are shielded, they have been for decades. That is why they would work after a nuclear war, where as your car may not. Essentially all critical military electronics are built inside of microwave ovens.

 

All it takes for those sprayers to not function is for the nozzles or pipes furnishing them with water to be bent out of shape.

Shielded electronics don’t matter much if the antennas and wiring connecting them to the interiors of the ship are wrecked.

 

USS Ronald Reagan conducting a real nuclear wash down after being exposed from the Fukushima nuclear contamination.




Chi-Coms

Sailors wearing Mission-Oriented Protective Posture (MOPP) gear conduct chemical decontamination wash down aboard China's amphibious dock landing ship Jinggangshan on April 20, 2017. The landing ship of the South China Sea Fleet under the PLA Navy conducted nuclear-biological-chemical (NBC) protection drill on Thursday.

 

Radiation of about 1% the strength of that which would be given off from the radioactive water of a nearby nuclear detonation.

You might get the ship cleaned, but then you’ll still have to pull it out of combat as every sailor involved in the clean up starts ******** their liquified guts out.

 

Then you might as well say that all modern warships are hopelessly vulnerable because key systems can be knocked out by a saboteur with a hammer.

 

Kinetic Bombardment would obsolete the carriers. But Kinetic Bombardment 'doesnt exist.'

Theres no stopping a tungsten or depleted uranium telephone pole loosed at high orbit coming with the full force of gravity and no effective terminal velocity. Given sufficiently accurate targetting and guiding mechanisms (which I dont doubt exist) a carrier would have no defense against it.

 

That is going to so with any successful attack.

The point here is that the US is far advanced in naval defenses.

Too much silly "what if" is bouncing around in this thread.

 

There was nothing "electronic" in the critical systems. It all predated modern electronics.

And come on now, nozzles or pipes bent out of shape? Worse than a ship would get going through a Cat 5 hurricane?

I suggest that you go and watch some actual footage of the Castle Able and Castle Bravo tests.

Here is one, a Japanese battleship, the HIJMS Nagato. She survived multiple attacks during WWII, including a bombing run that placed multiple bombs right on her deck at Leyte Gulf. She was still heavily damaged in 1946 with a 7 degree list and 2 broken propeller shafts, keel damage, and sprung seams when she pulled into port at Bikini Atoll under her own power.

Then after being tied up, she was 1.5 km from the blast of Test Able, and received only superficial damage.

For Test Baker, she was 850 meters away from ground zero. Once again, she rode through the tsunami and pressure waves with only minor damage. And this is a ship that long predates even the Iowa class, being launched in 1917.



Yes, that is the HIJMS Nagato, after not only surviving damage in WWII, but being 1,500 and 850 meters away from the detonation of 2 atomic bombs.

Do I really need to bring up more shots? The footage and aftermath of the damage (and sometimes lack of) to these ships has been studied for decades. Especially by the people that design ships today.

 

And was so irradiated, any crew not under the armor belts would be dead immediately.

 

Kinda like saying battleships must still be relevant because 16 inch guns are still an imposing weapon

 

No, they would not. Wow, you really are just making all of this up on the fly, right?

Once again, research would have saved you from making such a wrong and idiotic statement. Here, let me quote something for you that I have known for decades from the Castle Able test:

There you go. Proof that you are wrong (this was actually covered in the famous documentary "Trinity and Beyond"). Small animals like this are much more sensitive to the effects of radiation than humans are. Yet even so, only 15% were killed by the radiation. And the majority of these ships were less than 1.5 kilometers from the actual blast itself.

And yes, much the crew would likely have eventually died from the initial radiation exposure. But that would have been days or weeks (even months) later, not "immediately".

 

mushroom and tecoyah rule this OP.

 

When the USS Reagan conducted a real nuclear wash down there was one fatality...one sailor came down with cancer and died a year later.

Maybe he didn't report to the decontamination stations that are located throughout the ship ?

Any squids on the PF who knows how many decontamination stations are on a Nimitz class carrier ?

 

Normally when someone dies from the results of an event a year in the past their death is NOT considered attributable to that event.

This would be especially true of cancer which often has multiple contributing factors including genetics.

 

Some of us simply rely on facts, and not spreading uninformed nonsense that has no connection to reality.

 

The sprinkler system will stand to a shockwave much better than the engine or generator or many internal systems.
Radiation effects are deadly to a ship that lost power and immobilized (no sprinkler).
Danger to any salvage teams that are trying to save a strangled ship
In case of an explosion in shallow waters, the nuke will lift considerable amounts of earth and dirt. It is very likely this dirt cannot be cleaned by salvage crews even in port (I believe so happened at Bikini to some ships)
But altogether the immediate danger is around 3km radius and around 6 minutes.
But within 1km you are dead anyway. Within 1 - 1.5km you are in trouble. Outside of 1.5km the sprinkle system and hand cleaning should be adequate.
By adequate I mean that the ship will remain operational. Bikini test showed that radiation killed animals in the hull, while some survived in cages on the deck. It is not all that simple and we really do not know why. But 90% crew should survive for another week, probably be fine. Though it is not possible to determine if they will be able to work effectively, we do not have sufficient data.
Please note, this is applicable to 100kT Nuke, Bikini data is going to be absolutely different.

The BattleStar Galactika is a wonderful film and all that, but. But it is not depicting how a Klingon ship (with computerized aiming and radar), are tearing apart the old timer (Galactica with mechanical calculators) from a safe distance where the hit probabilities are 99% for one side, and 3% for another.
Ship to ship gunnery of WW1 and WW2 is art. Intuition. Luck. Experience and training, training, training. Modern radar/computer assisted gunnery is playstation shooting. Mark one is placed above mark two, and fire, afterwards it is statistics and probabilities. The difference between a skilled gunner and modern gunner is like 20 years of training and experience

Or any other rules of engagement. You have mentioned the Caribbean crisis yourself.

No, no, no, these calculations are ridiculous. This gives the ship an acceleration of 2G, this alone, will kill half the crew and send the turrets flying. And we are talking about a side effect. This means that the total energy of the salvo is 100 times larger, we are talking about energies applicable to launch the Battleship into Earth orbit .

Absolutely true! We need to understand that the opponent will be using anti-nuke order at all times. Distances within the order will slightly exceed the effective kill radius of the opponents nuke. Only one or two ships will be killed by a torpedo nuke attack. All other ships will be damaged, somehow, but in majority of cases, they will be damaged “lightly”.

But there are drawbacks:
1. The wider the order is, the more problems with supporting each other from a sea skimmer attack.
2. Sub will be launching all its nukes.

 

The USN will receive only minor damage from enemy nuclear forces, where as the navies and the ports of either or both Russia and China will cease to exist for the next 100 to 200 years.

 

In 1969 while attending NGF school we went out to San Clemente Island to spot some real naval gunfire. We spent one day on a Gearing class destroyer to get a better idea what the sailors were doing during a NGF fire support mission. The battleship USS New Jersey was also on the gun line and from about 1/4 of a mile away did get to experience what happens when an Iowa class BB fires its 16" guns.

It was an "E" ticket one will never forget. From over a 1/4 mile away off the bow of the New Jersey you had to cover your ears and you felt the over pressure.

Firing just one 16" gun will produce 16.7 PSI against the bulkheads of the battleship. Not going to make an accurate calculation but probably close to a 450 MPH blast. (?)

Now picture a nine 16" gun salvo being fired. Add six 5"/28 guns firing a six gun salvo at the same time.

Note:
(An Iowa class BB can withstand twice the over pressure than a Nimitz class carrier or Arliegh Burke.)

FYI:
When you look at a photo or a video of an Iowa class BB firing a nine 16" gun salvo, because of the over pressure all the guns aren't firing exactly at the same time. It's all happening in a fraction of a second but not at the same time.

Modifying the firing sequence of the three guns in each turret required the development of an ORDALT. ORDALT 15034 added agastat time delay relays and attendant rewiring of the firing circuits for the two outbound guns, while also removing the firing delay coil from the firing circuit for the center gun. The ORDALT was installed on each Iowa's battleships.

The thick armor plating and the wooden teak decks on a battleship and gun cruisers help to absorb the over pressure (blast) from the guns.

So what would happen if you put a 8" naval gun on a destroyer ?

The U.S. Navy tried it back during the 1970's.

8"/55 (20.3 cm) Mark 71 on USS Hull DD-945.

Full article here -> http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNUS_8-55_mk71.php

Promising but... Urban myth so they say, it wasn't the 8" gun causing the cracks.

 

Wow, then somebody had better tell the amusement park community. Rides over 2 G are quite common.

The Tower of Terror boosts it's passengers to 6.3 G in fact.

Care to try again?

God, I am so sick of people just making stuff up and expecting everybody to believe it unchecked.

 

The energy that is transferred into shockwave that is sent downwards (that is supposed to displace 100000t of water) is peanuts compared to overall energy of the shot.

40% of energy is turned into kinetic energy of the projectile, up to 20% is heat, flash is very small, like 1%. Bang (the shockwave) is the waste of energy, the lesser the Bang, the more effective is the gun. Lets say that Iowa Bang is 40%.
Majority of the Bang shockwave is sent forward, (10% of the shot is kinetic energy of the gas), the barrel channels it forward, the expanding gasses have the inertia and speed. Basically, your hand gun is loudest from the front.
Lets say (I am guessing), that forward cone – 50%, Left, Right, Up, Down, - 40%, Backwards – 10% or so. So its 10% downwards, which is 4% of the total shot. Or something alike.

If we consider that 4% of the shot displaces 100000t of water, than can you possibly imagine the energy of the recoil?

Recoil will be 40% of the projectile + 10-20% from the Bang. That is like 15 times the energy of the Bang that goes down. The recoil affects the barrel, goes to the shock absorbers, and through the turret sinks into turret ring, which connects the turret and the deck structure, which finally dissipates the shot recoil into the ship deck and below deck structures. The bottle neck is the turret ring. The turret is placed freely on to the ring and held by gravity only (so it will detach itself if the ship capsizes). Now at certain point in time, according to the article, you apply 100000/3*15 = 500000t to a single turret. That’s 10 Iowa weights. The turret is going to fly!

So the overpressure might not be the main issue, why you should not install high energy guns on a week platform. Same applies to aluminum, it is harder than steel but more fragile. It lacks the flexibility of steel, otherwise all tanks would be built out of aluminum already (like M113)

Its not the fall that kills you, it’s the ground below.

 

Uh-huh.

At sea level, I have 14 pounds of air pressing on every square inch of my body, yet I am not crushed.

If this formula is true, why is my wrist not broken whenever I fire a pistol?

Sounds more like you are trying to chase some crazy conspiracy theory as to why such weapons would never work, and that we are being lied to by saying that they do.

 

You lost me on that one bigly.

Aluminum is actually very soft, easy to work with. Since it's a nonferrous metal it upholds well against corrosion. But aluminum should never be used in the construction of warships. Lessons learned during the Falklands War, aluminum burns.

Hardness of Materials -> https://www.tedpella.com/company_html/hardness.htm