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The United States Navy and its allies recently laid siege to a retired frigate in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It was all part of a SINKEX, or sinking exercise, that tested the missiles and big guns of modern navies against an actual warship.
Every two years, as part of the multinational Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercises, the US Navy tows a retired warship out to sea. Then the U.S. military, along with allied forces, blow it to smithereens.
The USS Thach was an Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigate. Commissioned in 1979, it was named after Jimmy Thach, a World War II F4F Wildcat pilot who invented the famous "Thach Weave" fighter formation to counter the Japanese Zero fighter.
Thach was retired from service in 2013 and then sunk Thursday off the coast of Kauai, Hawaii. Stripped of weapons, ammunition, fuel and pollutants, the ship was towed into water two to three miles deep and bombarded from the air, sea, and under the sea.
Thach absorbed an enormous amount of punishment, starting with a Harpoon missile launched by a South Korean submarine, the ROKS Lee Eokgi. Next, the Australian frigate HMAS Ballarat launched another Harpoon, and an Australian SH-60S helicopter shot it with a Hellfire missile. U.S. maritime patrol aircraft then hit it with Harpoon and Maverick missiles.
But Thach wasn't done. The cruiser USS Princeton hit it with yet another Harpoon missile, and an American SH-60S Navy chopper hit it with more Hellfires. US Navy F/A-18 Hornets lobbed a 2,000 pound Mk. 84 bomb at it, and a US Air Force B-52 bomber dropped a GBU-12 Paveway laser guided 500 pound bomb on it. A U.S. Navy submarine got into the action, striking it with a Mk. 48 torpedo.
Thach was hit with nearly five thousand pounds of high explosive, plus unspent rocket fuel and yet held out for nearly 12 hours. How did it survive so long? Good warship design, which has improved considerably since the days of World War II.
Another reason the ship survived as long as it did was that everything flammable or explosive onboard had been removed. A Perry-class frigate typically carries up to 587 tons of fuel, plus 64 tons of helicopter fuel, in addition to many more tons of missiles and gun ammunition. The video is notable in that not a single fire starts onboard the ship, and there are no secondary explosions. When it comes to actual combat, things can go differently. In 1941, while dueling the German battleship Bismarck, the Royal Navy battlecruiser HMS Hood took a hit resulting a magazine explosion so powerful only three of the 1,421 men onboard survived.
Another sinking is planned on Tuesday, when the USS Crommelin, Thach's sister ship, will be sent to the bottom of the ocean by ships and planes from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Korea, and the United States. The SINKEX will also feature a new version of the Harpoon missile, Block III, which extends the missile's range to 130 nautical miles.
The Rim of the Pacific 2016 exercises are currently ongoing off the coasts of Hawaii and southern California. Australia, Brazil, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Denmark, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, the People's Republic of China, Peru, the Republic of Korea, the Republic of the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Tonga, the United Kingdom and the United States are all participants.
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That's awesome, however, I think this is super relevant
Another reason the ship survived as long as it did was that everything flammable or explosive onboard had been removed. A Perry-class frigate typically carries up to 587 tons of fuel, plus 64 tons of helicopter fuel, in addition to many more tons of missiles and gun ammunition.
Ofcourse it survived so much power, it was basically just a big paperweight. There was nothing explosive on there
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/07/20 14:28:34
jreilly89 wrote: That's awesome, however, I think this is super relevant
Another reason the ship survived as long as it did was that everything flammable or explosive onboard had been removed. A Perry-class frigate typically carries up to 587 tons of fuel, plus 64 tons of helicopter fuel, in addition to many more tons of missiles and gun ammunition.
Ofcourse it survived so much power, it was basically just a big paperweight. There was nothing explosive on there
.. so.. you're telling me that boat fuel can melt steel ? !?! 1111
The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn't; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all
We love our superheroes because they refuse to give up on us. We can analyze them out of existence, kill them, ban them, mock them, and still they return, patiently reminding us of who we are and what we wish we could be.
"the play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king,
Ofcourse it survived so much power, it was basically just a big paperweight. There was nothing explosive on there
That's still a helluva lot of ordnance to poke enough holes in that paperweight to make it sink.
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Ofcourse it survived so much power, it was basically just a big paperweight. There was nothing explosive on there
That's still a helluva lot of ordnance to poke enough holes in that paperweight to make it sink.
Right, but as the article points out, firepower isn't what usually sinks ships, it's usually onboard fires and explosions.
The video is notable in that not a single fire starts onboard the ship, and there are no secondary explosions. When it comes to actual combat, things can go differently. In 1941, while dueling the German battleship Bismarck, the Royal Navy battlecruiser HMS Hood took a hit resulting a magazine explosion so powerful only three of the 1,421 men onboard survived.
JSF wrote:... this is really quite an audacious move by GW, throwing out any pretext that this is a game and that its customers exist to do anything other than buy their overpriced products for the sake of it. The naked arrogance, greed and contempt for their audience is shocking.
Would have been interesting if they'd hooked up the ship with a dozen live cameras or so to record the bombardment from a first person perspective, to give people an idea of what its like for Sailors in war who come under attack.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/07/21 19:00:20
djones520 wrote: The hole that the torpedo made was smaller then on the Cole, and that ship stayed afloat.
Arleigh Burkes are beasts.
IIRC it's not the hole the torpedo makes that is scary, it's the bubble of the explosion underneath the ship lifting it and snapping the keel.
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So does this mean there's more value in securing flammable and explosive contents in a ship than there is in securing the vessel from direct damage?
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Eeshh. You need someone from the Navy to answer that question. Like a Damage Control Guru. Though I will say 125% surety that those contents are secured in a directional storage room
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sebster wrote: So does this mean there's more value in securing flammable and explosive contents in a ship than there is in securing the vessel from direct damage?
Pretty much, yep. There's a reason the magazines on ships like the Iowas are hardened bunkers as close to the center of the ship as possible. Most ships sink after they catch fire or the magazine is hit. If you've got all the bulkheads sealed up tight (which you do in a test like this), you have to put a hell of a lot of holes in Navy ships before they take on enough water to sink.
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Jihadin wrote: Eeshh. You need someone from the Navy to answer that question. Like a Damage Control Guru. Though I will say 125% surety that those contents are secured in a directional storage room
Or someone who read too many naval design and strategy books on a whim.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/07/22 03:29:18
Pretty much, yep. There's a reason the magazines on ships like the Iowas are hardened bunkers as close to the center of the ship as possible. Most ships sink after they catch fire or the magazine is hit. If you've got all the bulkheads sealed up tight (which you do in a test like this), you have to put a hell of a lot of holes in Navy ships before they take on enough water to sink.
Interesting, thanks.
“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”
Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something.
IIRC the US used some captured German ships as targets for nukes in the Bikini atoll after WWII, and the things just would not sink. I'll see if I can find the stuff when I'm not on my mobile phone.
EDIT: Here we go, Operation Crossroads. Prinz Eugen survived two nuclear blasts and sank five months later because it couldn't be repaired due to radioactive contamination.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/07/22 10:26:54
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