In WWII, at Okinawa, the US Navy countered Japanese kamikaze
attacks with a system of outlying picket ships that screened the invasion
force. The picket ships were subjected
to unending, brutal suicide attacks and, although the pickets succeeded in
their task, the US Navy paid a huge price in ships and sailors.
One such picket ship was the USS Aaron Ward (DM-34) which
underwent a horrific kamikaze attack by ten planes and suffered six kamikaze
crashes and two bomb hits while shooting down four attackers in a 52 minute
ordeal. Not only did the ship not sink
but it kept fighting effectively the entire time. Does anyone think a Burke could do that?
Brave Ship Brave Men[1] tells the story of that battle.
It's stunning reading especially against the backdrop of the weakly built ships
of today, made worse by minimal manning.
The author writes in a highly readable, semi-fictional style
(reconstructed dialog and thoughts) which makes the events vivid and
alive. The reader is immersed in both
the daily routine of the ship preceding the battle and the terrifying events of
the battle. The routine events paint a
picture of wartime life aboard the ship which, alone, makes the book well worth
the read. This leads directly into the
battle itself and the writing style places the reader in the middle of the
action and chaos, with combat, casualties, destruction, and damage control
swirling around.
Brave Ship Brave Men reads like Red Storm Rising
except that it actually happened.
The book graphically slams home the various lessons I preach
on this blog about armor, ship construction and strength, weapons density,
redundancy, damage control, emergency measures and equipment, adequate manning,
etc. When you read the book and compare
the Ward to what we have today, you realize how far we've fallen.
If you want to understand the ‘how’s and why’s’ of what I
preach on this blog, this book provides the answers. Read the book, ‘experience’ the battle, and
then reassess your understanding of naval matters.
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| Aaron Ward after the battle. Note the armored aft 5" unmarked despite the mangled devastation all around it. That's what armor is for. |
2 × 40 mm quad Bofors AA guns
2 × 40 mm dual Bofors AA guns
8 × 20 mm Oerlikon AA guns
1830 hr - Shot down Kamikaze
1831 hr - Kamikaze and bomb hit on ship - mount 44 destroyed, mount 53 on manual/local
1859 hr - Shot down Kamikaze
1904 hr - Shot down Kamikaze
1908 hr - Kamikaze hit on ship
1913 hr - Kamikaze and bomb hit on ship
1913 hr - Kamikaze hit on ship
1916 hr - Kamikaze hit on ship - mount 43 destroyed
1921 hr - Kamikaze hit on ship - various 20 mm mounts destroyed
Ironically, kamikaze attack resurface today in different way - drone. We can see this in current Ukraine war. Worse than WWII, drones can come in even larger number. Enemy with good industry capacity can tolerate even more loss than Japan in WWII.
ReplyDeleteI mean, an autonomous kamikaze drone is basically an antiship missile, and those have been a viable weapon for the last 60 years....
DeleteNo battleship suffered serious damage from Kamikaze attacks. Perhaps they should have placed a few old World War I era battleships ahead of the destroyers to draw attackers.
ReplyDeleteThe Kamikaze strategy was very successful, causing far more losses to the Americans than the Japanese lost. I recently did a short mini-doc about this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HptaPOwkrA
In the early 1980s I read that modern warships were less sturdy than many commercial ships because armor (and the associated weight) was sacrificed for speed. I was a kid who did not know that a Fletcher-class destroyer did have some armor and could achieve 36 knots.
ReplyDeleteI sincerely hope that our systems can jam signals and make swarms of cheap kamikaze drones useless. I am not being sarcastic. I write this because I hope this is the case but don't really know.
CNO, your Fleet Structure provides detail on all the anti-aircraft capabilities of your AAW destroyer, independent cruiser, and battleship concepts. What would you recommend for short-range and point defense weapons for the smaller warships?
My suggestion is the ASW corvette would have a Vulcan Phalanx 20 mm Gatling gun, a RAM launcher (or instead a second Phalanx), and an 8-cell Mk 41 VLS housing 32 ESSMs. (This is inspired by your post on how you would equip a ship similar to India's Kamorta-class corvette.)
https://navy-matters.blogspot.com/2017/11/asw-corvette.html
I don't know at what range a corvette could detect an enemy submarine and thus don't know whether it would be worthwhile (or practical) to include a second 8-cell VLS. If eight more cells are worthwhile and practical, and the submarine threat is minimal but the air attack threat is significant, Carlton Meyer's proposed NAVROC missiles with their large warheads could take big bites out of a drone swarm.
For an ASW frigate/destroyer escort (FF/DE) I suggest two each of the Vulcan Phalanx and and SeaRAM, plus the ESSM.
I would suggest the same armament for the ASW destroyer (DD). Because this ship is larger than a frigate, maybe an extra one or two Phalanx/SeaRAM systems could be added.
Our current warships carry .50-caliber machine guns. As a last ditch weapon, new ships could carry the GAU-19 .50-caliber Gatling gun (tri-barrel). I realize this weapon may not be much use against jets or anti-ship missiles, but it could work reasonably well against cheap drones in the event the enemy launches so many of them that a few get past the more sophisticated weapons. I also recall that during the Tanker War there was footage of sailors holding Stinger missile launchers. (This could be interpreted as evidence that the ships didn't have enough AAW armament, but people make do with whatever they can get.)
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/the-lesson-the-uss-fitzgerald-tragedy-us-navy-warships-need-21233
ReplyDeleteThis article in "National Interest" discusses the USS Fitzgerald tragedy but devolves into discussing armor !
Brian Clark : “Adding more armor to ships would be helpful, but will add weight and could impact the ability to place sensors, weapons, and other mission systems where they are most effective,” Clark said.
"While the Navy might consider such technologies for future vessels, retrofitting existing ships is probably not an option. The best defense for today’s Burke-class is its combination of sensors, speed and maneuverability. "
“Also, new armor materials, like Kevlar, are available and being added to ships. For example, DDGs have some armor in the superstructure and along parts of the hull and the Navy is adding Kevlar and other armor to the LCS"
I am not a naval engineer and I do not understand the rational for not adding even Kevlar armor during refits ! Their's is too much weight added to the ship and interference with sensors etc .
With just the statements you quoted from the article/report, do you see any problems/issues with the statements? Analyze, don't read and accept. Tell me what's wrong with the statements.
DeleteWhat I see is that from the get go more armor was not included in the Burke design. They put some faith in the weapon systems to counter missiles. But some missiles may get through the layered defense of the ship. In other words the Burke seems fragile if it takes a hit.
Delete" armor was not included in the Burke"
DeleteCorrect. As Clark says, correctly, after-the-fact armor additions are challenging to impossible. You MUST design the armor in from the beginning and we have failed to do so.
There are still more problems with the statements. For example,
“Adding more armor to ships would be helpful, but will add weight and could impact the ability to place sensors, weapons, and other mission systems where they are most effective,”
This is false. Armor is, generally speaking, added low on the ship and weight lower on the ship actually improves stability (ballast is weight low on the ship) and would allow MORE topweight in the form of sensors and weapons.
Another problem:
"The best defense for today’s Burke-class is its combination of sensors, speed and maneuverability."
Completely wrong. The best thing for the existing Burkes is to retire them and replace them with a real WARship. They are utterly unsuited for modern warfare. They are the equivalent of the US' old battleships at the start of WWII. Objectively, the best thing that could have happened to the old battleships is for them to have been sunk on the first day of WWII so that we wouldn't be tempted to treat them as actual combat-effective warships which would have only resulted in naval disasters. In a sense, the Japanese did us a favor by sinking the battleships at Pearl Harbor. It forced us to quickly adapt to carrier warfare - quicker than we might otherwise have.
Similarly, our Burkes are ill-suited to modern naval combat and will lead us into attempting naval ventures that we should not.
More:
"Kevlar"
Kevlar is NOT armor as we're using the term. It provides no structural strength. It is an anti-fragmentation protection which is fine but it is not armor. I hope that our naval leaders and ship designers are not being deceived into thinking that Kevlar makes an armored ship.
So now we have the DDG62 Constellation frigate about to start production and I have not read anything about armor scheme.
DeleteThere is none that I'm aware of. We are not building WARships.
DeleteMeant to say FFG 62. They are quiet about the ASW capabilities of this frigate as well.
DeleteIs there any word on what kind of armor the DDG(X) will get? Is it too soon to know? Hope we get some for a ship that could cost at least $3.1 billion.
ReplyDeletehttps://breakingdefense.com/2022/11/next-gen-destroyers-price-tag-could-be-1b-more-than-navys-estimates-cbo/
"Is there any word on what kind of armor the DDG(X) will get?"
DeleteYes! Reynolds Wrap is producing extra rolls of aluminum foil as we speak!
simply amazing that they made it. just reinforces again that you design back armor, frankly, it's strange they got rid of it and tried to put logic to it. I recall the Soviets having consternation about if they could sink a MO class battleship with their lesser ASW missiles; I guess they don't worry as much on that issue today. What would be interesting is what really (don't want today's data revealed) but what the US Navy thought would really leak through in a hard core Soviet attack say in the 80's or 90's when you knew they were going to attack carrier groups with a massive onslaught of bombers toting multiple missiles each. Has to be a leaker % to what the Navy thought Vampires would make it through.
ReplyDelete"what the US Navy thought would really leak through"
DeleteAlong that train of thought, what I find simply unbelievable is that despite Aegis being the Navy's main defensive system, we still don't have a dedicated Aegis test ship. That's criminal negligence.
"still don't have a dedicated Aegis test ship."
DeleteWell, we're about to retire a bunch of Ticonderoga cruisers. Maybe one of them could be repurposed?
That's been suggested many times by many people. The logic and common sense of that seem crystal clear to everyone but the Navy! Baffling, isn't it?
DeleteDo you think that the Zumwalts could be transformed into something like a modern battleship? It seems like they're *almost* there, they just need more armor and firepower. They've got some of the right ideas:
ReplyDelete-weaponry based on guns, not missiles or aircraft
-stealthy hull. Not to make it invisible, but just enough to turn a direct hit into a glancing blow, or reduce the detection range maybe.
-smooth, minimal superstructure. that would make it easier to armor the topside of the ship.
I dunno, am I missing something here? It seems simple to me. Ditch the futuristic weapons ideas and just put a really big gun on there. Don't worry so much about speed or efficiency, so slap a bunch of armor on there too. You'd get a ship that can provide fire support from long distance at low cost, take a beating if necessary, and maybe even dodge the enemy fire completely.
"Do you think that the Zumwalts could be transformed into something like a modern battleship?"
DeleteAs a conceptual starting point for a new design battleship ... possibly (though I can conceive of much better starting points). As a literal conversion from the existing ship to a battleship ... not even remotely possible.
The Zumwalt hull form has stability issues (certain seas have been eliminated from the operating envelope due to concerns) and adding armor, especially to the superstructure (high weight), would exacerbate the instability. In general, it is very challenging to add armor to a ship that was not designed for it.
The guns are NOT capable of firing any other projectile than the original - and now cancelled - LRLAP so they could not be adapted to general gun use. Even if the guns could be adapted to general use, two guns on a cruiser size ship represents very poor combat efficiency/effectiveness.
A 'battleship', by definition, needs to be able to stand and fight which means it needs an extensive secondary and AAW battery. The Zumwalts have zero of either. You'd need to completely rebuild the ship which would be cost prohibitive.
Thanks for the detailed response. I guess I'm still hoping to find *some* sort of use for those ships so they're not just a complete waste of money but yeah, probably a conversion would cost more than just building a new ship from scratch. Maybe some of the design/engineering work will still be useful
Delete