De Feo’s Moskva

Uriel Fanelli April 17, 2022 0 Comments

You will have noticed how I cite De Feo as the summa of ignorance when it comes to military matters, and I see that Repubblica has also given him a report on the Moskva , which he examines taking as an example the first launch of the Ardito Class, making some blunders that would be funny if they weren't pathetic.

And I recognize the bullshit because there were TWO ships of that class (Audace and Ardito) and I served there. I know, I mean, both what they were like outside and what they were inside, and I did several fire drills with them, of course.

The most epic part is when he exchanges, on Metropolis / 73, a system of launching flares, the SCLAR, it is described as the close defense system, which was instead the task of the oto melara.

At the time of that Ardito model, the sclar was NOT the main close combat defense system, nor the best. It is a rocket launcher that launches flares to illuminate the sea, or flares to confuse the infrared guide.

I don't even know where to start listing the bullshit that De Feo says. I don't know why he is there: old friends describe him both as someone pushed by a military dad, and as a person who, in case he has to buy weapons with a contract, would be able to tell you who to win the contract.

But let's leave the gossip alone, because absurd things are said in the video. First, the model is obsolete. The class was upgraded. This is the twin, the Audace, and as you can see after the upgrade it is very different, moreover one of the bow guns has been removed, replaced by the Aspide. To the delight of De Feo, there are still SCLARs. But they are not missiles, mind you.

First, a cruiser and a destroyer are different things. Not so much for the tasks, which are different but in different marines they can overlap. The problem is that it was not the daring class that had to face the "Slava" class, but the opposite: the Slava class was built to perform the same tasks that in Italy was carried out by cruisers such as the old Andrea Doria and Caio Duilio (who on the side they had the C of Cruiser and not the D of Destructor), which were disarmed almost 10 years BEFORE the Vittorio Veneto class was called to take their place.

So let's understand: if we refer to the Slava class, we should compare it to the old Caio Duilio and Andrea Doria ("Doria" class), or at most to the Vittorio Veneto class:

So forget about the Ardito class, which had other duties, and was almost in no way comparable to Moskva. Size, tonnage, displacement, draft, role… everything. It doesn't have a shit to do with it.

Probably what De Feo shows is the only model he has found, and therefore compares it to Moskva, for no apparent reason.

But as I repeat, De Feo cannot distinguish a flare launcher from one of the (different) anti-missile defense systems on board. And he thinks you're firing missiles.

For the record: at the time of the model, the anti-missile close combat was done by the two pairs of fast-firing otomelara guns that you see on the flanks. Later the Aspide system was added. And since the Oto Melara has been (and still is) a "best-seller" on the arms market, (it has a record of adoptions from 60 different countries) the fact that De Feo doesn't know it tells you a lot about man.

In any case, in those days the Moskva was called "Slava". Then it became a class of ships (clones were launched, in short) and then took the name of Moskva, after being modernized.

But the birth of the Moskva as we know it and the Ardito class with that configuration do not overlap.

The Ardito class was also modernized: in the De Feo model there are still two guns in the bow, while after the modernization there was a 127 gun (with relative carousel), and an "Aspide with Sea Sparrow launcher" system with a 8 missile launcher (two groups of 4). There he is:

So no, the air defense was NOT done with flares, the defense was organized with

otomelara, rapid-firing automatic guns (76/62)
Aspide system (Sea Sparrow compatible, partially)
RIM-66 systems (which later passed to Durand de la Penne)

After that, like ULTIMA, extreme hope, there are flares, which De Feo believes to be missiles in the video: which certainly does not shoot down missiles, it produces false targets.

They are not missiles, de Feo. Get over it.

why all this? Because De Feo chose the only model he had available, or perhaps he found it in the cellar. The Ardito class was contemporary with the Slava, but very little with the Moskva and the Slava class, because the Ardito class retired almost twenty years earlier. When the Slava was put back into the sea as Moskva, the hardy class was celebrating the dismantling.

Moreover, the Slavs remained in the dock for the entire period of the Russian economic crisis after the USSR, so in the end the possibility that they would meet at sea was almost nil. We knew the Slava class, but we knew we would never meet them in the remaining life of our ship.

let's go to the description of the fires on board.

De Feo continues to think that for some reason explosives are piled up in a specific part that he calls the “hold”. There is no such part. Nobody is that stupid.

Of course, the problem with cramming so many weapon systems into a relatively small ship is that the areas where the explosives are held and the merry-go-rounds are relatively close: they were only 140 meters long and 14 meters wide. the carousels of the otomelara, the two couples on the sides, are not very distant rides.

However, if you take a good look at the shape of the ship, you will find that the rides descend to below the waterline level. That is, in an emergency, there is no shortage of water. It has its own importance due to the cooling technique of the old Otomelara.

What is true and what is false in what De Feo says about the Ardito class (Audace, however, was different, because after the modernization there was an Italian-made 3D radar on board , which cost us' the kidnapping of a GE employee by "boh" – I do not think there is still clarity on this thing).

The real thing is that Audace, due to its size, was not very liveable and tremendously armed. In this I can see some analogies with the Moskva, even if the Moskva is much later.

Audace had a long list of weapon systems. Each weapon system has a department that takes care of it. Each weapon system has a parts depot and a repair shop. Each weapon system has its own ammo bay.

And understand that if in 140 meters you have to fit all this, and 380 men, you are "uncomfortable". It was not a comfortable ship and the quality of life was not excellent. When I hear the inmates complaining that they are 8 in a cell with only one bathroom, I want to remember that on a daring ship, in a 14m x 14m crew room, there were 78 sailors. With 4 toilets available, 4 showers and 4 sinks. And they hadn't killed anyone.

The important thing, however, is that a good second in command and a lot of elbow grease, the hygienic situation was dignified. It means that the toilets of the prisons are clogged because the prisoners clog them, and because they are not called upon to unblock them. When they let you unclog them, the toilets don't get clogged anymore. But look how strange. (then okay, the best way to unclog them was the 10 atm fire hose).

So it's true, it was getting tight.

However, the ship's design was enviable. And I say this because we had American officers on board, and they respected us enough, especially in drills, when we showed them what we were going to do to their "sixth fleet". (and in competition I'm sorry, the result is what it is). We would not have won, but they would have paid dearly for it.

But let's go back to De Feo, and to the “enviable design” of the Ardito classes. The ship was pneumatically isolated. The internal pressure was higher than the external one: it is an NBC measure, it serves to prevent chemical weapons or radioactive waste from outside entering. (the air is very filtered).

When you went out you had two doors, with a cavity (the size of a telephone booth) in which, in case, you could put NBC measurements (it means that you were wearing a suit and gas mask), and when you had to open one of the two doors you had to "PUSH ”, Because the pressure difference sealed the door against you.

This means and implies a rather powerful air exchange and filtering system. But pneumatic isolation means that the air enters it ONLY if I want to. There was no suction, it was pumped in and out due to the overpressure. The ship was segmented into three sections. The fire doors were normally open, but when you went to the first stage of preparation, or even to the second, they were sealed with several turns of the steering wheel.

So a fire on board could not spread beyond a third of the ship. each section had its own way of allowing the crew to escape outside: Italian ship designers are respected. It was not comfortable, mind you. But every inch was functional.

Obviously there were different systems, both anti-smoke and anti-fire. We could flood, foam, or fill any section of a ship with neutral gas, and then aerate it in minutes. A fire would not last long, also because the areas were closed, it would have suffocated by itself. B He had to turn off the pumps that pushed air in, and the oxygen would be gone in no time. And no oxygen, no flame.

But let's go to the people. I talked about a crew room where 78 people sleep. There were two of them, one in the bow and one in the stern. What happens to them? First of all, at the time of navigation there are shifts, 4/4 or 8/8 hours. In that room, therefore, there are not 78 people sleeping at sea, but about twenty. One third.

The problem, however, is that in the case of the Moskva, it would not be normal navigation: if the drone passes over you, the first degree of readiness is triggered. If before you were in the second (you are always in the war zone) and then you sleep dressed, in the first you do not sleep at all or you sleep on the spot. Therefore, the crew quarters are empty. And it is no coincidence: because if you fill a room with neutral gas or foam or wash it with water, you have a barrier against the flames: the room that is switched off acts as a barrier. Even the fire fighting on a ship is sophisticated and has the strategies, in short.

So I'm sorry for Di Feo, but on the Ardito facing (the model) a fire that takes the whole ship IS NOT practically conceivable, unless there are integrity problems (= has not been hit).

But let's go to Di Feo's shameless bullshit.

It is true that these are not armored ships. After all, on a battleship it's not easier to put out a fire, huh . If they have been decommissioned, there is MORE than one reason.

It is easier for a battleship to resist a large caliber cannon shell, but these shells fly so slowly that it is now possible to shoot them down in flight .

It is therefore worth investing in a close range defense and therefore the battleships are dead. And an explosion aboard a battleship is a serious problem, when every cannon nose weighs tons, and the loading merry-go-rounds are huge . And I'm not talking about the pity cartridge. In short, more disadvantages than advantages.

However, it does not mean that the new ships are made of paper. It means that of course, there are parts made of special aluminum alloy (let's say "beams") and clearly the steel does not exceed two centimeters in thickness. But thanks to this on the Audace you turned with 30 degrees of roll and a ten-second warning. The other marines, except the English one, watched and kept silent.

What I would like to object to di Feo is that even a 1-centimeter sheet of steel does not pierce it with the lapilli of a fire.

Of course, the high explosive does not even see it, certainly the termite melts it like butter, but if the ship is intact, the lapilli usually do not pierce decks and bulkheads. Point. No way. A centimeter of steel is not easy to pierce for a lapillus. And as I said, if the ship stops pushing air in, the oxygen quickly runs out – even the heat goes down. The crew knows how to escape, flees the affected area, then the air goes out, and the fire suffocates. In the case of fuels that do not require air, such as those on torpedoes, it is possible to empty a large tank of noble gases, and beware: once a zone of noble gases has been sprayed, the fire no longer spreads to that zone. Here, too, shutdown strategies come into play, which De Feo obviously does not imagine.

So no, simply no, a fire aboard a daring class did not spread quickly or easily as De Feo says.

Of course, in history there have been devastating fires on military ships, but few Italian ones, and especially: much older ships.

Let's go to the history of the "hold", where according to De Feo there are explosives. Many imagine these barbs filled with crates of dynamite and barrels of gunpowder, that a spark is enough and the ship is blown.

But no: in modern ships, let's say after the war, explosives are segregated.

In the case of the daring class we can speak of a high density of explosives, but the situation is known, and De Feo does not understand that it is managed. I give an example of what I did.

In the torpedo bay (which does not appear in the model because there was an addition in the middle of those two sections which appear separate) I had 14 light torpedoes. My babies". Programming them together with the ECG department was my "fish". I don't know if it's legal to say the type of torpedo, so I'm not saying that.

Of these 14 torpedoes, in case of readiness six would have been inserted on the external pipes, and the compressed air necessary to expel them would have been pressurized. So already in the ship it's 14 minus six.

Two would be immediately mounted on the trolleys that are used to carry them to the flight deck, in case you wanted to launch them in the helicopters. And we're less than eight warheads piled up inside the ship. Another four would go into the caissons next to the torpedo tubes, so they could be reloaded quickly.

The last two did not have the detonator, which had to be mounted (for heaven's sake, a relatively simple operation, we did it in about ten seconds) in case launching the first twelve torpedoes was not needed. (case enough, let's say, "atypical", but the Ardito classes did not have a very large sonar, so they launched torpedoes also to scare the submarine and run away).

Furthermore, those two were locked inside a "coffin", a kind of fireproof container, which had to be removed. Operation that can be done in a few seconds, but as long as it is inside its "coffin" (we called it that because it looked like a coffin) the fire reaches us badly. Sure, if it burns for hours, it gets there. But the set does not burn for hours, because the noble gas immediately goes into discharge and saturates it. And it's airtight anyway, so if you don't pump air into it, the fire will suffocate.

Without the detonating chain, the lead-salt underwater explosive of the warhead does not explode (it goes). At schools they put it (a little) on an anvil and hammered it. It does not explode. You put it on a Bunsen burner. It does not explode. You have to activate a long detonation chain before it explodes: that is, it only explodes when in contact with something else that explodes. And it has to explode quickly. Then a little thing A explodes, which detonates another little thing B, which then detonates the real warhead. There is a check and interrupt circuit in both A and B. If they both disagree, it doesn't explode.

Otherwise what does the explosive do above a certain temperature? It burns. But it doesn't explode.

Excluding then that the warheads explode, does it end here? No, because in those days the torpedoes had an internal combustion engine powered by Otto Fuel II.

Today there are electric batteries, like on phones. The A-184 torpedo also had a seawater battery, but we didn't have them (anymore) on the Ardito classes.

But in those days no, there was Otto Fuel II. That stuff burns even without oxygen (it's on torpedoes, right?) So it's dangerous. And it's also, let's say, slightly less toxic than cyanide. No kidding. Do you know what to do if you are in a torpedo bay and you smell an orange? Die.

So in his coffin there is a kind of sponge that absorbs it and turns it into a pulp. (the sponge is not toxic, and some slept inside an empty coffin of the torpedo, and they are alive. I hope.) Outside the coffin… there are fire sensors, and nothing is enough for it to flood and fill with noble gases.

But the torpedo bay is a small isolated and armored room. There is no "hold" for explosives. The hold is also a concept of commercial ships.

The same goes for on-board missiles. Theseus were inside their coffin,

and the other missiles have a loading system that keeps them "encapsulated" practically until launch, or they have their own beautiful shell, De Feo. It is not easy to spread the flames.

Where De Feo says something that resembles the truth, (but then drowns him with bullshit)?

Vexata quaestio are the jousting of cannons: on the Audace ship they were actually very close. But. There is a small "but".

Although there are two on each side, only two could be used at a time. Both for reasons of overheating (they throw some big waves) and to make sure that if one carousel is full, on the other there is only what is needed to start the shot and fill it. It means that if one piece fails, the other takes its place and starts firing (they are fast-firing, machine gun-type firing, 120 rounds per minute, and firing 8 kg of charge each, so under the cannon there is it's a kind of loading carousel that must contain many shots). Obviously, the shooting department will have to start filling up the second carousel immediately. The carousel can be filled while it works because it is very deep, even if it is not the most suggested mode. It has to be said that there are two on each side, and a ship can turn. Italian ships are famous for their maneuverability, and the captains for knowing how to use it.

There is also the case in which all the rides are ready, but even here there are things that De Feo does not know: the cooling of such a cannon is not easy, and on the Ardito of his model was done using the most obvious method: sea water. Seawater pipes and radiators everywhere. In case of rupture, that is, the flooding of the fire is more worrying.

And I say this because those of the cannons are the ONLY explosives, together with the fuel of the missiles, which can really explode due to thermal shock, that is, a fire.

So no, not even in the case of the rides was that simple. Even the carousel of the 127mm gun, the one in the bow, was still a good distance from the rest: in the worst case it could interfere with the capsules of the Aspis loading system. But in between there were special sections (including the crew room I) which being empty in case of combat could be saturated with noble gases.

So no, De Feo, such a fire is not so simple, not even in a ship of ancient conception such as an Ardito class. Who was not in any case the correspondent of Slava, if anything they were Vittorio Veneto or Caio Duilio.

You don't understand shit, De Feo, admit it and go back to playing with toy soldiers.

Debunk: Am I saying a fire is impossible? No. Shit happens, and with a little sloppiness and a little negligence it is possible to make the unthinkable happen. And if the ship is hit, many speeches go to that country. This is also obvious.

But it didn't happen very often, objectively. At least, in the Italian navy.

The situation is different for the Russian one.

First of all, let's face it: the book of naval victories of the Italian Navy is not very thick. But there are episodes such as the Enterprise of Pola or the Enterprise of Premuda, Piran, the defense of Venice, the sinking of the Wien, and others in the First World War.

But the book of naval victories of the Russian navy which is older is, as it were, much shorter. I mean it has no pages . It's a navy that has never worked well. He never won. He never did things. It never brought value.

Russian ships are not, as if to say "the best". It is not "the best". The design is tremendous, the livability is ridiculous, their only aircraft carrier has a reputation for being haunted, so often it breaks down or has internal accidents.

Russian submarines are dangerous, but in my opinion sooner or later we will find out what they suck: you don't make good submarines if you don't know how to make good ships. Yes, the Russians show us that they launch a missile. One.

I wait for the moment to see the video where they launch TWO. Because if after the launch you take two hours to put out the fires born around the pipes, as is rumored…. I would care little about it.

That said, even an obsolete wreck still has to meet minimum requirements if you want to send it around the world and call it an "aircraft carrier killer". So it's hard to think of him struggling with such a devastating spontaneous fire.

But De Feo doesn't stop there. At one point he places the example (ad minkiam) of the Falklands war.

But what happened in the Falklands war with the Exocet missiles, precisely on the level of the fire, was an extremely atypical case.

The destruction caused by the missiles was due to a mix that is incredible:

British ships had keel and bulkhead angles designed hoping not to trigger the missile delayed-firing mechanism. (yes, even the British know how to draw ships, and how).
the "fuse" that delayed the explosion of the Exocet was a little "retarded", but not in the sense that it detonated the charge later (it was the initial purpose), but in the fact that it was a little bit of a crackpot. He made it explode immediately, or never. In short, the opposite of a delayed detonator. A delayed detonator in the sense of "crackpot".

obviously the French said it was done on purpose. Oddly, this "feature" was removed from later versions of Exocet. Evidently in France they don't fix bugs: they fix features.

However, this happened: the exocet missile hit the ship and the warhead exploded immediately (due to the French "feature") or did not explode at all (due to the English "design").

The problem, however, is that due to the way the Argentines used it (which aimed at sight, not with the radar), the missile reached the ships still full of fuel. Rocket fuel, which is basically an explosive, is a tremendous incendiary explosive.

After the ship was hit, devastating fires broke out. Reason why some English ships, which structurally were not very devastated, were however decommissioned.

However, if Di Feo pays attention to it, the British death toll was not like that of Moskva, which, according to the latest news, seems to have lost 90% of its 500 men.

But De Feo, as I said, understands little.

UPDATE

Let's go to the Moskva facts. In the last few hours a “small” figure has changed, which changes the whole scenario. Yesterday, the commander "had evacuated the ship and the losses were limited". (and in chernobyl the situation was under control).

Today's version is that there are 50 sailors rescued, and 450 have died on board. It is "slightly" different.

This "little" detail obviously changes everything. Not because it's about a fire, but because it could be about missiles. Or rather, it really talks about missiles.

Difficult to achieve such a massacre with a light torpedo. With this data, my accounts don't quail anymore. So the hypothesis is NOT practicable. So I withdraw it.
The Neptune has enormous quantities of fuel, and if TWO missiles hit a ship, and they haven't started very far, a fire develops inside the ship (after the bang, which is not a dock !!!) a fire monstrous. (as in the case of British ships in the Falklands, but with much more fuel).

As you can see, even a simple detail can completely change the evaluation of a naval event. In this case, the evacuation of the sailors and the number of deaths.

But that it wasn't a spontaneous fire, you can pretty much bet. It is not easy to exterminate 90% of the crew with a simple fire on board. Not even on ships of questionable quality like Russian ones.

Even if an accidental fire renders a ship unusable, that 90% of the sailors fail to evacuate it, it no longer happens.

PS: I know that "De Feo" is wrong. But it amuses me, for several reasons.

The mountain of shit theory

De Feo’s Moskva

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