Moskva, oh Moskva.
Due to my past in the Navy, you can imagine how friends and acquaintances started talking about the sinking of the Moskva. And you can imagine their face when I say that I don't believe in the Russian version (a fire on board that reaches Santa Barbara is fine if you are a Johnny Depp lover), much less the Ukrainian one. I think it was the Ukrainians, but not with two Neptune missiles.
So, first of all: if you want to analyze a defeat, start from the weak points. Nobody gets defeated because he's strong, okay? A missile cruiser defeated with missiles? Uhm.
So if we have an armed missile cruiser to deal with aircraft carriers (which will then throw aircraft into the sky that will target you with everything they have) and its escort (which will therefore throw all the missiles it has into the sky), it means that on the plane of the sky you are STRONG.
It's like having a young tyson: with your fists, you can't do it. Point.
But if you tell me that you face the young Tyson using the ju-Jitzu, well: Tyson didn't know how to defend his legs very well, as is meant in the Ju-Jitzu, and to mean it all from the point of view of Judo, having his feet that do not touch. never land … certain techniques are forbidden in federal combat, but are still practiced.
By this I mean that if something destroyed Moskva, it wasn't a missile. Sure, the Ukrainians would like to sell the missile that destroyed the Moskva, but too many things do not speak of a "missile". We see.
Neptune have a 150Kg high explosive warhead. They are "brutal" weapons. It means that, even if we are talking about a 180-meter beast (the next Italian destroyers will be, they tell me, of the same size, I don't know the displacement), it is brutal.
Brutal means, to give you an example, that an exocet like the one that hit the British ships in the Falklands has "only" 165 kg of explosives. And a ship empties you. The British were blessed that it hit the flight compartment compartment, which limited some effects of the missiles. The Theseus, which is considered "a blunt weapon", has 210Kg of explosives.
To make you understand, with 15Kg of old explosives they disintegrated a wing of the Bologna station and gutted a train on the first platform. Here we are talking about 150 Kg for two, that is 300Kg.
So sure, you went against a nice buffalo, but you did it using the engine of an iveco truck as a club. The Buffalo is affected.
In details:
- a metal hull propagates vibrations very well. In such an old hull there are few countermeasures. And no modernization work can change the structure in the mechanical sense. In short, when a missile explodes against the hull, within a radius of a few tens of meters in every direction there is, in all the metal structures, a whiplash that, literally, smashes people against bulkheads and decks. Think of mosquitoes when you squash them on the wall. Here, like this. Each tube on board tends to explode, throwing shrapnel. In a nutshell: with a three-hundred-kilo charge, or even two charges, there is very little crew left to evacuate, and little remains to be repaired.
- the ship is a closed environment in the barometric sense. It means that the internal pressure is kept slightly higher than the external in order to keep out any nerve gases, and what a chemical attack, or radioactive fallout can be. When an explosion hits the hull, the pressure undergoes a huge spike, which produces embolisms and other devastations in the human body, and this happens (with 300Kg of HE, it will happen A LOT) even tens and tens of meters from the explosion (a unless the fire doors are already closed and sealed: but with such an explosion the fire doors are torn up, so I wouldn't worry about it). In short, a double massacre.
- the other effects of an explosion against the keel, from the thermal effect to the vaporization of several hundred square meters of seawater, to the transformation of the metal into molten splinters and drops, combustible things that are on board, and all the paraphernalia that follows a similar event (war surgery is a show of horrors about it) I'll spare you.
First point: if two missiles with 150Kg of HE hit a 180m large ship, evacuating almost all the crew is "difficult". It was "evacuated" by missiles.
I, on the other hand, would focus on the underwater side. Mines or torpedoes. For several reasons.
If you look at the profile of the ship, the part above the waterline is prevalent. The vast majority of the crew will have been there. Especially since, being a missile launcher, most systems in need of maintenance and operation will be at the top.
Second point: it was not a ship with A / S duties, ie antisubmarine. So it was WEAK from the underside. And if you analyze a defeat, start with the WEAK points.
What are the WEAK points of such an old hull?
- the shape of the hull. The noise profile of such an old hull has probably been known for decades. This hull, the torpedoes hear it coming from Mars. There is no way to change the shape of the hull by "doing some work". I mean, you can add some countermeasures inside, adding sound-absorbing gaps and more, but don't change it. One hundred and eighty meters of 50-year-old bolt makes a deafening underwater noise.
- the engine. Of course, you can change the propellers here too, but to really change it you have to practically rebuild the ship. You can also try to blow compressed air into the propellers and have all the modern sophistication, but that turbine doesn't make it quiet in any way. Or rather, no: (now it's silent).
- The on-board equipment: making a ship that is not designed to be silent (in the modern sense (of silent) is very complicated. You should do it all over again, or rather you should make a more modern one. A ship has a whole series of apparatuses, pumps, air filters, gun rides, which are not silent if they are not designed to be
- It wasn't a particularly fast ship. There are ships that can hope to use speed to prevent mines from rising in adequate time (modern mines are not random floating balls), and even get out of the danger zone of a torpedo in time. Not the Moskva: too slow. With that shape he had a painful turning arc, and maneuverability. The unsinkability (a military requirement linked to the geometry of the hull) is in my opinion doubtful, as for many “refurbished” carcasses.
That ship, that is, the torpedo "calls it". But also the mine.
When you think of a torpedo, you don't necessarily think of a submarine. There are torpedoes (usually light) that are launched on a carrier missile. The missile approaches a few miles from the ship, and drops the torpedo into the water. Which arms itself (it's as sophisticated as a drone) and goes in search of the target. If the ship has fooled itself into being heard (back and forth in front of my shores for 50 days straight, for example), the torpedo can go into passive mode and find the target.
Passive mode means that it just listens and follows the sound, active mode means that it goes into search, emits a “beep”, and then listens for traces of metallic echo, chasing it.
If the sea was bad, a modern torpedo (without propeller, in short: they have a jet) in passive mode you do not "feel" it coming. Not that you can do anything about it if you hear it coming, but at least you will take some countermeasure.
The problem is, however, that these torpedoes are defined as "light" torpedoes and therefore have a small warhead. (35-50Kg depending), made for submarines, but they are also used well against ships. The warhead is hollow, because it has to pierce the double armor of submarines, but even on a ship they make a nice mess.
In passive mode it will preferably hit the propellers, which make more noise, devastating the stern. This normally prevents you from using the onboard helicopter, as the flight deck is at the rear. And it will cause a leak on board.
The lower part of the stern is normally not very inhabited (so you will have few victims) and since it is full of pumps for the evacuation of the water (the axis of the motor passes by), this could also preserve much of the crew.
If the blow comes from one end (stern or bow) the fire doors and bulkheads will give you some time to evacuate the crew. As the top is intact, except that you won't be able to use a helicopter, the crew can evacuate out to sea.
…. do you see how it all adds up if we put on a light torpedo launched with a missile?
Could it have been a heavy torpedo?
No. Heavy torpedoes are louder, don't put them on systems like ASROC or other ASWs, (on average they are six meter beasts) and if you hit a ship… there isn't much left to evacuate.
This if I'm not mistaken is a Mk48 (American), which is less powerful as a warhead than an A-184, and the more modern Blackshark (I'm talking about Italian torpedoes). Do you see when the whole ship is lifted out of the water and twists? The test ship is bigger than the Moskva, so to speak.
At that moment the crew is smashed against bulkheads, decks and so on. Here, take into account that it is, on average, about 200 / 250Kg of underwater HE explosives. Knowing this, ask yourself what effect TWO "Neptune" warheads would have had for a total of 300Kg of explosives. What did you evacuate afterwards?
It is true that some effects are amplified by water, but there would be little left to save or repair. Or to tow. So no, I would exclude objects with more than fifty kilos of warheads.
But back to the heavy torpedo.
Typically, launching a heavy torpedo requires either a submarine or a very large aircraft with a nice six-meter bulkhead. Unlikely to go unnoticed by the radar. Many still have the helices, and therefore a little can also be heard on the ECG.
I would rule out the heavy torpedo.
I favor the light torpedo, fired from a helicopter, or a missile (there are missiles suitable for launching torpedoes close to ships, but far enough not to be shot down) or light ships.
I honestly don't find literature on drone-dropped light missiles. I don't know if that's possible. The famous Turkish drone would not make it because it has a small payload, unless you give up a lot of fuel, but there are more capable drones. But I don't find any literature about it. Helicopter, light ship or missile, I'd say.
Having said that the hypothesis of a light torpedo hitting aft in passive mode is MUCH more consistent with the little we know, another hypothesis remains open.
The mines.
First of all, modern mines are not just floating balls. Or rather, they become. Modern mines stay quietly a few meters underwater (even at discrete depths) and begin to rise if they hear the sound of a large bolt.
However, this tactic has flaws. The first is that you have to place them where you know the enemy ship will pass. The second is that in bad weather the accuracy is very low. The third flaw is that undermining an area is simple, doing damage to the right ship almost impossible, the fourth is that you still have to make sure that the mines stay in the right place.
The advantage is that it's cheap. And if you fear a landing in a specific place, undermining it makes sense.
Why do I find hypothesis number two? Because to rescue that ship, the Russians immediately called other ships, but there were no deminers. (otherwise the US would have noticed it with the satellite). This struggles to quail with the mine hypothesis.
That said, I'm leaning towards the light torpedo, and let's see why the Russian story isn't floating around.
Fire on board. It happens, for heaven's sake. But also a cart from the 70s is equipped to have fire doors and extinguishing systems: remember that water is abundant. But normally there are, even on old ships, noble gas systems and all paraphernalia. You don't evacuate a ship for a fire.
Then the saints arrive, and then SantaBarbara. I don't know what makes you think that there is a "santabarbara" on modern ships. Anything explosive is contingent and scattered in small quantities around the ship. OBVIOUSLY, the places where there are explosives are extremely protected against fire, monitored, and if you really insist, the explosives used on missiles and torpedoes do not explode simply from a flame. A prolonged fire could cause them to explode, but in these areas it is almost impossible.
Same thing for the missile launch zones, which are equipped with "extreme" anti-flame systems (extreme means that if you put out the fire using noble gases, you sacrifice the people present), which are unlikely to catch fire.
But then doesn't it happen? It happens, and how, but only practically in the rides: if the ship has cannons, under the cannon there is a kind of "automatic loader", called a carousel. This carousel contains many bullets (depending on the rate of fire) and is the one that usually explodes when "a santabarbara catches fire", as the newspapers like to say.
This is what blew up, I don't know, Battleship Roma in IIWW: a German radio-guided bomb Fritz-X hit a carousel.
The Moskva, however, was not a ship equipped with large-caliber rapid-fire guns. So he probably won't have had some huge rides. And anyway, the carousel does not explode in a fire: OBVIOUSLY it has a bunch of noble gas extinguishing systems. It needs to be hit.
That a 180-meter-long ship becomes unusable due to a single fire is very rare, that it has to evacuate the crew even worse. It should be an unspeakable bolt unfit for combat.
Obviously, accidents happen. But you don't have to throw a ship away.
To give you an idea, this is an accident due to the accidental explosion of a missile, which took place in the so-called “missile bay”, or where there are other missiles, on a German frigate, and at the end of the video on an American one.
There have been two deaths, and the frigate will be repaired.
So no, I wouldn't believe the Russian version. And keep Santa Barbara for village festivals, or for films with Johnny Depp.