The US Navy Is Dumping Billions into New Aircraft Carriers—It Could Be a Disaster

National Interest ^ | June 19, 2016 | David W. Wise

[Rockingham]

Modern bombs and missile warheads are hardened and can be fused to penetrate outer layers of hull and explode deep inside a ship. Defeating this takes armor plate, or at least several layers of sophisticated antimissile defenses to avoid getting hit at all.

As for torpedoes, consider what two torpedoes did in 1982 to the American-made WW-II era Argentine light cruiser General Belgrano during the Falklands war. The first torpedo blew off its bow, while the second struck about three-quarters of the way along the ship, just beyond the side armour plating.

That torpedo -- a pre-WW II model with 805 pounds of torpex explosive -- punched through the side of the ship before exploding in the aft machine room. The explosion tore upward and ripped a 20-metre-long hole in the deck, also taking out the ship's electrical power.

The ship rapidly filled with smoke and water flowed in through the hole in the hull. Due to the electric power failure, water could not be pumped out and the General Belgrano sank within hours.

Exploding a torpedo under a ship is said to do about ten times as much damage as a simple hull hit. The bubble of explosive gasses lifts the vessel, then drops it, making the vessel collide with the water rushing back in. This usually breaks the ship's keel, opens seams along the hull, and does major internal damage. Under such a pounding, ships often sink, frequently breaking apart as they do.

Might a supertanker with its bulk, multiple tanks, and even a double hull survive such an attack? Perhaps, but there has never been a direct test of the proposition, and I am hard put to think that a supertanker would do better than a substantial naval warship. Even if a supertanker survived an initial salvo, it will be damaged and can be hit again and again until it sinks.

[Oztrich Boy]

>There are a lot of 500k ton tankers sitting idle right now. If you bought those, refitted the interiors with lots of closed off watertight containers and refitted the center sections with missiles, lots of firewalls and multiple command centers they'd be almost unsinkable because they're so huge

And one good heavyweight torpedo under the keel and you have two 250K ton ships - or are you proposing billion dollar keel strengthening?