Fiberglass?
Sure. All of today’s plastic “turrets” (good enough for spray and water protection) are “not armored” against anything but the environment.
Don’t get fooled by “Well, it’s just a Korean (small) corvette - “our” USN ships are really tough.”
USS Cole was destroyed - put completely out of action by a smaller bomb exploded against its side carried by a outboard-motor fishing boat.
An underwater mine blew a USS destroyer nearly in half i the Gulf - They had to carry it back on a submersible freighter or it would have broken in two Mid-Atlantic.
Since WWII, NO cruiser-destroyer-frigate sized ship of ANY Navy, ANYWHERE worldwide, has “survived” (still able to fight, flee, AND float”) after EVEN one missile, mine, shell, or anti-radar hit.
Once hit one time - by anything - every frigate-destroyer-cruiser (up to CG-47/Spruance sized) ship has been put out of action.
Used to be, we’d brag about “Wooden ships and Iron men.”
Then it became “Steel ships and electronic weapons ...”
Now? “Aluminum boats and wooden men, led by lawyers and bureaucrats, reading procedures to fire blanks.”
-—...-—...
Chains and dragging effects are visible as the rough vertical scars parallel to the chains holding the ship in the air. Chains and lifting forces could have done some of the topside damage, but the impact on the bottom is want “cut off smooth” all of the upper electronic masts and gear.
Excellent analysis, as always...
We sure don’t make them like we used to, that is for sure. but then, nobody does.
Though to be fair, in a threat environment that includes cheap Exocets and Silkworms armoring a DD or CG against such threats is uneconomical.
Modern naval architecture thought seems to revolve around keeping the incoming from getting near the hull, either via CIWS, RAM, or both. Which, when the enemy is pitching cheap antishipping missiles with the capability to hurt a medium aircraft carrier or wound even an Iowa-class, probably isn’t a bad idea.
Forgot to mention - most armor for anything above small arms became irrelevant the moment someone realized that a torpedo with a 1000lb warhead could sink any non-capital ship and even some capital ships, not by attacking the armor directly but by exploding some distance below the hull. Hydrostatic effects then lift the ship - and then the keel breaks.
Observe: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RV8MF-440xg (ignore the audio)
The torpedo is detonated *below* the hull, it doesn’t actually hit the hull at all.
Versus this torpedo type, armor is irrelevant. The hull has cracked in half before the secondary explosion occurs.
USS Cole was destroyed - put completely out of action by a smaller bomb exploded against its side carried by a outboard-motor fishing boat.
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Wasn’t in brought back to America on a salvage ship that looks like a dry dock? This is what I remember. That the USS Cole could not return under its own propulsion.