Loss as an integrating indicator of security
Life is the highest value to which all other values are subject.
A. Einstein
A. Einstein
Prologue
According to the European Commission, on average, human life is estimated at 3 million euros. The most valuable is the life of a male child - growing up, the little man will be able to produce a large amount of material benefits necessary for the reproduction of the next generations. Of course, the number of 3 million is arbitrary. Human life is not a market commodity, and the idea of its value is necessary only when calculating the amounts of insurance compensations and when assessing the need to take additional security measures.
Unfortunately, life is not priceless: our whole story - This is a series of continuous wars. And yet, every soldier and sailor, traveling to distant shores, believes that he is lucky and he can return home alive.
The greatest interest is the protection of warships - places of mass gathering of people, where a large number of combustible and explosive substances interspersed with critical equipment is concentrated in a confined space. Its failure can cause the death of the entire crew.
In unison with the demand for the preservation of human lives, the problem of the security of the ship itself sounds: after all, where the fragile human body could survive, all expensive instruments and mechanisms would remain. As a result, a radical reduction in the cost of subsequent repairs and an increase in the combat stability of the ship. Even receiving serious combat damage, he will be able to continue the task. Depending on the situation, it will save an even greater number of human lives and, possibly, will ensure victory in the war.
Tsushima phenomenon
According to ship engineer VP. Kostenko, the squadron battleship "Eagle" received 150 hits with Japanese shells of various calibers during the battle. It is worth considering that the engineer Kostenko (the author of remarkable memoirs “On the Orel” in Tsushima ”) hardly had the opportunity one night before handing over the battleship to carefully examine each compartment - his data, for the most part, are recorded in captivity according to other crew members . As a result, Kostenko’s memoirs featured a series of horrible scenes describing the results of hitting different parts of the ship, but there is no exact damage pattern indicating the locations of each of the 150 mentioned shells.
Foreign sources provide more realistic damage estimates. So a direct participant in the Tsushima battle, a British officer, William Pekinham (was an observer on board the battleship Asahi), later counted 76 hits in the Eagle, incl. five hits with 12-inch shells; eleven 8 and 10 inch shells; thirty-nine hits with 6-inch shells and 21 with small-caliber shells. According to this data and the photos taken, an atlas of damage to the Eagle for the British Navy was later compiled.
The world was impressed with the results of the Tsushima battlefield - one of the largest naval battles of the era of armor and steam. In practice, the correctness (or erroneousness) of certain concepts and technical solutions was confirmed. The Eagle was particularly striking - the only one of the five newest EBRs of the 2 Pacific Pacific Squadron, which managed to survive the rout. Such "rarities" have never fallen into the hands of naval specialists. The Eagle became a unique exhibit, demonstrating the enormous vitality of large armored ships, the forerunners of the era of dreadnoughts, alive.
Three hours under heavy fire! There is no living space left on the ship.
On the spardek and on the surface decks, chaos was formed from the wreckage of steel, plucked light bulkheads and broken pieces of equipment. Interdeck ladders were almost everywhere demolished, as they were swept away and twisted by explosions of high-explosive shells. For communication between the decks it was necessary to use the holes formed in the decks, lowering the cable ends and pre-prepared ladders in them.
But the terrible evidence of "meetings" with 113-kg "blanks" flying at two speeds of sound:
An 8-inch projectile struck armor above the gun port of the aft casemate. Its fragments smashed the port cover, and the armor in the place of impact instantly heated and melted, forming steel icicles.
In the stern casemate on the left side, an 8-inch projectile blasted into the semiport and burst upon impact into the cannon of the cannon was thrown from the base of the cannon. The entire servant of the gun was disabled, and the commander of the dungeon, Ensign Kalmyks, disappeared without a trace. Apparently, he was thrown overboard through the gun port.
In the stern casemate on the left side, an 8-inch projectile blasted into the semiport and burst upon impact into the cannon of the cannon was thrown from the base of the cannon. The entire servant of the gun was disabled, and the commander of the dungeon, Ensign Kalmyks, disappeared without a trace. Apparently, he was thrown overboard through the gun port.
Even more damage was caused by 12-inch Japanese "suitcases" with shimozy (the mass of the projectile - 386 kg).
The 12-inch projectile hit the front corner of the casemate armor of the left side, loosened the thin trim and made a huge gap in the mess-room level with the battery deck. But the casemate armor 3 inches thick and 2-inch deck survived the explosion without damage.
Another hit!
From shaking all the objects fixed on the bulkheads flew off, and the tools flew out of the cabinets and scattered around the deck. A man in the workshop twice overturned his head.
Two 12-inch projectile hit the bow compartment on the battery deck, which housed the cabin of the conductors. The entire right front clump was torn out; it fell overboard with all the fixings.
(It is difficult to verify this information - perhaps the damage described was caused by hits of 8 or 10-inch shells).
Despite such a fierce fire, the battleship continued to fight in full force. Destruction on the spardek did not affect the performance of cars, boilers and steering devices. The EBR has fully maintained the course and controllability. There was no serious damage in the underwater part: the risk of overturning due to loss of stability was minimized. As before, the right cannon of the forward turret of the Civil Code operated, using manual feed of ammunition. On the starboard side was one of the 6-inch towers, another aft 6-inch left-side tower retained its limited functionality.
And yet the "Eagle" was not an immortal hero.
By the end of the day, he had almost completely exhausted his ability to resist: armor plates were loosened by numerous shells hit. All the food was engulfed in flames: bulkheads deformed from strong heating, thick smoke covered the battleship, forcing the servants to leave the GK aft tower. By that time, the stern tower had completely fired its ammunition, and the glass of the fire control devices were so smoked that the system was out of order. In the lower rooms there was a strong smoke, which hampered the work of the machine team. On the decks, 300 was strolling in tons of water that had accumulated there during fire fighting.
The second such battle could not be sustained by the EB. But he was still heading for Vladivostok, confidently moving under its own power! Losses among his crew were 25 people killed ...
Total 25 people? But how? After all, the "Eagle" was literally riddled with enemy shells!
In death agony tremble body,
The thunder of guns, and the noise, and the walls,
And the ship is swept by the sea of fire
It is time to say goodbye.
Such desperate pictures of the sea battle draws the imagination while sounding the song “Varyag”! How does this fit the story of the beaten "Eagle"?
No match. The Eagle is a battleship, the Varyag is an armored deck cruiser, where the deck crew and gunners worked on the open deck under enemy fire (by the way, in that battle during Chemulpo, the Varyag’s irretrievable losses were 37 people. In less than one hour and much lower density of enemy fire).
25 MAN ... Unthinkable!
What was the strength of the battleship crew?
On board the "Eagle" was about 900 sailors. Thus, the irretrievable loss was less than 3% of the crew size! And this is at the then level of development of medicine. Nowadays, many of those 25 unhappy ones could probably be saved.
And what was the number of wounded? V. Kofman names in his monograph the number of 98 people who received injuries of varying degrees of severity.
Despite dozens of hits and brutal injuries of the battleship, the main part of the EBR Eagle team got off in a fright after the battle. The reason is clear: they were UNDER THE PROTECTION OF THE BOOKING.
... thanks to the work of the bilge-fire division, commanded by midshipman Karpov. He harbored people under the armor deck, while he himself ran out for reconnaissance and called up the division only in case of serious fires.
Michman Karpov did everything right. People do not need to once again protrude from under the armor. Risk is a noble cause, but not in a sea battle, where there is an “exchange” of supersonic blanks weighing several centners.
Why, then, did the rest of the Eagle sisterships die?
EDB "Prince Suvorov": not a single man escaped from his crew (except for the squadron headquarters; the senior officers left the burning battleship in advance and moved to the "Violent" destroyer).
EDB "Alexander III": died with his crew.
EDB "Borodino": from 866, a man of his team was raised from the water just one sailor - martyr Semyon Yushchyn.
The answer is simple - these ships got even more hits with Japanese shells (estimated - more than 200). As a result, they completely lost their stability, overturned and sank. However, the Prince Suvorov, torn by explosives, stubbornly did not want to sink, and to the last one fought back from the aft three-inch. The Japanese had to plant four more torpedoes into it, which caused critical destruction in the underwater part of the battleship.
As the practice of naval battles of the first half of the twentieth century showed, at that moment when the armored monster fell on board in exhaustion, and the rooms on its upper decks turned into solid ruins, as a rule, the 2 / 3 teams were still alive and healthy. Armor protection until the end of its mission.
Most of the sailors from the crews of the sunken battleships did not die under a hail of Japanese shells. Heroes drowned in the cold waves of the Tsushima Strait, when their ships went to the bottom.
Other Russian battleships who survived the Tsushima defeat were subjected to less fire impact from the enemy, but also demonstrated surprising security:
Old Emperor Nikolai I (1891): 5 dead, 35 injured (from the crew of 600 + people!).
Sisoy the Great (1896): 13 dead, 53 injured.
Little Battleship Admiral General Apraksin (1899): 2 dead, 10 injured.
The flagship of Admiral Togo battleship "Mikasa", Yokosuka.
Mikasa, battery deck with 3 'guns
These conclusions are precisely confirmed by the data of the opposite side. The Japanese honestly admitted that their flagship battleship "Mikasa" was mercilessly beaten in the Tsushima battle - 40 of Russian shells hit itincluding ten 12-inch blanks. Of course, this was too little to sink such a powerful ship. The irretrievable loss of the crew "Mikasy" have made 8 people. Another 105 sailors were injured.
The security of these monsters is simply amazing.
Heroes of our time
Flew a century. What heights have shipbuilders achieved today? The latest technology has allowed to turn ships into unsinkable fortresses, whose security can be envied by the heroes of bygone eras!
Guided missile destroyer weapons Sheffield. Burned out and sank from an unexploded rocket stuck in it. The victims of the fire were 20 people (with the number of 287 crews in people and the availability of modern fire extinguishing equipment and personal protection - heat-resistant suits made of Nomex material).
Frigate with guided missile "Stark". He was attacked by two small-sized RCCs, one of which did not explode. The rockets "flashed" the tin board of the frigate and flew in triumph into the cockpit of the personnel. The result is 37 dead, 31 injured. Sailors of the battleship "Eagle" would be very surprised by this state of affairs.
If all of the above coffins were somehow justified by the imperfection of their design (synthetic interior decoration, superstructure made of aluminum-magnesium alloys), then our next hero bravely struggled with his best security among all modern ships. The main structural material of the hull and superstructure is steel. Local booking using 130 tons of Kevlar. Aluminum "armor" plates 25 mm thick covering the ammunition cellars and the destroyer's combat information center. Automated systems of struggle for survivability, protection against weapons of mass destruction ... Not a ship, but a fairy tale!
The real security of destroyers of the Orly Burk type was demonstrated by the incident with the destroyer Cole. A pair of Arab ragplains on a felucca worth $ 300 have easily knocked out the newest super ship worth $ 1,5 billion. Close NAVIGATING explosion 200 kg of explosives smashed the engine room, turning the destroyer into a fixed target overnight. The blast wave literally “burned” Cole diagonally, destroying all the mechanisms and premises of the personnel on his way. The destroyer completely lost combat effectiveness, the victims of the attack were 17 American sailors. Another 39 were urgently evacuated to a military hospital in Germany. A single blast disabled the 1 / 6 part of the team!
These are the “heights” achieved by modern shipbuilders, turning their masterpieces into mass graves. In the case of the first fire contact with the enemy, these terribly expensive, but flimsy ships are guaranteed to carry most of their crew to the bottom.
Finale
The discussion on the need for armor has repeatedly been raised on the pages of the Military Review. Let me quote only three general points:
1. Nowadays, it is not necessary to install too thick armor, which was used on battleships and dreadnoughts in the early twentieth century. The most common of modern anti-ship weapons (Exochet, Harpoon) have negligible armor penetration compared to large-caliber shells of the Russian-Japanese war.
2. By additional costs it is possible to create an anti-ship weapon capable of overcoming any armor. But the size and cost of such a weapon will negatively affect its mass character - the number of missiles and the number of their possible carriers will decrease, their number in one salvo will decrease. That will greatly facilitate the life of the ship's anti-aircraft gunners, increasing their chances of fighting off using active means of self-defense.
3. Broken armor does not guarantee success. The system of isolated compartments with armored bulkheads, equipment duplication and distribution, together with modern systems for survivability, will help to avoid the simultaneous failure of all important systems. Thereby maintaining the combat capability of the ship in full or in part.
And of course, armor will save human lives. Which are priceless.
Based on:
"On the" Eagle "in Tsushima", V.P. Kostenko.
“Tsushima: analysis against facts”, V. Kofman.
http://tsushima.su
Information