When will “Zamvolt” overturn?
"An unequal battle. The ship lurches ours. Save our human souls!" - Vladimir Vysotsky sang.
Now story with the lurching ship gained special importance. On the Internet, there appeared a mass of experts concerned with the stability and magnitude of the metacentric height of the new American destroyer.
“Zamvolt” really looks unusual. But maritime history knows examples of ships with a much more paradoxical design. Which, at first glance, could not keep on an even keel.
Japanese battleship pagodas
The ships of the sons of Amateras were distinguished by their own unique color.
The main “decoration” of all Japanese battleships was an extremely high superstructure, in which foreigners saw the features of classical Shinto pagodas. The highest was the “pagoda” of the battleship “Fuso”, it climbed up to 40 meters - like a modern twelve-story house!
Externally similar to the disorderly conglomeration of bridges and battle posts, in reality the “pagoda” was built strictly according to Feng Shui. Each level was designed for a specific task: a running bridge with an excellent overview - for the commander and helmsmen, navigator bridge, observation platforms, artillery rangefinder posts - for main, medium and universal caliber guns.
This structural element can be considered a brilliant find, if it were not about a warship, which, like any other watercraft, would have to meet the requirements of stability. Those. be able to withstand external disturbances, causing it to roll or trim, and return to equilibrium at the end of the disturbing influence.
In addition to the 40-meter “pagoda”, the battleship “Fuso” carried on the mighty shoulders of SIX towers of the main caliber - bulky rotating structures, whose front plates had a thickness of 28 centimeters. Each tower weighed 620 tons - all six in total weighed four times more than the composite superstructure of the destroyer Zamvolt. Apart from 12 thousand tons of armor and dozens of smaller caliber guns. Rate the scale!
In the end, “Fuso” turned over. This did not happen before the battled battleship received a couple of torpedoes during a battle in the Surigao Strait (1944).
Atomic cruiser “Long Beach”
After launching in the 1959, the cruiser “Long Beach”
He was known and feared: Vietnamese pilots were forbidden to fly closer to the coastline closer than 100 km, so as not to be hit by anti-aircraft systems of the cruiser "Long Beach". According to the Americans themselves, the cruiser still managed to bring down a couple of MiGs. In addition to providing air defense, the cruiser was used as a command post, coordinating the actions of groups with its powerful radars aviation.
In European waters, “Long Beach” appeared infrequently, having spent most of its service in the Pacific. The sailors of the Pacific Fleet were well acquainted with its enchanting silhouette. Alas, all expectations were in vain. Despite the storms and the fighting, Long Beach never fell over under the weight of its monstrous superstructure.
Its presence was not explained by the weak-mindedness of the designers, but by the necessity of locating the antennas of the experimental Hughes radar complex SCANFAR. Like Zamvalt, that cruiser was a demonstrator of new technologies that were ahead of their time by 20-30 years.
In the late eighties, there were plans to turn the Long Beach into a strike cruiser, similar to the Soviet Orlan. However, having fallen under the action of the Russian-American arms reduction programs, the legendary cruiser went, as a result, to the dump.
Modernization "Albany"
The cruiser “Long Beach” had the same awkward-looking colleague called “Albany”.
This ship of the Second World War is famous for having undergone a sex change operation. Being built as a heavy artillery cruiser, the Albany was chosen as an experimental platform for the deployment of rocket weapons. In the course of modernization at the end of 50's. He lost all the towers, cannons and superstructure, which took the form of a tall tower.
Instead, they installed five missile systems and 12 modern radar, which turned the Albany into the heaviest armed missile cruiser in history.
The quaint appearance of the Albany cruiser did not remain without consequences. Those who stood on the bridge described a chilling fear when the 17-thousand-ton Makhina lurched around the bends. And then also reluctantly returned to an even keel.
The true dimensions of radar and missiles are evidenced by subtle human figures.
The main problem was the inadequate size of computers and the bulkiness of 60-year-old radars. Another nuisance was the irrational layout of the premises and compartments, originally designed for the installation of artillery weapons. Plus, completely useless in the existing form of armor decks, weighing over a thousand tons, but due to the changed layout, are no longer able to cover the most important compartments of the ship.
Trying to somehow reduce the “upper weight” and maintain stability, the Yankees built a superstructure of light alloys, simultaneously laying two thousand tons of lead in fuel tanks along the keel. This markedly reduced the cruising range, but Albany’s seaworthiness still left much to be desired.
However, the cruiser did not capsize. “Albany” served in a new guise for a long 18 years, fulfilling the position of the flagship of the Sixth fleet.
Fire from all trunks!
Finale
“Fed up the rhinoceros”, “the big closet falls more loudly” and other caustic comments do not reflect the situation. It is unreasonable to draw fast conclusions based only on the appearance. How large or small the stability margin of a ship can only say is “the calculation of stern nuts and steel”.
Stability and seaworthiness depend on many parameters: ship dimensions, the ratio of the length and width of the hull, the shape of the contours in the underwater part, the ratio of “top weight” and ballast reserve, the height of the bead, the depth of the draft, the distribution of weights inside the hull and superstructure ...
Nevertheless, based on the examples given and the laws of incomprehensible eternal logic, it can be noted that “Zamvolt”, with all the desire, clearly does not fall into the “risk group”. All known facts of a technical nature indicate that a destroyer is “more adequate” than his famous predecessors.
The superstructure pyramid does not exceed the “box” of the “Long Beach” cruiser in terms of dimensions, while the “Zamvolt” objectively should have an advantage due to the below-deck weapon placement and the absence of huge radar boxes for target illumination set to max. high altitude above water surface.
Due to the strong collapse of the sides, the Zamvolta structure is concentrated around the center of mass, which also has a positive effect on its stability in comparison with the ridiculous “box” and the tower of past cruisers.
Finally, the destroyer is shorter, wider and more “stocky”, which means it is a priori more stable. The dimensions of the Zamvolt are 183 x 24,5 m versus 200 ... 220 meters with the standard hull width of the American cruisers of that era 21,3 m.
As for the example with the Japanese battleship, the “Fuso” is undoubtedly a masterpiece of naval engineering. A direct comparison with the “Zamvolt” is hardly appropriate - the battleship is three times greater than its displacement. But the scale is amazing: only the towers of the main caliber weighed four times more than the entire Zamvolt superstructure (the most bulky element of the modern destroyer, 920 tons in mass). Repeated talk about the 40-meter “Pagoda” is considered superfluous.
The creators of Zamvolta know all this better than us. Not by chance, having received an official refusal to install a complete set of radars, they made changes to the project of the third destroyer of the series. Instead of light (and expensive) composites, the superstructure of the destroyer “Lyndon Johnson” will be made of ordinary structural steel.
Superstructure "Zamvolta"
The battleship "Fuso" overturns! Joke. Only tests of the counterattack system of compartments (1941)
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