Naval Pictures VI: A New Enterprise

[glitterboy2098]

so basically the ship was loaded with three different types of explodium, and the torpedo managed to hit at least one of them, probably triggering a chain reaction..

[DoctorMonkey]

Re HMS Caroline

There is a chapter on her restoration in the Haynes Manual for Dreadnought Battleships (1906-1916)


First a comment on the armament of the C class cruisers - forward 4" guns and aft facing 6" guns as they were designed to bully smaller ships with their rapid firing 4" guns but run away from larger threats while keeping them at bay with the 6" guns.


During the reconstruction they discovered a lot of original features hidden behind later additions including peeling back paint layers to find the original paint colours!


She became the drill ship for the Ulster Division of the RNVR in 1924, having been commissioned in 1914, and that was when a lot of the alterations were made including the aft deckhouse, removal of boilers and conversion of rooms to instruction spaces and workshops. After a brief hiatus in 1939-1945 she resumed her role until 2009 and decommissioned in 2011 and handed over to the National Museum of the Royal Navy.


The description of the restoration is that they used different parts of the ship to tell the different parts of her story - from Jutland, through her post-WW1 deployment to the East Indies and using the aft deckhouse as an exhibition space used to tell the story of Jutland.

[Kidd]

I heard you liek weird French warships

Cruiser Jeanne d'Arc (1899)

[worktroll]

Love it! And those stacks - very typical of French Ganymedes ;)

[JadeHellbringer]

"You call that weird? Try harder, old man."

(Suffren-class frigate)

[Ursus Maior]

Not looking as weird, but still a weird concept for that time:



Training cruiser Deutschland (A59), built between 1959-1963. With slightly less than 5.700 ts displacement, she was one of the largest (Western) German units of the Cold War, but offered almost no offensive or defensive armament worth mentioning, except for four 100 mm guns and some ASW mortars, torpedos, depth charges and mine rails. Sonar was rather anemic with not upgrades after commissioning, speed was abysmal, topping at 21 kn (cruising at 12 kn to 16 kn at the most) and air-defence was out-dated already when she was launched: while the 100 mm guns were dual-purpose and aided by two twin 40 mm and two single 40 mm, no missile systems or CIWS were added during her career.

In fact, Deutschland was never overhauled properly and in 1989 she was marked for decommissioning the following year and subsequent scrapping. She was demilitarised from 1990 onwards and scrapped at Alang in 1993.

A weird, yet interesting ship.

[beachhead1985]

"You call that weird? Try harder, old man."

(Suffren-class frigate)

I dunno...we have the mushroom boats...



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_ship_Kosmonavt_Vladimir_Komarov



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_ship_Kosmonavt_Yuriy_Gagarin

Or The Russians did, before they were scrapped.

[Kidd]

holy shit guys, size please

not even my PC monitor can deal with pixels of this magnitude

[JadeHellbringer]

What he said. Those images either need to be shrunk down or removed immediately guys. Come on.

[Ursus Maior]

Fixed the size. Sorry, totally botched this one.  :-\

[beachhead1985]

holy shit guys, size please

not even my PC monitor can deal with pixels of this magnitude

Can I do that in the forum, somehow?

[Daryk]

Yes... simply add a space, and "width=" something between 400 and 600 in the first img tag...

[Orin J.]

"You call that weird? Try harder, old man."

(Suffren-class frigate)

lucky them working on a ship with an epcot center attached!

[beachhead1985]

Yes... simply add a space, and "width=" something between 400 and 600 in the first img tag...

I will try and remember this.

[nerd]

lucky them working on a ship with an epcot center attached!

Huge air search radomes weren't unknown in that generation of escorts. Note the HNMLS Tromp (F801) and her massive air search radome.

[Colt Ward]

Huge air search radomes weren't unknown in that generation of escorts. Note the HNMLS Tromp (F801) and her massive air search radome.

He is being polite and not calling them targets, lol.

[kato]

Not looking as weird, but still a weird concept for that time:

Not really. Her peacetime role was to train officers for ships throughout the navy. Her wartime role was ASW escort, for which she was amply equipped with 2 quad Bofors 375mm ASW mortars, 2 twin 21-inch torpedo tubes, 2 depth charge rails; originally also two fixed backward-firing 21-inch TT. Design-wise - by shape - the ship was a 40% scaled-up Rhein class frigate tender.

What was actually weird about the ship was the propulsion, which was so rare that there isn't even a standard acronym for it. It really emphasized the training aspect. Basically they took the two different types of diesels built into minesweepers at the time, arranged them in a CODAD arrangement on two drive shafts like the diesel genset on the Köln class frigates, and then for good measure added a third drive train and propeller - driven by two of the boilers and a single steam turbine of the Hamburgs.

The electronics fit was similarly thrown together for training. The sonar was standard and used on the Hamburgs and the Thetis subchasers; the radar was a mix of the radars from the Hamburgs and Kölns.

[Kidd]

The only way that gets any weirder is if sail power was involved as well.

By the way, do any navies or coastguards still use sailing ships? I know there's a couple of training tall ships in service to somebody... are they any of any real use?

[kato]

The only way that gets any weirder is if sail power was involved as well.

That's what the other one was for:



The could have also added one of the BBC-built gas turbines from the Kölns... and, come on, we've got four diesels in the ship, four diesel models operated throughout the navy...

[DoctorMonkey]

The only way that gets any weirder is if sail power was involved as well.

By the way, do any navies or coastguards still use sailing ships? I know there's a couple of training tall ships in service to somebody... are they any of any real use?

Would a sailing ship enable a towed array sonar ship to generate even less sound to give away position? The power generator would be able to be even more isolated from the hull to transmit sound (of course you would need power for the sonar and things!)


Non-metal hulls are used for mine warfare ships although I think there has been a shift to glass reinforced plastics rather than using wood

[Nightlord01]

Would a sailing ship enable a towed array sonar ship to generate even less sound to give away position? The power generator would be able to be even more isolated from the hull to transmit sound (of course you would need power for the sonar and things!)


Non-metal hulls are used for mine warfare ships although I think there has been a shift to glass reinforced plastics rather than using wood

In short: No. Sailing ships are anything other than quiet, with the slap of sails and groaning of lines and joins. That's before you look into the noise of the generators required to run the equipment. :-P Wooden ships are significantly constrained by construction materials and require specialised maintenance, they are effectively worthless in the modern combat era.

The reason GRP is used in mine hunters is for magnetic reduction and resilience in the event of a near by explosion, as they don't have any strength members and flex better. It's not particularly useful in a lot of other circumstances and the GRP hulled vessels tend to have significantly worse sea keeping ability.

[Ursus Maior]

Not really. Her peacetime role was to train officers for ships throughout the navy. Her wartime role was ASW escort, for which she was amply equipped with 2 quad Bofors 375mm ASW mortars, 2 twin 21-inch torpedo tubes, 2 depth charge rails; originally also two fixed backward-firing 21-inch TT. Design-wise - by shape - the ship was a 40% scaled-up Rhein class frigate tender.

As I said, weird. ;) The weapons were ample, yes, but totally out of date by the 1970s. Yes, the Soviets were still using ASW mortars as well, but that was by no means a state of the art concept. Not even for the Baltic Sea, where she would have been fighting. With limited speed and an outdated sonar, she would have had hard times against contemporary submarines. And the Baltics would have been a hot theater, with most of the threat coming from missiles fired by Pact airforces and the numerous fast attack craft. She absolutely stood no chance from the 1970s on.

What was actually weird about the ship was the propulsion, which was so rare that there isn't even a standard acronym for it. It really emphasized the training aspect.

Yes, WAHODAGs must have been quite the nightmare. Yet another odditiy and German Sonderweg.

[Kidd]

Speaking of which

The Belgian-Dutch navies are buying a class of minehunters from the French Naval Group. They're going to be equipped with a fleet of UAV, USV and USuV drones for the task, as well as towed array sonar. The equipment is 'modular' and can be taken off; there are 12 ships but only 10 sets of equipment.

I wonder. Since the work is being done with drones and other modular equipment, will the purpose-built dedicated minehunter soon be a thing of the past?

[kato]

Since the work is being done with drones and other modular equipment

Mine countermeasures warfare work has been done with ROVs for 40 years.

The solution in this case - ECA's UMIS system - is to put the ROVs on ROVs to extend their range. You still need a dedicated control ship on site (there's a container solution for that) and - more importantly - you need facilities to deploy those ROVs. And that's what the purpose-built dedicated minehunter is for, unless you want your deployment envelope to be limited to about 10 miles from a port.

There are viable cross-solutions - in particular in connection with amphibious ships - but by and large you don't just throw 10-15 tons of equipment into the water and hope it'll come back so you can somehow rope it up back onboard.

The 10 sets of equipment for 12 ships for the two navies is btw because they're also replacing the Belgian logistics/squadron support ship Godetia, and extending the concept to the other half.

[marauder648]

Speaking of French ACR's



Bruix



Dupy de Leon - aka Yo dawg I heard ya liked a ram bow!



And finally, Waldeck Rousseau, the last of the French armoured cruisers, armed with 14 x 7.6-inch guns on a 23 knot hull.

[Colt Ward]

In short: No. Sailing ships are anything other than quiet, with the slap of sails and groaning of lines and joins. That's before you look into the noise of the generators required to run the equipment. :-P Wooden ships are significantly constrained by construction materials and require specialised maintenance, they are effectively worthless in the modern combat era.

You did have 'modern' sailing ships with steel hulls (USCGS Eagle), or if its just a sonar platform like the fake tuna boats TASwhatever, it could be fiberglass.

Speaking of the Eagle . . .


I hear some keep trying to retire her but she keeps on sailing . . .

[DaveMac]

Found by same team that located Argentinean sub last year

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/22/french-submarine-minerve-found-50-years-after-disappearance

[Kidd]

Those guys do get around. I think Ocean Infinity is the leading private contractor in this field?

Found just 45km off Toulon. Imagine, there's so much of our own planet we don't know, like what's on the seabed just a few klicks off the coast.

[Wrangler]

Well, something naval related being developed.  I found this report about Royal Navy doing trials for their "IronMan" competition.  Essentially it's a Jetpack,  a former Royal Marine developed.  It's part of ability of Marines or other personal to use a Jet pack to fly over to a speeding boat. 

Personally, as much i like seeing new gizmos being attempted for the services, i think this big bulleye for would be armed thugs who see bunch a guys fly over.  There a link shows a demo of a patrol boat, HMS Dasher, with this fellow flying his jet pack from it and to another boat and back while it's moving. Also, i can't imagine how much fuel something like that can manage to carry. Old 1970s Jet packs barely had like less than minute of flight range before they ran out gas.


Image of the HMS Dasher from shipspotting website.

[Colt Ward]

I would think the problem is how often you might have to fish the guy out of the drink . . . if the weight did not pull him immediately under.

Btw, what is that in the background?  Looks like some WWII bunker.