The Gun Counter

That torpedo went off more or less under the missile magazine.

Stripped ship means no fire, no secondary explosions, etc.

And if the sea weren't so calm, no doubt the ends of the ship would work a little more and, well, detach.

Mike OTDP wrote:I'd bet good odds the missiles had dummy warheads. Targets are scarce, they try to keep them afloat as long as possible.

And don't forget that the Exocet that burned the Sheffield during the Falklands War had a dud warhead. The fire that sank her was from the missile's fuel.

Jericho941 wrote:

Precision wrote:I have to say I was not impressed with the damage done by 2 anti ship missiles and a torpedo. I would have expected a sunk ship. That ship was still VERY usable assuming the engines (etc) would still run.

Look at the way the flight deck and hangar were busted up, and check out this diagram. I'm guessing engine power is out of the question.

The torpedo also seems to have settled any notion of using the missile launcher (if it still had one).

I would guess that the first hit, the one to the hull, would have penetrated most of the way through the compartments in the middle of the ship. With a full warhead, that would have knocked out the ship right there.

The 2nd hit, would have taken out most of the CIC spaces.

The torpedo hit was probably on the bow on purpose, had it hit under the midships, it would have torn her in two. But with the bow being so narrow, much of its energy was dumped into the area of the sea that had nothing on top of it. Still the stress buckling was rather impressive.

We used to call them "Little Grey Missile Sponges."

yeah, I remember of an action involving a Rockeye and an Israeli boat. Still afloat but completely denuded of anything useful topside -- a thorough and complete mission kill courtesy of all those little bomblets. Scoured the topside.

I remember a couple of decades ago the US Navy experimented with using the old unguided MLRS missiles on a target ship. It was nasty in that it pretty well stripped the antennas and stuff off the topside and would have probably killed a lot of crew. I think they gave up on it because of the high trajectory of the MLRS rockets and the guided low altitude missiles were in the pipe line.