Random question thrown up from my mind’s murky depths while reading a former Navy person’s Facebook page where he commented that he’d spent a lot of time at sea and hurricanes were nothing new to him.
So suddenly I wondered if it were possible to capsize an aircraft carrier. I mean, big, big, BIG ship, but still a speck as far as the oceans are concerned. And if it IS possible, what would it take to do so? Broadsided by a freak big wave? Cat 8 hurricane winds[sup]1[/sup]? Temperamental kraken?
For the sake of the argument, we’re talking a ship the size of the USS Enterprise, length 1,123 ft, beam 132.8 ft (at the waterline) or 257.2 ft (widest), and displacing 93,284 long tons.
[sup]1[/sup]Yes, I know the scale only goes to 5. I’m exaggerating for effect.
I was on the FORRESTAL and was in some really, really rough weather, but capsizing was never an issue that I was aware of. I doubt a carrier would ever capsize. Too many ways to take on counterweights. I am not an expert though.
Not really in the real world for Nimitz Class aircraft carriers outside of extreme hull damage caused by an outside attack or an internal explosion. It is perfectly possible to debilitate one through an attack which is one reason they always travel with a convoy of protective battleships, submarines and other support ships but the aircraft carriers themselves can survive all types of high seas caused by hurricanes, typhoons and rogue waves just fine. It would take an extremely unusual event to capsize one. We are talking hand-of-God type events, not just a regular storms no matter how strong nor rogue waves.
They sometimes lose aircraft and people over the side because of extreme weather and it may not be that comfortable to the thousands of people on it but the carrier isn’t in danger due to any seas normally found on Earth. It takes a tremendous amount of energy to roll one past 7 degrees and that isn’t remotely close to capsizing.
Fun Fact: Nimitz class carriers are among the fastest, if not the fastest, ships in the Navy. They can move faster than most storms when they need to (it is classified but likely about 50 mph) so there is no need for them to face the worst of the vast majority of storms as long as the weather forecasters are paying attention (it is the military so plenty will be).
Yeah, I probably should have said I was thinking of “natural” causes, not man-made ones.
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I don’t know why, but I find the idea of windshield wipers on an aircraft carrier hysterical.
That said, thanks. The information is interesting. From the video, it appears that the ship is pointed into the waves, but from your first paragraph it sounds as if even a rogue wave hitting it along the side wouldn’t be able to tip it much, much less capsize it. Do I interpret correctly?
I guess the question now moves into IMHO territory; in real world conditions, it can’t be capsized (by natural forces). How outré would the natural forces have to be on the open sea (not close to shore) to capsize an aircraft carrier?
Yes, that is correct. Think of it this way. The ocean is huge and powerful but an aircraft carrier is also built to be inherently stable and is massive. The open ocean doesn’t have a way to target all of its energy to capsize a modern aircraft carrier. The energy the ocean has is immense but distributed and all it can produce are individual waves that the carrier can survive just fine because the carrier is even more massive than the waves that hit it directly no matter what the direction.
The MV Derbyshire wasn’t quite the size of the Enterprise, but she was 965 feet long and 145 feet on the beam, with a gross register tonnage of a bit over 91,000. She was lost with all hands in Typhoon Orchid in 1980, and never even sent out a mayday signal. One of the (multiple) investigations into her loss theorized one or more rogue waves over 92 feet smashing down on her cargo hatches caused them to give way and allow the ship to founder; other theories speculate a structural failure.
Chains tie down the aircraft at various points on the aircraft and hook into recessed anchor points built into the deck. Every so often the Integrity Watch Officer inspects all aircraft connections on the flight deck.
I think the only realistic way to capsize an aircraft carrier would be to fire a nuclear weapon set to explode underwater, which isn’t how they are normally targeted. I don’t think much else would manage to do it, any weather that isn’t some kind of super-disaster (like the mega tsunami mentioned above) just isn’t focused enough.
Slight nitpick, the US Navy hasn’t had active battleships since 1990, and before that didn’t maintain one for each aircraft carrier. Carriers normally do have destroyers and cruisers escorting them, but battleships aren’t used now and weren’t always with carriers even during WW2.
Why the specification of the open sea? It’d be a lot easier close to shore. That mega-tsunami, for instance, would barely be noticed by a ship on the open sea, even a ship much smaller than a carrier.
You need to think about this issue a different way. Ships are inherently stable. In theory while they remain intact they are unsinkable because even if they were to capsize they would right themselves because they are inherently stable.
Whether heavy weather can capsize a ship depends. If once again we assume the ship stays intact, there would be no prospect of any known wave capsizing a large ship while the ship remains headed into the seas.
If the ship turns broadside on, things tend to get very hairy. For instance, I know of a large ship which was struggling in severe weather. It was doing OK, but things weren’t easy because it was a ship with high windage (ie lots of area above the waterline, just like a carrier) and the seas were sufficient that the prop and rudder were lifting out of the water as it went over the largest waves, which made steering hard (not impossible, but hard). Then it got caught at an angle to the conditions sufficient to catch the bow and turn the ship fully broadside on. This wouldn’t have been a problem but then the extreme rolling caused the engine lubricating oil pumps to lose suction which caused the main engine to shut down. In the time it took to restart the main engines the rolling was so bad it caused other damage. It all turned out OK in this case. But what can happen is that the rolling is so bad it causes things to break loose and move to one side. This can certainly happen on cargo vessels, I don’t know if it is theoretically possible for, say, all the aircraft or other stuff on an aircraft carrier to break free and move to one side. But if so you may have stability issues.
The other thing is damage. Below waterline damage can cause loss of stability very quickly. Just ask Captain Schettino.
Funny, but AIUI, salt-water spray corrosion is an important design consideration for Navy aircraft (as opposed to Air Force aircraft); that video shows why.
I’d bet it would be possible to overturn one of those pint-size carriers – the ones that are jump jet or helicopter carriers, or sometimes classified as assault ships. The Brits had a couple of them, but I don’t think they’re still in service.
Talking of mega-tsunamis: There’s a lot of high amplitude wave right near the origin that folks have skipped over. As folks have said, once the wave gets out away from whatever generated it, it’ll be mostly imperceptible except to instruments. Until it approaches shore and will again build amplitude.
So a carrier that happens to be cruising past a coast just as a major landslide occurs or is out to sea and happens to be near a major meteor impact could be overwhelmed as well. These are natural forces acting on an undamaged ship. But they’re also 99-point-lots-of-nines-percent unlikely and probably outside the design considerations.
The key thing any military vessel will have over a cargo carrier is greater overall mechanical robustness. Ref Princhester’s scenario, a carrier has multiple independent engines, backup lube systems, and relatively little shiftable cargo. And is overall simply of stronger construction. So compared to a comparably-sized cargo vessel the same insults produce less damage & especially reduce the tendency for problems and damage to snowball.
Yeah, no. Many powerboats can’t do 50 mph except in glassy water. The Nimitz class likely tops out around 33-34 knots. It just appears to be very fast because it can go from a cruise to full power without having to bring extra boilers on line or anything, and because it can run at its maximum speed for long periods. Good prior thread here (particularly links in post 23).
From a carrier’s point of view, normal seas are glassy. What matters is the size of the waves relative to the size of the vessel, and an aircraft carrier is a lot bigger than a speedboat.
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