Well, the armor, compartmentation, and massive emphasis on damage control and firefighting make it unlikely a Nimitz would be sunk or wrecked by large naval guns. Even less likely it would be sunk or seriously damaged by small land-based howitzers, which are typically much less effective than naval guns.
Moving into extremely unlikely that a single howitzer popping off a few rounds would accomplish the task.
Why not try the proven, effective way, and get a bunch of two-year-term budget hawks elected to Congress?
It doesn’t have to be sunk or wrecked, just “disabled”. Presumably it would be enough to make the flight deck unusable, or even just the steam catapults.
It’s why I suggested a Mortar, at least—smaller weapon, comparatively large bomb. You wouldn’t sink the carrier, but you might disable it for awhile, as well as disrupting other carrier port operations with the terror value.
On the other hand, though, with the Howitzer approach, depending on the gun, it looks like you could actually reach San Diego with a gun placed outside of Tijuana. Even better results might be met using GPS guided shells.
Obviously to sink a ship you are aided by the sympathetic explosions which the armaments you use ignite. The shells themselves don’t have to sink the vessel; the massive conflagration they cause by detonating stored munitions, aviation fuel tanks and fuel-laden aircraft most certainly could,especially since it would be a sneak attack.
It’s not as if someone prior to launching an attack with a howitzer would fire a warning shot first. Or call ahead and schedule an appointment. With a sustained firing rate of 4-6 shells a minute and roughly 10-15 minutes of firing time before local law enforcement was available to somehow prevent this from occurring, between 40-90 rounds could strike their target.
And a much longer rate of fire could be sustained if the howitzer were located just across the Mexican border as it would be at minimum 1/2 hour before anyone would muster enough testicular fortitude to launch a military strike on a foreign nation. ANd that strike would still have to take out the offending weapon.
There is historical precedent for this: Land based guns of exceptionally small calibers denied British and French naval vessels access to the Dardanelles during the initial stages Gallipoli Campaign. And those were vessels which were EXPECTING to come under fire; not a vessel moored in port with a portion of its crew ashore.
Finally, the question asked about DISABLING, not sinking the vessel. 20-40 armor-piercing rounds on target are going to disable almost any vessel, regardless of its size and armor.
Since you brought up the system and I did not, I was giving you the opportunity to support your statements with factual examples from credible sources. Not a “Scotsman fallacy” at all; the US military is less inclined to give honest assessments of weapons systems for which the have lobbied Congress and have given exceptionally glowing reviews. An example of this was the performance of the Patriot missile system in defending Israel during the Second Gulf War.
You don’t know me and you have no idea how I will respond to a given question. I have given you the courtesy of not assuming how you would respond to a statement; it would be nice if you returned the favor.
Again…this would be a sneak attack against an unprepared target. If a modicum of planning were put into it, then historical evidence favors that the attack will almost certainly be partially, if not completely, successful.
Sigh indeed. US supercarriers of the Nimitz class and beyond are regarded as exceptionally durable ships, not just for their armor and size, but for the massive amount of damage-control systems (particularly firefighting) and the constant state of training the crews are kept in. Sure, you could mess it up, but I think you don’t give enough credit to the damage-resistance of these ships. No one expects them to endure sustained, heavy naval attack without damage – but you’re not talking about sustained, heavy, or even naval attack, are you?
Also, a howitzer would indeed fire a ranging shot or shots, unless we’re talking about satellite-targeted smart shells, at which point you’re talking about a nation-state we probably would not moor a carrier in, not some Mexican yahoo with a howitzer.
Lastly, I’m going to dispute your interpretation of the Dardanelles attack. Firstly, your characterization of the land-based guns as “exceptionally small calibers.” I am unable to find citations for the size of all the Turkish fortress guns – Wikipedia mentions only one size, 9.4 inches – but here’s a page mentioning 355mm (14-inch) fortress guns at Gallipoli. I don’t see a count of how many there were, but the first gun type is described as having been in three different forts. That page also shows the 280mm (11-inch) and 240mm (9.4-inch) naval guns.
There were also some small 6-inch howitzers present, I acknowledge. However, reading about the attack, it seems the ship losses were due to mines, not guns, and that the shore fire (including that from the small howitzers) drove off these small minesweepers.
Note that the minesweepers, specifically, were crewed by civilian volunteers, not Royal Navy personnel:
[QUOTE=Wikipedia]
The minesweepers, commanded by Carden’s chief of staff, Roger Keyes, were merely un-armoured trawlers manned by their civilian crews who were unwilling to work while under fire.
[/QUOTE]
How did they do? Wikipedia has a quote from one of the officers:
Allow me to repeat, for clarity:
That doesn’t indicate to me that the big ships fled from howitzers, as you imply, but that the civilian minesweeper crews fled fire that had not shaken picket boats crewed by naval personnel.
What about laying a trap with really big air tanks that embubble the water under and around the carrier? The carrier would sink into the low-density froth. It’d take considerable stores of air, and you’d have to get your timing right to ensure the air is released under the carrier–maybe you channel the air to the target zone using really long hoses. But I’d bet that would work. The Royal Smart Person should be able to develop the process & equipment and calculate the necessary volume of air required.
Relatively cheap, no fallout, no noise, no proof who did it.
The question asked about disabling the carrier. A direct armor piercing round to the aviation fuel tanks or a munitions storage locker would do just that. Since no one has ever done this with a howitzer (or been in a position to do so for that matter), it is as I have stated, a speculative attack whose purpose would be terror.
Also, there is a thing called math. Especially trigonometry. It wouldn’t be exceptionally difficult to hit an anchored target with a howitzer again using a gun crew who is experienced with the weapon and with firing at targets at the remote edge of its range.
The reason that I brought up Gallipoli was not that vessels were sunk (which if you read my posting I did not say) but that armored naval vessels were loathe to enter the straits because of land based guns. I KNOW how the minesweeper and battleships weren’t sunk using them; since it was due to mines, and not germane to the point I was making, I didn’t bother mentioning that either.
A howitzer attack on a docked carrier would be unique because:
[ol]
[li]It would be unexpected[/li][li]There’s little if anything the vessel could do to prevent it.[/li][li]It would be relatively inexpensive for a group looking to do so.[/li][li]If would effectively damage the carrier,especially (yet again) if it caused sympathetic explosions using on board aviation fuel and/or munitions.[/li][/ol]
The “damage control” on the vessel would largely be irrelevant as it would be unlikely that would able to do anything until the firing stopped. Not much point having your damage control crews (which would be minimal on a docked vessel) be killed before they could effectively fight any fires on board.
We could certainly go back and forth all day, but it would be rather pointless. I think that I have made my points and you disagree with them. That’s your right and we can leave it at that.
The official story is that a cigarette made it to HAZMAT storage and ignited the rags. Personally I find that hard to believe and think someone usedna cigarette as a fuse. So, disabling a carrier with some high volatile solvent rags, boyscout skill, and a cigarette.
Another way would be to constantly cover the ship in metal fragments that would get sucked up into the aircraft turbines. That’d would effectively negate it’s primary purpose.
Lastly, ramming it while in transit at some straight, like at Hormuz.
The Russians still have powerful ship-borne guns so much so you’ll hope the saying “A carrier is the most heavily protected ship in the US navy” still runs true.
Ok, apparently the “urge to win” is strong with you…stronger than rational argument.
“A direct armor piercing round to the aviation fuel tanks or a munitions storage locker…” Sure. But those things are armored and placed deep in the ship specifically so that doesn’t happen, certainly not from something as small as Howie the Howitzer. But I guess if we imagine the ships were designed differently, we could imagine this working.
Math and triangulation! Why didn’t…oh…everyone who’s ever fought in a war think of those! Despite the efforts of armchair artillerists everywhere, it turns out it’s actually pretty hard in practice to hit targets at the edge of your range. That’s why it’s usually done with ranging shots, as I described. Sure, once in a while someone gets a hit on the first try – in 1944, a black artillery unit in France put three shells into the air in response to a fire mission and scored two direct hits on a German armored vehicle at a range of nine miles. But people are still talking about that today because it’s unusual.
And regarding “but that armored naval vessels were loathe to enter the straits because of land based guns.” Well, indirectly I guess you have a point, in the same way that they were loathe to enter the strait because of Gavrilo Princip. But in terms of more direct cause-and-effect, no. The quote I have (fro an actual person who was present) says that UNARMORED light ships were undeterred by the gunfire. The idea that the heavy armored ships were deterred by guns doesn’t even come up. They were deterred by mines. The heavy armored ships wanted to come to grips with the land-based guns; the light, weak ships weren’t deterred by them either. It was the civilian volunteers who were deterred by the Turkish shelling.
Regarding damage control: a carrier is a huge thing, made mostly of steel. The valuable parts are covered by more steel, and (as much as is possible) located deep within more steel. It’s all subdivided into smaller working units that can operate independently, and filled with redundancy.
Historian John Keegan has written that postwar surveys of the American daylight bombing campaign against Germany showed that it’s extraordinarily difficult to damage high-grade steel machinery with high explosives.
What will likely happen is that your howitzer shells will probe for weak spots and the like in a vast, hard, dense object, doing local damage only. You may incidentally kill people exposed on the deck and so on, but it would take a very lucky hit to disable the carrier, and you have zero chance of killing enough crew to take out the damage control parties. Damage control is all about getting the carrier undisabled as fast as possible – i.e., undoing the thing you’re trying to do.
A lot of people are mentioning the use of WWII technology, like naval guns. No one gets close to each other any more, carriers are hundres of miles off of any given coast as the aircraft have a huge range which allows this. Getting close enough to do damage would be unlikely as a ship with “naval” guns would be detected long before it got in range and would be attacked. Also, factor in radar, intel, satellite imagery, and sonar. So, getting in close with a big ship with naval guns would be hard if not possible.
As I was actually in the US Navy for 8 years, I have never seen a large group of ships sail together. Maybe at the beginning and end of a deployment but not while on deployment. We usually break-up into our respective “groups” for our related missions. This complement can vary from many to just a ship by itself. A carrier will probably have a DDG or a CG with is along with a SSN. Maybe throw in a supply ship (or two).
Outside of being moored, or going through a straight or canal, it will be hard to get to a ship. The best bet would be a USS Cole type attack, wait for the CVN to be moored, where CIWS won’t be active (as you are in a port and there is too much traffic for it to be effective), at peak harbor/port hours you zip in a fishing boat. Disguise it looking like it has a huge catch and have a big motor on it. Cruise along normal to get within a 100’ or so and then punch it. Which is basically the Cole attack. Will this actually work, as in disabling the ship where it will have to go back in for repairs, yes. Will it sink, nope. Will the ship be able to continue on deployment? Depends where it was hit and how much explosive. Getting a larger fishing boat with a 3-4 tons of explosive on it tamped by sand to direct the blast forward would do a lot of damage.
Also, the notion of multiple redundant spaces is not true. A ship might have two or more engineering “main spaces” but to consider them redundant is incorrect. If a ship has two props then each main space will power one prop. There is no way to transfer power from one to another. If there were then the integrity of the main spaces would be compromised. So, you make them fully independant of each other and that is how they are run. The notion of a myriad maze of compartments that can be sealed off to contain flooding is true. The primary and secondary damage control “control” spaces can assume each others roles 100% though.
