Somethingawfulin sotaveteraanifoorumilta bongattu:
Acebuckeye13Apr 19, 2022
Some interesting commentary from Jon Parshall, co-author of Shattered Sword, on the loss of Moskva:
quote: A lot of interest continues to be shown in Moskva's demise, and there are some illuminating analyses running around out there from various folks (Tom Cooper's is excellent). So I'll just try to paraphrase what I've been reading out there. There's been a lot of scuttlebutt regarding Moskva's damage control capabilities, and this internal plan of the ship says a lot. Basically, her main damage control center was in the space directly between her two main machinery spaces. In other words, very close to where she got clobbered. It's unknown whether the initial hit(s) also took out her propulsion along with her main DC center, but let's just say the prognosis wouldn't be good. If her engines go offline right at the outset, that's very bad news from a pumping standpoint, obviously (and pumps are used both to control flooding *and* to power fire-fighting hoses).
Furthermore, every indication we have is that the ship never knew what hit her. Her main SAM radars are all trained fore and aft, meaning they didn't engage the incoming targets, and might not have even detected them. Which, in turn, means that her crew wasn't in any way ready for the catastrophe that overtook her. Think about what that must have been like for most of the crew. The first indication you have that something's wrong is hearing the explosion. Then all the lights go out, the ship is pitch black, and the corridors start filling with smoke. And now you need to get to your action stations and start trying to save the ship. If you're not well-trained, or don't know your way around the vessel in the dark, you start off the game at a huge disadvantage. And again, thorough training is something that seems to have gone by the boards for a lot of the Russian military. According to Tom, an observer who was on board the ship a decade ago had a litany of bad things to say about Moskva's DC capabilities: equipment and hoses not well maintained, hose fittings painted over or ill-fitting or corroded, outdated personal firefighting and breathing gear, and DC equipment not decentralized in stations around the ship. The latter is particularly damning, in that redundancy is a key to survivability. Having lots of smaller damage control stations that can each contribute something to saving the vessel is a *much* better design solution than having one great big station with all the capabilities. Because "fluke hits" actually happen *all the time* in war! The scale of the fire in the photos is sobering. It's pretty clear from the soot further aft on her hull that at one point Moskva was on fire internally all the way back to the helo hangar. In the close-up photo, we can also see fires still actively burning near her stack. The fact that the smoke is dark is indicative of heavy ongoing fires as well, which are burning things like fuels, paper, and plastics, and doing so incompletely. She's a mess. Shrewd observers have noted that the two streams of water being applied aft around the big, conical "Top Dome" fire control radar (on the aft superstructure) are actually coming from a salvage tug that is close aboard Moskva's starboard side. You can just see the tug's masts peeking out immediately to the right of the "Top Dome." There's some speculation as to why the crew are not still actively fighting the fires when these pictures were taken. The helo deck is clear of smoke and cool. And though the ship is clearly down in the water, and has lost a fair amount of reserve buoyancy, she's in no danger of immediate sinking. So, it would seem that fire-fighting efforts by the crew could be ongoing, and there's actually been at least one expert who feels that the captain abandoned her too early. Then again, we don't know what her innards looked like at this point. And the presence of sixteen gigantic unexploded P-1000 missiles (and the sixteen tons of high explosive they collectively carried) located forward might certainly have given one pause. If those things start going off, you could very easily have a daisy-chain of lethal explosions that would slaughter any crew nearby, and potentially sink the ship immediately, thereby dooming a lot of the crew who might have escaped the explosions, but be located below decks.
Bottom line: live by the sword, die by the sword. Moskva was a very impressive ship, in that she was absolutely *packed* with fearsome-looking weapons. But the price of that, particularly if you make the mistake of centralizing your damage control capabilities near her radar center of mass, is that this is a "one-shot" warship. She's not designed to take a hit and keep on functioning. Instead, she's likely to burn to the waterline, which is roughly what we see happening.
Edit: kolme kuvaa lisätty
www.is.fi
