Powerful Storms/Typhoons & Military ships, Submarines

Big joke.

Warships aren’t “big and heavy” compared to most merchant ships. They’re in fact lifeboats compared to them. The reason why merchant ships, and those are most likely either bulk carriers or ferries as mentioned, sink much more often is because they are simply much more often at sea. Warships just sit alongside most of their lives. Also economy is pushing the merchies further and further, merchies have to consider going through the storm or going around it. Warships just stay inside most of the time if there is any risk of a storm.

Ferries are not built cheaply as assumed here. They only have one big flaw, they have that car deck in the middle and that makes them extremely vulnerable to free floating surfaces. This is an effect of instability caused by a moving body of water. It’s the broadness of the open surface that is most important. In other ships they avoid this by adding longitudinal frames and avoiding partial loading, yet for car ferries that can only be done in a limited way. Bulkers have sort of the same problem along with the presence of large holds. Sometimes their vents break off in heavy weather and then water gets into the forward hold. This pulls the ship down and often they just break because of the heavy weight forward. Measures have now been taken to avoid that too.
Of couse such accidents happen more often with certain flags and in certain areas. That’s a different matter of course. Warships have a LOT of people onboard and can do a lot of maintenance while for merchies that is very limited. They often have to operate without spare parts and create their own stuff. Something that immediately becomes a big disaster and cause for “media concern” when it happens in some navy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neBVG7HUhT8&feature=related

this one is scary,poor sailors on the sov.

Wonder what the max weather conditions are for a SLBM launch.
Anybody any info on that?

[QUOTE=Adrian_44;1262139]There have been warships lost in hurricanes. Off Okinawa on December 18th 1944, the USN’s 3rd fleet planes off the carriers and shakes the hangars. Eight carriers and one cruiser are disabled and 3 destroyers sink. Eight hundred people are injured or dead while one hundred and eighty-six airplanes are lost. These range from carrier aircraft to scout aircraft of cruisers and, battleships.
URL –http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq102-1.htm

Typhoon Cobra, or the Typhoon of 1944, spurred the interest of the USN in modern meteorology. You can very easily alter the course of a ship to avoid a typhoon or hurricane, given the proper warning. Global typhoon/hurricane tracking was the result of the experience in 1944.

In other words, subsequent to 1944, the issue of riding out a typhoon became a moot point. Ferry disasters in the third world will continue to occur, of course, but no modern navy would expect warships to ride out a typhoon!

Another thing to consider is the very design of the ships. Ferries are usually designed for short haul in coastal waters, and most if not all modern passenger ferries are roll-on, roll-off, and I can remember at least one major distaster that was caused by faulty sea doors. And of course, lets not forget that ferries are commercial ships and as such as built as cheap as viable.

Warships, on the other hand, are designed and built far more sturdy, with better damage control, a full crew well trained and equiped (or so you would expect) in damage control. The ships themselves are also built to be oceon going and are designed with battle damage in mind, so a warship can get battered and suffer far worse damage then a ferry but still remain afloat.

Warships tend to have better internal separation of watertight sections, damage control features etc, they are built to withstand damage from armaments and can weather the odd storm. Though, as historical precedent shows they can sink. Whether this is due to human error (leaving the odd hatch open, trimming, steering, speed) or mechanical, structural etc is open to debate, but I would guess the former. Googling “warship sinks” would likely bring up results on Sri Lanka (active combat), India (collisions with merchant vessels) and smaller naval craft hit by Tsunamis in South East Asia.

On ferries sinking, some of the factors have been outlined already, but there is also the fact that ferry disasters are big news because they imply large numbers of casualties. There are fair numbers of cargo ships (mostly smaller coastal types) sinking, but these are less well reported internationally (local media yes) due to smaller number of crew involved, unless they are cases of pollution, heroic rescues, or them becoming navigation hazards and being hit by another few passing ships as in the case of a car transporter in the English channel a couple years ago.

RE: Reload this Page Powerful Storms/Typhoons & Military ships, Submarines

One occasionaly reads about drowning of a ferry or a “Passenger-Ship” due to a storm or typhoon, however such news tend to be very rare for military ships.

Is there a special reason for that. The military ships tend to be big and heavy, but is this the sole reason for their being relatively safe, or a safety-factor against storms is incorporated in their designs.

There have been warships lost in hurricanes. Off Okinawa on December 18th 1944, the USN’s 3rd fleet planes off the carriers and shakes the hangars. Eight carriers and one cruiser are disabled and 3 destroyers sink. Eight hundred people are injured or dead while one hundred and eighty-six airplanes are lost. These range from carrier aircraft to scout aircraft of cruisers and, battleships.
URL –http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq102-1.htm

One more question, in the event of a storm, will a submarine be more a safe than a surface vessel.

Heavens yes. At a depth of a couple hundred feet surface water movement energy is not enough to move the WW2 diesel subs. Unfortunately, for those old diesel subs would have to cut its energy expenditure so the hurricane would completely pass over when they had to surface.

Mostly you hear of ferrys (ferries?) having problems, due mostly to seakeeping being pushed to the end of the design line by capacity,speed, and economy. -Matt

True, economics is the reason ferries tend to have a lot more problems than warships. In the civilian sector money controls all things.

I Googled “warships sink due to weather” and got bunches of hits.

Adrian

Depending on the sea level (Beaufort) submarines are not affected by whatever hell is loosing on the surface, >5~10m depth.

http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq102-1.htm

One occasionaly reads about drowning of a ferry or a “Passenger-Ship” due to a storm or typhoon, however such news tend to be very rare for military ships.

Is there a special reason for that. The military ships tend to be big and heavy, but is this the sole reason for their being relatively safe, or a safety-factor against storms is incorporated in their designs.

One more question, in the event of a storm, will a submarine be more a safe than a surface vessel.

Mostly you hear of ferrys (ferries?) having problems, due mostly to seakeeping being pushed to the end of the design line by capacity,speed, and economy.

Matt

One occasionaly reads about drowning of a ferry or a “Passenger-Ship” due to a storm or typhoon, however such news tend to be very rare for military ships.

Is there a special reason for that. The military ships tend to be big and heavy, but is this the sole reason for their being relatively safe, or a safety-factor against storms is incorporated in their designs.

One more question, in the event of a storm, will a submarine be more a safe than a surface vessel.

I would think yes but I’m no expert in the matter:D I think a Submarine would be safer submerged in a storm.

I do remember a rather long part of the film Das Boot (one of my three favorite WWII fils alongside the Battle of the River Plate and The Dam Busters.) where U96 rides out a storm underwater.