ORIGINAL: Gary Childress
ORIGINAL: herwin
ORIGINAL: bradfordkay
Harry, I understand everything in your post except for that last bit... how does an underwater near miss, causing the hull plates to buckle, increase the chance for a magazine explosion? Boyle's Law?
Typically, the near miss causes flooding - and flooding the magazines is a tactic used to prevent explosions.
Please help me understand. [&:]
A near miss produced a
hot gas bubble expanding at supersonic speed. It was the shock of that bubble hitting the hull plates that caused the damage. If the shock wave got beyond the hull, you hoped that the underwater protection system (UPS) prevented it from getting into whatever was behind the UPS, such as the magazine. (Note cruisers and smaller carriers lacked a UPS.) If the shock wave damaged the magazine, you prayed for flooding.
How often were ships actually sunk by near misses in the war? Especially from magazine explosions? I don't think it's a matter of what CAN happen but of how often DID it happen in reality. I assume the chances of a near miss translating into a magazine explosion would be relatively rare. Ships weren't just blowing up from magazine explosions left and right in the war, were they? And I believe WITP-AE factors in things like magazine explosions. Who is to say that some of those magazine explosions are not due to near misses?
Casualties to RN cruisers by enemy action 1939-1945:
21-shelling, 3 sunk
65-bombing, 6-7 sunk by near misses, 2-3 sunk by fire (9 total sunk)
10-mining, 1 sunk
30-torpedoing, 11 sunk
126 total casualties, 24 sunk
Mean time to repair a shelling casualty: 6-7 weeks
Mean time to repair a bombing casualty: 6-7 weeks
Mean time to repair a mining casualty: about 28 weeks
Mean time to repair a torpedoing casualty: about 40 weeks
I hope that helps.