Are today's 76mm naval guns intended to sink ships?

there was one recent test in the PMRF Hawaii range. an aegis class cruiser's 2 76mm guns shot at an empty target ship with all water-tight doors open. all shots were at the waterline. it took 48 minutes before the hull started submerging.

of course, that's with an empty ship. today's warships have no armor, are heavily dependent on electronics, and are chock full of explosive ordnance. i can imagine a 76mm gun can cripple or even put a big modern warship out of action, given enough time.

 

Do you have a link?

As the Aegis ships carry either the 5-inch/54 or the 5-inch/62(they might all have been upgraded to the /62, but I have not stayed as current with the Navy as I used to).

 

Sink quickly no. Cripple yes. The primary anti-ship weapon on non CVN ships is of course missiles. Even those don't have a good chance of sinking a ship. A missile's main purpose is to damage the electrical system and to spill any remaining fuel into the ship causing fires. As long as the ship is out of the fight for 2 hours the battle should be resolved.

A 76mm's primary duty is anti missile defense coupled with shore bombardment and anti ship duty. In essence if your using the 76mm either your out of missiles or being attacked by small boats while entering a harbor. Against small boats the 76mm is more than enough. Your correct against larger craft the 76mm will require a lot of shots to sink but will cause fires and damage the electrical system.

 

Let's just hope that our future naval adversaries subscribe to our line of thought in the way naval warfare will go in future wars.

 

My understanding was that the 76mm guns were primarily AA and anti boat weapons. They'll do a number on a plane, missile, or boat. Bit light for antishippng work though.

 

Even back in WWII and before, it took a lot of gunpower to sink a ship. It was rare for a ship to sink another of its own type purely by gunfire; more often it was a concentration of fire or a larger ship sinking a smaller one. The main ship-killers then were torpedos, either in the initial attack or finishing off a ship that had been crippled by gunfire.

Today's warships, largely dependent on electronics and missiles, are vulnerable to "mission kills" by weapons that fall short of total destruction.

 

A 3" (76mm) shell is just too light to do significant damage to a 7000t hull but the very high rate of fire could mean lots of hits, as long as the enemy has no armour, it wouldn't take much to stop a 3", you could probably start enough fires to destroy the target or punch enough holes to sink it. The increasingly small crews of modern ships means they have to rely on automated damage control, if that fails to work as designed the ship will eventually sink, but it may take a long time doing it.

 

A good question and one posed by naval architects on several occasions in the last 70 years.

Post WW2 guns on surface ships seemed only necessary for point AA defence and even then ships were expected to rely on the CAP and SAMs. The Cuban missile crisis illustrated why ships still needed guns for surface action. The USN discovered that it was not possible to fire a missile across a ship's bow.

If you want to sink a ship there are other weapons available.

 

Have to wonder if the projected electro-magnetic gun will be much better over all.

 

As far as I know it will not, it's even more oriented towards high initial velocity that is pretty useless when firing at an unarmoured ship.

Today the situation is a bit better, but in the 70s the missiles were mostly AAA, you could fire a beam rider like a Terrier "across a ships bow" but it would be a pretty expensive warning shot and if by any chance it lost guidance, and I believe the "beam" could be affected by the sea surface, you could end up with a big international incident.

The USN was never that bad off, as it always had some gun ships in it's task forces, though some of the big "leaders" went for an all missile solution there were not many of them, just the Leahy class and the two nuclear powered Bainbridge and Long Beach.

 

Truthfully, the Leahy class and Bainbridge did not become "all missile" until some time in the 1980's. These ships all mounted two twin 3-inch/50s aft, and it was not until the 80's that these guns were replaced with Harpoon launchers.

 

Minor quible terrier wasn't a beam rider that was Talos.

 

The early variants of the Terrier(RIM-2A, -2B, -2C, and -2D) were all beam riders, the switch to semi-active radar homing was made with the RIM-2E.

 

Thanks. I'd either forgotten that or not been aware of it.

 

I think Long Beach had a pair of 5 inch/38 but about sure when the were installed, I have seen some pictures without them. The use of such an old weapon seems strange on such a ship so it could be a "retrofit", but she was very much an "experimental ship", some of the technologies and solutions in her didn't become mature until a lot later.

 

Looks like we may have another case where wiki is a bit off. I looked at:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Long_Beach_(CGN-9)
to see what they said about the 5"/38's and it said that not only were they on the ship originally but that they were retained.

*** edit for ***
Looking a bit deeper found this:
http://navysite.de/cg/cgn9.htm

Since she was commissioined on 9 September 61 that could explain the picture of her without guns.

 

Long Beach and the Albany class coversions were originally conceived as all-missile ships, but early experience showed that missiles were not as infallible as hoped, so they added the old reliable 5"38s. Legend has it that this was ordered personally by President Kennedy after observing an exercise in which several missile ships failed to engage a drone flying straight and level.

 

My father was heavily involved in the Italian missile test site in Sardinia, where other NATO forces often came to try out their equipment. Episodes like the one described were not uncommon with early missiles, though there was no US president to watch, just some embarrassed top brass.

One story I found on Long Beach was she had spaces for Polaris missiles, like the Italian Garibaldi, and those were reused for the 5"/38 when the US decided not to mount the Polaris on surface ships, the Italians tried to go at it alone with the Alfa missile but eventually gave up.

 

Minor note: Talos wasn't really a beam rider either. It was kind of unique in the way it worked. The missile was fired on a ballistic trajectory and used mid-course guidance until it was terminal on the target. At that point the target was illuminated with the fire control radar and the missile homed in a semi-active mode on the target. It was unique that the missile would normally be falling on the target terminally, rather than rising to meet it.
The big problem with it was it was a large missile and required considerable space for handing and assembly prior to being launched.

 

I don't agree with that statement.

You see, the other big problem with the Talos was that it used two radars; one to track the target, and one to guide the missile. While, the Talos did not ride the beam of the radar tracking the target, it did ride the beam of the guidance radar.

The ballistic flight path was necessitated by the use of a ramjet engine, which was more fuel efficient at high altitude. Hence, the ballistic path was used for the long range intercepts. At short ranges, where fuel was not an issue, the Talos flew a "normal" path to the target.

The Talos missile system is covered in detail here:
http://www.okieboat.com/Talos%20history.html
As well as the radars used
http://www.okieboat.com/SPW-2%20description.html
http://www.okieboat.com/SPG-49%20description.html

and the entire fire control system
http://www.okieboat.com/Talos%20fire%20control%20system.html