Fullbore Friday
When you care enough to send your best ... downrange
Commander Colin Williams said: ‘It was a good old fashioned ding-dong. The enemy fire was coming in pretty close. It was fairly close-range stuff but we’ve trained for this and we were ready to win the fight.
Repeat after me: "There is no more important weapon on a warship than its main gun battery."
Translate that in to Latin and we'll put it in to Autotune for 'ya and make it a Gregorian Chant. Heck, we'll put it on t-shirts and sell them.
The Portsmouth-based destroyer was just six miles off the coast of Gaddafi-held territory when she came under a barrage of rockets and heavy calibre machine gunfire yesterday.
But the Libyan forces were no match for her 4.5in gun, which silenced the attack within half an hour with no casualties or damage to the ship.
...
Cdr Williams said: ‘We had a couple of contacts moving down the coast. The other two ships went in to investigate and we sent up our helicopter in support.
‘Then they started getting fired on by the vessels and from the shore and it all got a bit hairy from there.’
As her helicopter dodged gunfire, Liverpool fired an opening salvo and manoeuvred into position to take on the shore battalion.
The captain said: ‘It took us about 20 or 30 minutes to bring it to an end.
...
He revealed he was actually asleep when the attack began at 2am yesterday.
He said: ‘I was woken as we prepared and it was very humbling to see my ship’s company working so calmly and quietly.
Exactly.
Though the shore-duty theorists with their transformationalist fetish continue to ignore facts that interfere with their religion - history & reality - their worst enemy - continue to tell us what you need to get right in your warships.
This time it is Libya - and again - it is the Royal Navy (what is left of her) that tells us what we need to know.
Other things to go with our chant:
1. As Seaman Murphy gundecks PMS and his brother at the factory has quality control issues - it is best a-la SPRUANCE & TICO to have two main batteries.
2. Larger isn't better, it is essential. Beancounters, men insecure with their manhood, and the non-battleminded like small caliber weapons. Those who need to kill or be killed know that if a 3" will do - a 5" is needed. If a 5" will fit, an 8" should be there instead. If you think I am nuts, just ask a Marine. If you think he is nuts - tell him to his face, please.
You will close the shore - you will be shot at - you will need to shoot back. Make sure those who have a comfortable commute and a comfortable home build you the ships you need - not the ones they think are neat.
This Marine wholeheartedly agrees. The abandonment of modern ballistic efficiency and modern propellants in pursuit of a very long range naval gun was to sentence every engagement outside of CIWS range to require expenditure of very limited and very expensive missiles.
Minor semantic point; it's not "two gun batteries" so much as a "two-gun battery" (or a "three-gun battery"). Your battery is all of your weapons of a certain type.
As an old Gun Boss, I gotta say we've lost considerable capability gunnery-wise since the Mk 42's went out. The Mk 42 had redundant systems, the Mk 45 is a one-trick pony. Any single component of the Mk 45 goes down and the gun's down. With the Mk 42 you have two of nearly everything; e.g. one hoist goes down, you have another. Of course that's why the Mk 45 weighs about half of the Mk 42. Mk 45's barrel is much thinner too; you're pretty much in "hot gun" territory as soon's you've let your first round go.