It's worth remembering that the Fritz-X wasn't the last thing to do significant damage to her. After Normandy, she hit a mine off Harwich, and the repairs to her propellor shafts were... perfunctory. There was more value in having a platform for 6 15" that could make about 15 knots *right now* than there was from having her in drydock to have more permanent repairs done. And, let's not forget, the 20 foot hole in the bottom the Fritz-X left was just concreted over (OK, not that simple, but you get the idea), and I somehow don't think that was exactly a long term solution, either.
See the new Drach video about jamming the Fritz-X bomb, electric razors were used to some effect at one point apparently. Only the Royal Navy could get away with doing that I think.
Just a precision, the Fritz-X was a gliding guided bomb, it had no propulsion and relied on gravity and the little portance of it's surfaces to get to the target, it was built around the PC-1400 armour piercing bomb so it was in a way closer to modern Paveway systems than anti shop missiles, that honour would be better suited to the HS 293, which has bigger wings and a rocket booster
Depends how you define missile though: "a weapon that is self-propelled or directed by remote control, carrying conventional or nuclear explosive" The act of controlling it makes it a missile, which is why there are rockets that are not missiles and missiles that are not rockets. Other definitions simply focus on whether it is somehow propelled toward the target making everything from a rock, an arrow, to a shell, to a rocket a "missile" but that's a very old-school definition that predates guided projectiles which we today consider missiles.
Styx is armour piercing, it has a hollow charge warhead. Also, the FX 1400 didn't carry fuel, it was a guided bomb, somewhat similar to the modern paveway series bombs, though they are laser guided. It had a flare in the tail to help the bomb aimer track it. The Hs.293 rocket bomb carried fuel.
I've always wondered how effective AShMs would be against a battleship, they carry big HEAT warheads but how effective would that actually be at punching through belt armor and reaching critical systems? They blow massive holes in modern ships, but those are pretty much completely unarmored and aren't designed with the same layouts as older ships meant to receive heavy shell fire in a battle line. Then again I assume they're still quite effective or modern navies would still use armor.
@@MrMattumbo Some modern shaped charges can penetrate up to 7 or more cone diameters. Even a WW2 era one was probably good for 1.5 at least. This is with rolled homogenous armour. I've no idea what difference face hardened armour will make. A Styx is 30" in diameter, so its warhead might be somewhere in the 16-21" diameter ballpark. If that hit a 13.5" belt at a favourable angle then it probably has a fair chance of penetrating and doing some damage, assuming the HEDP warhead is good for at least 1.5 CD of penetration. Whatever damage it does behind the armour is dependent on how heavily the armour is overmatched.
@@ant4812 Keep in mind that the Iowas don't just have a single external armored plate, the 12" belt is internal. So there's probably some spaced armor effect if you fired a HEAT warhead at the hull.
Styx would not penetrate to a critical area on an Iowa. Internal belt plus size would give the Styx very little effect on an armored ship of that class.
Warspite is a legend! fought harder than any ship in history and when her time came she said F the breaker yards an tore her lines loose an broke herself on the rocks...
I was a Radarman on the USS Dahlgren DLG-12 and did a Med cruise back in 1970. The Navy at the time was hyper aware of the capabilities of the Styx missile. I also worked in Electronics Counter Measures (ECM) and was trained on what to look out for with these missiles. The Osa and Komar boats both carried these missiles. The ships navigational radar would go from a circular scan to fire control mode before firing. If I remember right it took about 30 seconds for them to acquire a fix on you before firing. Three years before my Med cruise the Israeli destroyer Eilat was attacked using these missiles and blew it out of the water. We were told they were heat seekers and flew down the Eilat's stacks. During this cruise we were one of the first ships "on station" off the coast of Jordan during the Jordanian Civil War. Needless to say, knowing what had happened to the Eilat three years earlier, we were very concerned about picking up that Osa/Komar navigational radar before it went into fire control mode...
The sinking of Eliat also spurred on development of anti shipping missiles of Exocet and Harpoon. It was almost negligent of USN to only rely on carrier attack aircraft to engage ships beyond horizon.
@@tonymanero5544 As an ops guy I was very tactically aware of our opponents capabilities and our weaknesses and I couldn't agree more. I felt so back in those days. The Soviets had anti shipping cruise missiles that would put the Styx missile to shame even back then...
There are 2 homers on the Styx and Silkworm so you have to use flares as well as chaff if you don't want to get hit by it or just let CIWS do its thing since they designed even the fist models of it with those things in mind.
This is interesting. as i thought Egyptian only operates Styx which have Active radar homing (P-15T) There were indeed 2 variants of P-15's the "T" and then "U" variant which a heatseeker. The latter was famous due to India-Pakistan War. where Indian using their heatseeking Styx against ground targets.
@@EricMBlog My ship was also hit by an exocet ,launched ironically from a trailer,we survived,that was HMS Glamorgan, the first ship to survive a hit from an exocet missile,although fourteen of my shipmates were killed.
@@davidbirt8486 Thanks. I couldn't recall if another HMS ship was hit or not - could only recall Sheffield and the merchant ship. I can't really imagine being in a situation like that.
About the effectiveness of allied jamming, well yes and no. Later in war the Germans wired the bomb in order to prevent jamming but the big problem was that they had no targets for the bomb by this time plus the skies were swarming with allied fighters and so on. The national museum of united states air force agrees with me: "Later operational "Fritz X" bombs were wire-guided instead of radio-controlled to prevent jamming."
I think more likely that later in the war they didn't have enough gas for the bombers, pilots to fly them, or ability to get one anywhere near allied convoys in the daytime. Either wire or radio guided, they weren't fire and forget, so it would have been tricky to keep on a relatively straight and level course to target with allied fighters running CAP.
For those who are finding the real name of those soviet missile SS-N-2 real name is P-15 terminte, SS-N-19 is P700 Granit, SS-N-22 is P-270 Moskit. Russia mostly use P-something for their surface launched anti ship missile. For air to surface missile often are use with KH-something. (Please correct me if i am wrong)
"KH" is close but is an English-language mistransliteration. In Cyrillic, the letter "Х" makes a sound that's not really common in English... think like "ach" in German, it's a really sort of throaty sound. It's usually transliterated to Latin letters as "Kh" or sometimes just "H" because we don't have a direct counterpart, similar to how "Ж" is usually written as "Zh".
Woah, absolutely incorrect to say the Styx is not an armor piercing missile. It has a 1 ton shaped charge warhead and carries the fuel tank ahead of the warhead, so it will spray burning fuel in through the hole it has punched. However, the Iowa class has about a 1.5" exterior shell outboard of the armor belt, and this would have set off the warhead while also providing space for the shaped charge jet to lose focus. So it is correct to say that it would almost certainly not have penetrated the armored belt, but not to say that it did not have an armor piercing warhead.
There's the trouble though. You need about... I think 12 cone diameters for even early shaped charges to START losing punch. How much space is there, son?
@@KoishiVibin I'm going to have to ask for a source on that, because it sounds like an overstatement. The panzerfaust of WW2 has a warhead diameter of just under 15 cm, so maybe a 5" (12.7 cm) cone diameter. A layer of sandbags on an M4 medium tank glacis was supposedly enough to improve the standoff and penetration. A sandbag is probably about one cone diameter, and that has a measurable effect on penetration, so the claim of 12 cone diameters to even start to have a measurable effect sounds ... well, again, like an overstatement.
Actually Storm Shadow's BROACH warhead makes it armour piercing. As far as Warspite was concerned she was already 39+ years old and effectively obsolete (EG her 15 inch guns had less range and less punch than most 14's in use). Not only that but Britain could not afford to keep on as many Battleships as we had at the time. Therefore even without the damage, Warspite would have been decomissioned.
The SS-N-2 came in 3 variants and the Silkworm was a Chi Com version of one of them and thanks to that NDA I signed the day I got out, I can't say which one it was but I bet you already know which one it was. CIWS was made specifically with those in mind when it was designed because they were (low slow flyers). The CIWS mount that opened up on the MO was likely firing because its pulse doppler picked up the chaff round as it was being launched and perceived it as a missile coming its way since its radar is designed to only see and track fast moving objects in the air that fall within certain parameters. The actual chaff bloom is invisible to the CIWS radar since its not moving fast enough but the rocket its launched in, absolutely moves fast enough for CIWS running in AAW Auto to lock on and shoot it.
well, it depends. if the missile hits the side of Iowa, the damage would be minimal. now, if the missile hits the ship's deck, the damage would be considerable. and depending on the missile it could pierce the entire interior of the ship and cause an immense explosion in its magazines, and could even sink it. Now about your last question, it also depends, if it's modernized Iowa, I'd bet on Iowa. because it has modern equipment, anti-ship missiles and of course a much greater armor than the frigate. now if it was the iowa of the second world war against the frigate, i would definitely bet on the frigate, which can keep safe out of the range of iowa's cannons, and attack it with missiles and remote guided torpedoes.
It's a misnomer to say that the Styx was not an armor piercing warhead. It used a hollow charge warhead similar to what an RPG uses and it's just a larger scale. The Styx was designed with dealing with allied armored cruisers and battleships in mind.
There have been lots of questions about effectiveness of the weapon itself. But what would the life expectancy be of a bomber flying straight and level toward an Iowa class battleship in 1944? I ask that because the 5" guns on New Jersey, and the crews and systems behind them, were probably the best ship anti-aircraft defense in the world at the time. Either the radio or wired version of Fritz-X required a person onboard a plane to guide the weapon to the target, and the US Navy knew that. The reach on the 5" guns with vt fuses is pretty long. Torpedo attack seems more dangerous, as they were lethal and fire and forget, even back then.
Imagine the germans using these bombs more efficiently in the north sea, since thats the perfect thing for them: Germany couldnt assemble huge bomber forces and as we see, out of 6 bombers against the italian fleet, 3 hit and 1 nearly missed - thats a damn good quota. It could have helped them to have somehting against the royal navy and support their surface fleet, at least early on.
On the downside the British had early warning radar in the area and lots of defense fighters so any small force of bombers over the North Sea would probably be intercepted before they could find and attack a significant RN force.
I suppose todays equivalent to sink battleships would be bunker busting bombs - or basically the guided version of a Tallboy. Which, if I'm not mistaken, was used to penetrate the insanely thick ceiling of german U-Boat bunkers.
The Germans should have used two types of bombs. A first one able to automatically home in on the jamming device. Subsequent bombs with regular radio control.
Kind of interesting how in the history of warfare, larger weapons were better, and then WWII came along and made it so that small weapons could easily take out large weapons.
The Silkworm missile shot down by HMS Gloucester with SeaDart is the only occasion in naval combat when a missile has been intercepted and destroyed by another missile.
Although they're technically unguided rockets, Israel's Iron Dome has huge experience at this point in interception. IIRC Syria might also have shot down a Tomahawk or two.
Apparently not. USS Mason was fired upon off the coast of Yemen three times by multiple missiles in October 2016 and fired decoys as well as Standard and ESSM missiles in self-defence and is believed to have shot down at least some of them.
Great work Ryan. Maybe it's time to talk about the exploits of Warspite. I suspect, depending upon how you qualify 'Battle Honors', she deserves her own segment apart from other BB's.
The Kirovs had a massive battery of SS-n-19s Shipwreck missiles...and the Kirovs were a major reason for the Iowas being brought back...so how evenly matched were they?
Enough that I heard Russian admirals were terrified of them. Mission killing a carrier was easy but a heavily armored battleship was very different story. The majority of fanboys out there would say a Kirov would win. However this is purely based on the speculation that a P-700 could actually mission kill a battleship. The Iowa's have a massive amount of redundancy systems. As such the Admirals knew if they didn't somehow force an Iowa to retreat then their secondary weapons would be useless against the Iowa's main battery which out ranged their torpedo's.
shipwrecks aren't designed for battlewagon thickness armor they're designed for modern almost no hard armor at all ships they would have bounced off so to speak!! it'd be like shooting 22's at AR 500 targets! just smudges left behind!
He has a video on it. Basically, without any sort of escorts on either side, the Kirov would be able to mission kill the Missouri from outside 16" gun range and the Missouri if still effective after the Kirov unloads her magazines, couldn't catch her when she ran away. So a one on one engagement would result in a damaged but still afloat Missouri and a Kirov running away with empty magazines.
The Fritz X was a giuded bomb, what usually makes people think they were missiles was the flare at the back of the bomb which was used to help see the bomb while being guided to its target
styx missiles were used by Indian Navy against Pakistani Naval ships and Karachi Port in 1971 Indo-Pak war . It was called as operation Trident. It was one of the most successful Naval operation after WW2. First time styx was used to attack suface Target along with ships. Even Soviets were shocked by operational Capability of Indian Navy and styx missiles. Operation Trident was an offensive operation launched by the Indian Navy on Pakistan's port city of Karachi during the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971. Operation Trident saw the first use of anti-ship missiles in combat in the region. The operation was conducted on the night of 4-5 December and inflicted heavy damage on Pakistani vessels and facilities. While India suffered no losses, Pakistan lost a minesweeper, a destroyer, a cargo vessel carrying ammunition, and fuel storage tanks in Karachi. Another destroyer was also badly damaged and eventually scrapped. India celebrates its Navy Day annually on 4 December to mark this operation. Trident was followed up by Operation Python three days later.
Love the channel gang and great video 😀.. Would love to get you all some awesome aerial photos of the New Jersey for the museum! (As long as the airspace allows it that is lol) Visiting an Iowa is one of my bucket list items so I'll def be bringing the fam out to visit in the future! Keep up the great work!!
Sorry Ryan, but the Fritz-X wasn't a guided missile. It was one of the first glide bombs ever used, though. It had a flare on the tail, (not a rocket engine), so that the person on the releasing bomber could keep track of its flight and steer it into a ship or ground target.
Warspite wasn't fully repaired because she was obsolete. The cost of repairing/ upgrading her simply wasn't doable. Also Battleships had been obsoleted by the Aircraft Carrier. You could, one supposes, remove her main armament and make her the world's biggest & nastiest anti-aircraft platform. Although given the advent of modern submarines & nuclear tipped torpedo's she would be rather vulnerable.
I read somewhere that the Fritz X's ability to penetrate armour was because it could exceed Mach 1 in a dive . About 5 years back Discovery Channel ran a small piece about this weapon that told a story about the time it was used against a US Navy ship and the government was so worried about the fear that would result from the mere possibility of such attacks that the crew was sworn to secrecy regarding what had hit their ship . The Discovery channel gave up on accuracy in the mid 90s and I can find no information on a Fritz X hitting a US Navy ship so I am not sure that its true. If someone is aware of it I would love to know if it did happen.
"Unlike modern guided missiles this is armor piercing" ... well not entirely true. Many soviet large missiles have armor piercing part of warhead that uses kinetic energy to pierce into ship and then rest of warhead detonated inside... Moskit, Granit and others.
The Exocet was used in Falklands, Argentina succeeded in damaging the HMS Sheffield... maybe not technically a "Battleship". The Exocet was also heavily used in the Iran-Iraq War. an Iraqi Mirage F1 pilot shot two Exocet missiles at the USS Stark, heavily damaging it.
I've heard from multiple people who come from the state that that's the way you pronounce it. About half of those people stated the same phrase, "Its not pronounced 'misery'."
Ive heard of an early british tactic against the fritz-x which involved the crew standing on deck with electric razors which jammed the radio signal controlling the bomb due to unshielded electric motors on early razors.
Drachinifel was asked about this and he actually found a reliable source confirming this (drydock: th-cam.com/video/x4afXMtBBl4/w-d-xo.html ). Such a bizarre story.
Sounds pretty sketchy. The power emitted by an electric razor would be negligible at more than a few yards range even if completely unshielded. Even many electric razors wouldn't have much more range as there's no antenna. Probably just wishful thinking.
Missile can be broadly used to describe many different projectiles, such as arrows, which also have no form of propulsion after they are accelerated by a bow.
@@General_Griffin yes, but is generally limited to arrows, javelins, darts, stones and other (in one form or another) human-powered projectiles. In the context of referring to ordinance carried by a plane, a missile is a specific type.
A few hundred Fritz-X and a long range maritime heavy bombers in 1940 could've prolonged or drastically altered the Battle of the Atlantic. Or if later in the war, a few hundred Fritzs & bombers likely would've had more impact than all the V-1s; the Artic Convoys would've been untenable - death by U-Boat in the long nights of winter & death by Fritz during the long Artic, summer days.
Perhaps the US should have invested in the VLS Seawolf missile that was planned in the 1960s and could probably have replaced some of the 5" guns on a 1 for 1 basis as indeed could the 6 missile unit fitted to the type 22 and could have entered service in the early 1970s
Curious if the part about CIWS firing at the chaff is accurate, as the cloud wouldn’t have met the inbound threat parameters for CIWS to engage. Is it possible it was actually shooting at the missile that passed through the cloud and missed?
Not sure, he also calls it missile despite it being a guided bomb But if i remember correctly it had a flair like trail to help guide it, which might need some "fuel"
@@moritzk3004 a set of flares in the tail for visibility, because the bombardier had to visually track it to the target and guide it using a joystick and radio control.
@@moritzk3004 Look up the dictionary definition. The original meaning of the word "missile" has nothing in it about self propelling as the word has been around since before such a thing existed. An arrow is a missile, even a thrown rock is a missile. I was just being cheeky, but if you're going to call me wrong when I'm not, F U.
@@IvorMektin1701 Shady arms dealers. Though the whole briefcase full of crisp banknotes in a dark warehouse while wearing sunglasses at midnight thing is a bit passe these days.
I didn’t think the Fritz X had fuel. I thought it was a guided glide bomb. I think only one American Cruiser was hit, USS Savannah was damaged by a Fritz X.
Theyve never tested it, we dont really know. They don't build armored ships anymore, the missiles aren't designed to deal with that, but we don't know what would happen exactly.
He keeps saying Missoura, like at 6:25 But he also calls it an Iowa class battlesship, so it must be the Missouri. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Missouri_(BB-63) Right?
8 September 1943 Admiral Begamini took the Italian fleet from port, NOT toward internment in North Africa, but on a meandering and bewildering journey. presumably blindly seeking to achieve something 'glorious' (?). His behaviour allowed the Germans attack and sink the Roma. Tragic that he could have avoided that if he'd only sailed as ordered.
@@niclasjohansson4333 I was more interested in whether the outcome would be closer to Warspite which survived, at least protecting her crew even if she only subsequently served as a shore bombardment ship
@@andrewcubbage1007 Roma was hit by 2 "Fritzes", and one of those hit the (full) magazine of number 2 turret, thats why she was a total loss. Warspite was NOT hit in any magazine, if i remember correctly, the weapon penetrated thru the ship and exploded undernieth her. If Romas magazines were empty, or the Bomb had hit some other part of the ship, then she would most likely been able to reach Malta.
@@andrewcubbage1007 It's all up to chance on where exactly the weapon impacted. Could be relatively trivial, could be a catastrophic magazine explosion.
My eyes were immediately drawn to the red painted deck and i knew it was The Massachusetts. Did you plan out all these videos you are doing from Battle Ship Cove, or did you arrive get all giddy like i do and just adlib and some how come out with so many awesome content filled videos?
We had a few videos we wanted to do, mostly we figured it out as we went. But we adlib literally every video we do so that method was pretty typical for us.
@@BattleshipNewJersey awsome job, i would love it if you did another post covid visit to Mimi and possibly offer a Battle Ship New Jersey twist tour of Massachusetts. Perhapses for a modest fee (split between both ships) tour group of say 20. With unique off the beaten path access.
Well, the HMS Sheffield was not a battleship however, it was a guided missile destroyer that was hit by an Exocet Missile launched from a Argentinian Mirage, sinking it with many fatalities during the Falkland Islands War in 1982.
Although not a BB, INS Eilat was sunk by Egyptian Styx missiles fired from within Alexandria harbour at the Israeli ship offshore. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Zealous_(R39)
I thought that Fritz-X display looked like the one on the USS Massachusetts. Also it's pronounced "Hidden zay" the double "ee" in German is pronounced "ay".
It’s really a crime that Warspite was not saved as a museum ship, the old girl earned it.
Not really. Money Better spent rebuilding the UK.
She certainly deserved it but as has been pointed out the UK at that point was almost penniless a situation that effectively lasted until the 1990s
It's worth remembering that the Fritz-X wasn't the last thing to do significant damage to her. After Normandy, she hit a mine off Harwich, and the repairs to her propellor shafts were... perfunctory. There was more value in having a platform for 6 15" that could make about 15 knots *right now* than there was from having her in drydock to have more permanent repairs done.
And, let's not forget, the 20 foot hole in the bottom the Fritz-X left was just concreted over (OK, not that simple, but you get the idea), and I somehow don't think that was exactly a long term solution, either.
She got the last laugh though escaping the tugs and running hard aground on the way to the breaker's yard
Warspite the battleship that couldnt decide whether she was a DD or Battleship, Narvik was awesome raid xD
The guy at the scanner must have been well motivated to quickly find the right frequency to jam
I guess the sense of impending doom motivated him somewhat
See the new Drach video about jamming the Fritz-X bomb, electric razors were used to some effect at one point apparently. Only the Royal Navy could get away with doing that I think.
@@sirmalus5153 electric razors thing was not true at all.
@@christopherwhitfield3037 lol
you have like 30of them
Just a precision, the Fritz-X was a gliding guided bomb, it had no propulsion and relied on gravity and the little portance of it's surfaces to get to the target, it was built around the PC-1400 armour piercing bomb so it was in a way closer to modern Paveway systems than anti shop missiles, that honour would be better suited to the HS 293, which has bigger wings and a rocket booster
Depends how you define missile though: "a weapon that is self-propelled or directed by remote control, carrying conventional or nuclear explosive"
The act of controlling it makes it a missile, which is why there are rockets that are not missiles and missiles that are not rockets. Other definitions simply focus on whether it is somehow propelled toward the target making everything from a rock, an arrow, to a shell, to a rocket a "missile" but that's a very old-school definition that predates guided projectiles which we today consider missiles.
Ahhh yes, the Mk.III Type 7/11 Anti-shop missile
Styx is armour piercing, it has a hollow charge warhead. Also, the FX 1400 didn't carry fuel, it was a guided bomb, somewhat similar to the modern paveway series bombs, though they are laser guided. It had a flare in the tail to help the bomb aimer track it. The Hs.293 rocket bomb carried fuel.
I get hit with rocket bombs whenever I eat Mexican food.
I've always wondered how effective AShMs would be against a battleship, they carry big HEAT warheads but how effective would that actually be at punching through belt armor and reaching critical systems? They blow massive holes in modern ships, but those are pretty much completely unarmored and aren't designed with the same layouts as older ships meant to receive heavy shell fire in a battle line.
Then again I assume they're still quite effective or modern navies would still use armor.
@@MrMattumbo Some modern shaped charges can penetrate up to 7 or more cone diameters. Even a WW2 era one was probably good for 1.5 at least. This is with rolled homogenous armour. I've no idea what difference face hardened armour will make. A Styx is 30" in diameter, so its warhead might be somewhere in the 16-21" diameter ballpark. If that hit a 13.5" belt at a favourable angle then it probably has a fair chance of penetrating and doing some damage, assuming the HEDP warhead is good for at least 1.5 CD of penetration. Whatever damage it does behind the armour is dependent on how heavily the armour is overmatched.
@@ant4812 Keep in mind that the Iowas don't just have a single external armored plate, the 12" belt is internal. So there's probably some spaced armor effect if you fired a HEAT warhead at the hull.
Styx would not penetrate to a critical area on an Iowa. Internal belt plus size would give the Styx very little effect on an armored ship of that class.
Warspite is a legend! fought harder than any ship in history and when her time came she said F the breaker yards an tore her lines loose an broke herself on the rocks...
and one of the coolest ship names ever
I never realized how big the Fritz x missel was. Good one! 😉👍
Just wait until you see a Bomb, Medium Casing, 22,000lb.
Actually I did stand next to a blockbuster earthquake bomb at the Aberdeen Armament Museum, back when the tank collection was still there.
He can say Missourah if he wants to. Respect his authorotah.
I was wondering if anyone else was going to comment on that! 😆
Misery. Sorry.
I was a Radarman on the USS Dahlgren DLG-12 and did a Med cruise back in 1970. The Navy at the time was hyper aware of the capabilities of the Styx missile. I also worked in Electronics Counter Measures (ECM) and was trained on what to look out for with these missiles. The Osa and Komar boats both carried these missiles. The ships navigational radar would go from a circular scan to fire control mode before firing. If I remember right it took about 30 seconds for them to acquire a fix on you before firing. Three years before my Med cruise the Israeli destroyer Eilat was attacked using these missiles and blew it out of the water. We were told they were heat seekers and flew down the Eilat's stacks. During this cruise we were one of the first ships "on station" off the coast of Jordan during the Jordanian Civil War. Needless to say, knowing what had happened to the Eilat three years earlier, we were very concerned about picking up that Osa/Komar navigational radar before it went into fire control mode...
The sinking of Eliat also spurred on development of anti shipping missiles of Exocet and Harpoon. It was almost negligent of USN to only rely on carrier attack aircraft to engage ships beyond horizon.
@@tonymanero5544 As an ops guy I was very tactically aware of our opponents capabilities and our weaknesses and I couldn't agree more. I felt so back in those days. The Soviets had anti shipping cruise missiles that would put the Styx missile to shame even back then...
@@retiredguyadventures6211 Nothings really changed then...
There are 2 homers on the Styx and Silkworm so you have to use flares as well as chaff if you don't want to get hit by it or just let CIWS do its thing since they designed even the fist models of it with those things in mind.
This is interesting. as i thought Egyptian only operates Styx which have Active radar homing (P-15T) There were indeed 2 variants of P-15's the "T" and then "U" variant which a heatseeker. The latter was famous due to India-Pakistan War. where Indian using their heatseeking Styx against ground targets.
Wonderful educational content on this channel.
Warspite was also used to bombard the German defences at Walcheren ,the last time she fired her guns.
This is a very well put together series. I am enjoying the Battleship Cove vids thoroughly!
I know its not a battleship that was attacked but an Exocet was used in the Faulklans against a warship.
Yup - The missile destroyer HMS Sheffield was hit and eventually sank.
@@EricMBlog My ship was also hit by an exocet ,launched ironically from a trailer,we survived,that was HMS Glamorgan, the first ship to survive a hit from an exocet missile,although fourteen of my shipmates were killed.
@@davidbirt8486 Thanks. I couldn't recall if another HMS ship was hit or not - could only recall Sheffield and the merchant ship. I can't really imagine being in a situation like that.
@@EricMBlog It got a bit scary for a bit.
About the effectiveness of allied jamming, well yes and no. Later in war the Germans wired the bomb in order to prevent jamming but the big problem was that they had no targets for the bomb by this time plus the skies were swarming with allied fighters and so on.
The national museum of united states air force agrees with me: "Later operational "Fritz X" bombs were wire-guided instead of radio-controlled to prevent jamming."
I think more likely that later in the war they didn't have enough gas for the bombers, pilots to fly them, or ability to get one anywhere near allied convoys in the daytime. Either wire or radio guided, they weren't fire and forget, so it would have been tricky to keep on a relatively straight and level course to target with allied fighters running CAP.
This story with the chaff and the Phalanx is crazy... Never heard about it before.
so we were the last ones to shoot at a battleship and score a hit?
For those who are finding the real name of those soviet missile SS-N-2 real name is P-15 terminte, SS-N-19 is P700 Granit, SS-N-22 is P-270 Moskit. Russia mostly use P-something for their surface launched anti ship missile. For air to surface missile often are use with KH-something. (Please correct me if i am wrong)
"KH" is close but is an English-language mistransliteration. In Cyrillic, the letter "Х" makes a sound that's not really common in English... think like "ach" in German, it's a really sort of throaty sound. It's usually transliterated to Latin letters as "Kh" or sometimes just "H" because we don't have a direct counterpart, similar to how "Ж" is usually written as "Zh".
It's amazing we still have these ships
Fritz-X was not a missile. It was a guided bomb, completely different.
Correct. The "glide bomb" was the Henschel Hs 293. Much more successful than the Fritz-X. Precursor of the "Exocet".
Woah, absolutely incorrect to say the Styx is not an armor piercing missile. It has a 1 ton shaped charge warhead and carries the fuel tank ahead of the warhead, so it will spray burning fuel in through the hole it has punched. However, the Iowa class has about a 1.5" exterior shell outboard of the armor belt, and this would have set off the warhead while also providing space for the shaped charge jet to lose focus. So it is correct to say that it would almost certainly not have penetrated the armored belt, but not to say that it did not have an armor piercing warhead.
There's the trouble though.
You need about... I think 12 cone diameters for even early shaped charges to START losing punch.
How much space is there, son?
@@KoishiVibin I'm going to have to ask for a source on that, because it sounds like an overstatement. The panzerfaust of WW2 has a warhead diameter of just under 15 cm, so maybe a 5" (12.7 cm) cone diameter. A layer of sandbags on an M4 medium tank glacis was supposedly enough to improve the standoff and penetration. A sandbag is probably about one cone diameter, and that has a measurable effect on penetration, so the claim of 12 cone diameters to even start to have a measurable effect sounds ... well, again, like an overstatement.
Actually Storm Shadow's BROACH warhead makes it armour piercing. As far as Warspite was concerned she was already 39+ years old and effectively obsolete (EG her 15 inch guns had less range and less punch than most 14's in use). Not only that but Britain could not afford to keep on as many Battleships as we had at the time. Therefore even without the damage, Warspite would have been decomissioned.
Another great video. Keep them coming Ryan!!
Great History lesson! Thanks for making these Informative Videos.
The SS-N-2 came in 3 variants and the Silkworm was a Chi Com version of one of them and thanks to that NDA I signed the day I got out, I can't say which one it was but I bet you already know which one it was. CIWS was made specifically with those in mind when it was designed because they were (low slow flyers). The CIWS mount that opened up on the MO was likely firing because its pulse doppler picked up the chaff round as it was being launched and perceived it as a missile coming its way since its radar is designed to only see and track fast moving objects in the air that fall within certain parameters. The actual chaff bloom is invisible to the CIWS radar since its not moving fast enough but the rocket its launched in, absolutely moves fast enough for CIWS running in AAW Auto to lock on and shoot it.
What guided missiles can do to battleship?
Jarrett: What iowa class bb could do to Oliver Perry class frigate? Asking for a friend
:)
well, it depends. if the missile hits the side of Iowa, the damage would be minimal. now, if the missile hits the ship's deck, the damage would be considerable. and depending on the missile it could pierce the entire interior of the ship and cause an immense explosion in its magazines, and could even sink it. Now about your last question, it also depends, if it's modernized Iowa, I'd bet on Iowa. because it has modern equipment, anti-ship missiles and of course a much greater armor than the frigate. now if it was the iowa of the second world war against the frigate, i would definitely bet on the frigate, which can keep safe out of the range of iowa's cannons, and attack it with missiles and remote guided torpedoes.
It's a misnomer to say that the Styx was not an armor piercing warhead. It used a hollow charge warhead similar to what an RPG uses and it's just a larger scale. The Styx was designed with dealing with allied armored cruisers and battleships in mind.
another great vid.
Thank you
There have been lots of questions about effectiveness of the weapon itself. But what would the life expectancy be of a bomber flying straight and level toward an Iowa class battleship in 1944? I ask that because the 5" guns on New Jersey, and the crews and systems behind them, were probably the best ship anti-aircraft defense in the world at the time. Either the radio or wired version of Fritz-X required a person onboard a plane to guide the weapon to the target, and the US Navy knew that. The reach on the 5" guns with vt fuses is pretty long. Torpedo attack seems more dangerous, as they were lethal and fire and forget, even back then.
Imagine the germans using these bombs more efficiently in the north sea, since thats the perfect thing for them: Germany couldnt assemble huge bomber forces and as we see, out of 6 bombers against the italian fleet, 3 hit and 1 nearly missed - thats a damn good quota.
It could have helped them to have somehting against the royal navy and support their surface fleet, at least early on.
Indeed! Now we need a Time Travel Mashine!!!
@@ldkbudda4176 We can call it a "Time Machine" muhahahahaha
On the downside the British had early warning radar in the area and lots of defense fighters so any small force of bombers over the North Sea would probably be intercepted before they could find and attack a significant RN force.
I suppose todays equivalent to sink battleships would be bunker busting bombs - or basically the guided version of a Tallboy. Which, if I'm not mistaken, was used to penetrate the insanely thick ceiling of german U-Boat bunkers.
The Germans should have used two types of bombs. A first one able to automatically home in on the jamming device. Subsequent bombs with regular radio control.
Kind of interesting how in the history of warfare, larger weapons were better, and then WWII came along and made it so that small weapons could easily take out large weapons.
The Silkworm missile shot down by HMS Gloucester with SeaDart is the only occasion in naval combat when a missile has been intercepted and destroyed by another missile.
Although they're technically unguided rockets, Israel's Iron Dome has huge experience at this point in interception. IIRC Syria might also have shot down a Tomahawk or two.
Patriot interceptions of Scud missiles in Gulf War 1?
Apparently not. USS Mason was fired upon off the coast of Yemen three times by multiple missiles in October 2016 and fired decoys as well as Standard and ESSM missiles in self-defence and is believed to have shot down at least some of them.
Great work Ryan. Maybe it's time to talk about the exploits of Warspite. I suspect, depending upon how you qualify 'Battle Honors', she deserves her own segment apart from other BB's.
Probably one of best value for money ever built
The Kirovs had a massive battery of SS-n-19s Shipwreck missiles...and the Kirovs were a major reason for the Iowas being brought back...so how evenly matched were they?
Enough that I heard Russian admirals were terrified of them. Mission killing a carrier was easy but a heavily armored battleship was very different story.
The majority of fanboys out there would say a Kirov would win. However this is purely based on the speculation that a P-700 could actually mission kill a battleship. The Iowa's have a massive amount of redundancy systems. As such the Admirals knew if they didn't somehow force an Iowa to retreat then their secondary weapons would be useless against the Iowa's main battery which out ranged their torpedo's.
shipwrecks aren't designed for battlewagon thickness armor they're designed for modern almost no hard armor at all ships they would have bounced off so to speak!! it'd be like shooting 22's at AR 500 targets! just smudges left behind!
He has a video on it. Basically, without any sort of escorts on either side, the Kirov would be able to mission kill the Missouri from outside 16" gun range and the Missouri if still effective after the Kirov unloads her magazines, couldn't catch her when she ran away. So a one on one engagement would result in a damaged but still afloat Missouri and a Kirov running away with empty magazines.
The Fritz X was a giuded bomb, what usually makes people think they were missiles was the flare at the back of the bomb which was used to help see the bomb while being guided to its target
styx missiles were used by Indian Navy against Pakistani Naval ships and Karachi Port in 1971 Indo-Pak war . It was called as operation Trident. It was one of the most successful Naval operation after WW2. First time styx was used to attack suface Target along with ships. Even Soviets were shocked by operational Capability of Indian Navy and styx missiles.
Operation Trident was an offensive operation launched by the Indian Navy on Pakistan's port city of Karachi during the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971. Operation Trident saw the first use of anti-ship missiles in combat in the region. The operation was conducted on the night of 4-5 December and inflicted heavy damage on Pakistani vessels and facilities. While India suffered no losses, Pakistan lost a minesweeper, a destroyer, a cargo vessel carrying ammunition, and fuel storage tanks in Karachi. Another destroyer was also badly damaged and eventually scrapped. India celebrates its Navy Day annually on 4 December to mark this operation. Trident was followed up by Operation Python three days later.
Love the channel gang and great video 😀.. Would love to get you all some awesome aerial photos of the New Jersey for the museum! (As long as the airspace allows it that is lol) Visiting an Iowa is one of my bucket list items so I'll def be bringing the fam out to visit in the future! Keep up the great work!!
I think you need to go an have a look at the warhead size of the Silkworm.
It would have caused significant damage.
Sorry Ryan, but the Fritz-X wasn't a guided missile. It was one of the first glide bombs ever used, though. It had a flare on the tail, (not a rocket engine), so that the person on the releasing bomber could keep track of its flight and steer it into a ship or ground target.
The jamming system was made by Canadians in Ontario
Warspite wasn't fully repaired because she was obsolete. The cost of repairing/ upgrading her simply wasn't doable. Also Battleships had been obsoleted by the Aircraft Carrier.
You could, one supposes, remove her main armament and make her the world's biggest & nastiest anti-aircraft platform. Although given the advent of modern submarines & nuclear tipped torpedo's she would be rather vulnerable.
very informative!
I read somewhere that the Fritz X's ability to penetrate armour was because it could exceed Mach 1 in a dive . About 5 years back Discovery Channel ran a small piece about this weapon that told a story about the time it was used against a US Navy ship and the government was so worried about the fear that would result from the mere possibility of such attacks that the crew was sworn to secrecy regarding what had hit their ship . The Discovery channel gave up on accuracy in the mid 90s and I can find no information on a Fritz X hitting a US Navy ship so I am not sure that its true. If someone is aware of it I would love to know if it did happen.
super nuts.... all of this is pre transistor friggin insane
the ww2 stuff obviously lol
I love the history of all the things you do. What ship are you on in this video?
"Unlike modern guided missiles this is armor piercing" ... well not entirely true. Many soviet large missiles have armor piercing part of warhead that uses kinetic energy to pierce into ship and then rest of warhead detonated inside... Moskit, Granit and others.
Most high speed AShM are basically AP. They're big heavy objects made of metal going fast.
You could say Missouri's AA defense bubble was........... Silky smooth heh 😅😎💥
Sweepers, sweepers, man your brooms.
The Exocet was used in Falklands, Argentina succeeded in damaging the HMS Sheffield... maybe not technically a "Battleship". The Exocet was also heavily used in the Iran-Iraq War. an Iraqi Mirage F1 pilot shot two Exocet missiles at the USS Stark, heavily damaging it.
I doubt the Germans in Normandy thought Warspite’s 15” shore bombardment fire was useless. She got banged up, but still refused to go under.
whoo hoo i was waiting for this episode!
That guy in green coat looked suspiciously occupied with getting the old East German missile ready to fire :-)
Colonel Billy Mitchel used a really big 500 pound bomb to sink a German Battle ship. It's amazing what you can do with a nifty airplane.
How about the Hs-293?
Didn’t know fritz x had an armor head. What can you tell us about there armor?
USS Missourah ? :)
I've heard from multiple people who come from the state that that's the way you pronounce it. About half of those people stated the same phrase, "Its not pronounced 'misery'."
@@kilikus822 If you're from St. Louis, it's definitely Misery. Most of the rest of the state is really nice.
Sounds like a Japanese fast battleship.
According to Wikipedia the SS-N-2 had a shaped-charge warhead so I'm not so sure it would have been harmless against armor.
Your thinking about tanks. Ships are compartmentalize d.
Ive heard of an early british tactic against the fritz-x which involved the crew standing on deck with electric razors which jammed the radio signal controlling the bomb due to unshielded electric motors on early razors.
Drachinifel was asked about this and he actually found a reliable source confirming this (drydock: th-cam.com/video/x4afXMtBBl4/w-d-xo.html ). Such a bizarre story.
@@BrikBot yup thats where i heard it XD
Sounds pretty sketchy. The power emitted by an electric razor would be negligible at more than a few yards range even if completely unshielded. Even many electric razors wouldn't have much more range as there's no antenna. Probably just wishful thinking.
Damn, how cold was it that day? Y'all seem like you're freezing.
love your vids :)
The Fritz X was a glide bomb, not a missile as there was no form of propulsion after it was dropped by the aircraft (except gravity).
Missile can be broadly used to describe many different projectiles, such as arrows, which also have no form of propulsion after they are accelerated by a bow.
@@General_Griffin yes, but is generally limited to arrows, javelins, darts, stones and other (in one form or another) human-powered projectiles.
In the context of referring to ordinance carried by a plane, a missile is a specific type.
The Fritz-X was used against the Italian battleship Roma.
Which wasn't allowed to launch fighters really or fire until fired upon
i you even watch the video?
The original comment was posted before the video was live, let's give him a pass guys
A few hundred Fritz-X and a long range maritime heavy bombers in 1940 could've prolonged or drastically altered the Battle of the Atlantic.
Or if later in the war, a few hundred Fritzs & bombers likely would've had more impact than all the V-1s; the Artic Convoys would've been untenable - death by U-Boat in the long nights of winter & death by Fritz during the long Artic, summer days.
Colonel Billy Mitchel proved to the Navy that he could sink a German Battleship. They court marshalled him for pissing off the naval brass.
What about the Falklands? Weren't there anti ship missles used there?
Perhaps the US should have invested in the VLS Seawolf missile that was planned in the 1960s and could probably have replaced some of the 5" guns on a 1 for 1 basis as indeed could the 6 missile unit fitted to the type 22 and could have entered service in the early 1970s
Curious if the part about CIWS firing at the chaff is accurate, as the cloud wouldn’t have met the inbound threat parameters for CIWS to engage. Is it possible it was actually shooting at the missile that passed through the cloud and missed?
holy shit, you got an actual FritzX?
Fun fact the first bomb hit on Roma punched through the entire ship.
So interesting! I'm so glad I've found this channel!
Welcome aboard!
Have always wondered how the main armoured belt of an Iowa class would do against a direct hit from say an Exocet or a silkworm..
You mentioned the weight of the Fritz X,. "including fuel". I thought the Fritz was a glide bomb?
Not sure, he also calls it missile despite it being a guided bomb
But if i remember correctly it had a flair like trail to help guide it, which might need some "fuel"
@@moritzk3004 a set of flares in the tail for visibility, because the bombardier had to visually track it to the target and guide it using a joystick and radio control.
@@moritzk3004 And "missile" really means any weapon that travels through the air to its target.
@@Mishn0 no, a missile is self propelled, a bomb isn't
@@moritzk3004 Look up the dictionary definition. The original meaning of the word "missile" has nothing in it about self propelling as the word has been around since before such a thing existed. An arrow is a missile, even a thrown rock is a missile. I was just being cheeky, but if you're going to call me wrong when I'm not, F U.
Wait how did you guys get a German Fritz-X in the ship? And where did you get it form?
This is part of our series from Battleship Cove
They bought it off Amazon!
Where do you buy antiship missiles?
@@IvorMektin1701 Shady arms dealers. Though the whole briefcase full of crisp banknotes in a dark warehouse while wearing sunglasses at midnight thing is a bit passe these days.
@@jamesharmer9293
You are indeed a Lord of War.
I didn’t think the Fritz X had fuel. I thought it was a guided glide bomb. I think only one American Cruiser was hit, USS Savannah was damaged by a Fritz X.
You're right, it's a guided bomb. He may have meant the warhead. and it was a 3000lb bomb (1500kg), 700lb of which was HE filler.
Fritz X was a guided bomb, not a missile in the modern sense of the word
Smart Bomb
"noun
an object or weapon for throwing, hurling, or shooting, as a stone, bullet, or arrow."
@@burroaks7 Missiles are propelled by a force other than gravity. Fritz X was dropped, not thrown, hurled, or shot.
@@clif4403 if you want to be pedantic, which we always do, the forward velocity of the bomber would constitute it being thrown.
I guess it only truly mattered to the folks on the ships that were hit by the things.
How would an Iowa class battleship do against a modern Mark 48 torpedo?
Wasnt USN ships but the Brits ate a couple exocets at the Falklands.
So with modern day anti ship missiles how bad would that be if they impact a battleship? The buggers can be quite sizeable and really quick.
Theyve never tested it, we dont really know. They don't build armored ships anymore, the missiles aren't designed to deal with that, but we don't know what would happen exactly.
I didn't realise how physically big the Fritz X bombs were. And were they rocket propelled?
They were the size of large caliber shells with wings. And no, they weren't rocket propelled. They were guided bombs.
They look a darn sight bigger than the shells I stood by on uss Iowa and Wisconsin
Nice video! But the Fritz-X is a glidebomb, not a missile, no? No propulsion.
Don't you mean Missouri?
He keeps saying Missoura, like at 6:25
But he also calls it an Iowa class battlesship, so it must be the Missouri.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Missouri_(BB-63)
Right?
yeah just with a yankee affect!!
He seems either really nervous, or really cold. Can't figure which.
It was very cold.
8 September 1943 Admiral Begamini took the Italian fleet from port, NOT toward internment in North Africa, but on a meandering and bewildering journey. presumably blindly seeking to achieve something 'glorious' (?). His behaviour allowed the Germans attack and sink the Roma. Tragic that he could have avoided that if he'd only sailed as ordered.
Silkworms are not small missiles. They are roughly the same size as a MiG-15
Not even close really. MG015 was about 10x10 meters and 5 tons. Silkworms were 6.5x2.5 meters and 2 tons.
So, still bigger than NJ's VWs :)
Germans are the smartest !
How well do you think the New Jersey's armor system would have coped with the attack that sank the Roma?
The Fritz x would have penetrated the deck of any battleship ever built when dropped from the same altitude.....
@@niclasjohansson4333 I was more interested in whether the outcome would be closer to Warspite which survived, at least protecting her crew even if she only subsequently served as a shore bombardment ship
@@andrewcubbage1007 Roma was hit by 2 "Fritzes", and one of those hit the (full) magazine of number 2 turret, thats why she was a total loss. Warspite was NOT hit in any magazine, if i remember correctly, the weapon penetrated thru the ship and exploded undernieth her. If Romas magazines were empty, or the Bomb had hit some other part of the ship, then she would most likely been able to reach Malta.
@@andrewcubbage1007 It's all up to chance on where exactly the weapon impacted. Could be relatively trivial, could be a catastrophic magazine explosion.
Love Battleship Cove. Can you do a piece on the PT Boats?
Check this out th-cam.com/video/3FHPDlUyGTA/w-d-xo.html
Fritz-X is a bomb, not missile. It's dropped, not launched. It has a flare at the back for tracing, not propulsion.
Am wondering if the sailor wounded on the Missouri would qualify for a Purple Heart?
Pretty sure yes. It was during combat.
there is a youtube video of men in USS Missouri when the missiles were inbound.
Do a video on the near collision of the new jersey and a freighter i believe it happened in 1988 in subic bay, philippines btw nice vid
I was on throttles in EMO1 for that incident.
My eyes were immediately drawn to the red painted deck and i knew it was The Massachusetts. Did you plan out all these videos you are doing from Battle Ship Cove, or did you arrive get all giddy like i do and just adlib and some how come out with so many awesome content filled videos?
We had a few videos we wanted to do, mostly we figured it out as we went. But we adlib literally every video we do so that method was pretty typical for us.
@@BattleshipNewJersey awsome job, i would love it if you did another post covid visit to Mimi and possibly offer a Battle Ship New Jersey twist tour of Massachusetts. Perhapses for a modest fee (split between both ships) tour group of say 20. With unique off the beaten path access.
Well, the HMS Sheffield was not a battleship however, it was a guided missile destroyer that was hit by an Exocet Missile launched from a Argentinian Mirage, sinking it with many fatalities during the Falkland Islands War in 1982.
Actually launched from a Super Étendard, not a Mirage.
@@gwtpictgwtpict4214 You are correct. I made the error of assuming it was a Mirage. Thanks for setting me straight. Cheers!
@@TheFlatlander440 No problem and thanks for the polite response :-)
There was also the USS Stark hit by an Iraqi Exocet from a Mirage F-1.
It's the State of Missourah. It's the Battleship Missouree....
Hiedensee is more like a Tarantul than to an Osa in overall layout. Very similar mission profile though.
She is a Tarantul, isn't she?
Dudes obviously from Missouri....
I don't think so.
Fritz X was a glide bomb. Not a missile.
I know it's secure, but man you leaning against that heavy monster makes me nervous.
Although not a BB, INS Eilat was sunk by Egyptian Styx missiles fired from within Alexandria harbour at the Israeli ship offshore. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Zealous_(R39)
I thought that Fritz-X display looked like the one on the USS Massachusetts. Also it's pronounced "Hidden zay" the double "ee" in German is pronounced "ay".
hey. Ryen thank u. for the histry lestion
So it's that **** that I have to thank for Warspite probably being made even more uneconomical for being preserved as a museum ship :(