Remember the USS Cole? We nearly lost it by a rubber duck with a beer cooler full of HE. And no velocity involved. It was saved by a beam in just the right place that buffered the blast.
Two missiles with a few hundred pounds of HE hitting just above the waterline at , oh, say 400 mph, one in the machinery space, and one near the fuel, or under the con., can do the job.
Note they described the ship listing which means there was ineffective watertight bulkheads so down she went.
British? you mean Argentine perhaps.
There was quite a significant storm raging out over the Black Sea last night. I don’t have a precise time for the alleged missile strike and/or explosions, but assuming it to be no later than 00z which was 0300 local time (almost 24h ago now) the winds peaked over Crimea around that time and even on land gusts over 50 mph were reported. The storm was quite intense looking on satellite imagery. It has since moved off to the northern end of the Caspian Sea and the weather after mid-day local time was considerably improved.
I have to ask, what sort of credibility is there in the Russian claim that the ship was being towed to port and sank due to rough seas? First of all, what resources would be that quickly available and on the scene to start towing such a large vessel? And how would that scenario explain the loss of over four hundred lives? Why were those rescued already at sea when the Turks pulled them aboard?
This all sounds like a cover story to make it sound a bit less like direct cause and effect, as in missile strike, explosions, rollover, immediate emergency conditions and ship rapidly sinking.
Not that it really matters, while this is not our fight, the longer this goes on the more dangerous it can become. One miscalculation and we all face a nuclear nightmare. That’s what makes it relevant. I don’t see this war lasting much longer. Forces inside Russian military would surely put an end to this by ousting Putin at some point, they won’t want to continue down this path much longer. The man is clearly not in his right mind. It’s one thing to loathe globalism, that strikes a chord with many, but attacking an independent sovereign nation with that as your main justification is just plain crazy even outside the nuclear aspect, which makes it a whole lot crazier.
I said earlier on this forum that I thought mid-April might be the time where Putin faced hostility from powerful forces within his own country, and might go out of office (if not out of this life altogether). This looks quite possible now any time, and the sooner the better. We can defeat globalism ourselves in much different ways than this.
The Cole got hit by a sizable charge similar to the payload on the Neptune missile. It was saved by good fortune but it was also saved by a well trained damage control crew who took immediate action.
The Moskva I suspect suffered from the Royal Navy syndrome of WW2 where too many watertight doors were open for convenience and safety was an afterthought. Sadly, I doubt the Russians will change anything even if that’s determined to be a contributing factor to the loss of the ship.
After the war is over I imagine Bob Ballard really will get contracted to go look at it and see what happened.