I'm a bit curious as to why the AS90 won't fall to the same problems as MONARC - naval environment corrosion.

Sailors + Oil = unthinkable things no corrosion.

 

I'd love to see a 155mm tube on the T45's at some point  - they're currently saddled with second hand 114mm  items scavenged from T42's - I still can't see why they got a single gun when one of the most consistent comments to come out of the Falklands was that a single gun isn't enough for naval gunfire.

Of course, major advantages come from being able to use the various 155mm guided rounds, and that extra diameter makes for a much bigger bang at the receiving end.

Too bad the RN retired their last Tiger before they got invovled in the Falklands.
That twin 6 up front would've been a boon to shore bombardment requirements...even without guided rounds back in the day.

 

Good thing for the Brits that the Belgrano was hulled early enough in the conflict that it never had a chance to bring her guns to bear on UK forces ashore.

I'd love to see a 155mm tube on the T45's at some point  - they're currently saddled with second hand 114mm  items scavenged from T42's - I still can't see why they got a single gun when one of the most consistent comments to come out of the Falklands was that a single gun isn't enough for naval gunfire.

I don't know that a 155mm gun is suitable for our air-defence destroyers.  The 4.5 inch gun is of use in the anti-air role (I believe one actually shot down an Exocet during the Falklands War, fired from the Argentinian trailor launcher.)

I don't think it wise to be risking our best fleet air-defence assets in the naval fire support role.  Allowing the ships to close so close to the coast exposes them to much reduced warning time to air-threats using the lay of the land to shield them from radar, in addition to land based missile threats and conventional artillery.  More expendable picket ships (ie frigates) are far more suitable for the job. 

The Tigers twin automatic 6 inch mounts were infamously unreliable.  While the Belgrano (aka USS Phoenix) was a workable gun platform with 15 barrels, had she closed with the British fleet she would have been exposed first to Harrier airstrikes if her position was known, then to numerous ship launched Exocet which outranged her guns, as well as ship launched Sea Dart, in addition to light weight torpedos and finally 4.5 inch automatic guns.

I don't think the Belgrano would have posed as great a risk as her two escorting (Exocet equipped) firgate escorts.

On the note of the Tiger class's troublesome twin 6":
here's the link from NavWeaps.Com,

which suggests it wasn't so much an issue of mechanical reliability, but one of being so crew-intensive in its general maintenance and upkeep.

 

Looking at the same website's link on the 4.5inch gun (Mods 0 & 1) suggest that, in the new form (Mod 1) it gains roughly a 3 mile range increase (27.5km vs 22km of the Mod 0).

And certainly, just as in the USN's Mk45 family, various improvement have been implemented to improve problems and concerns that arose with the previous mod.

 

So is there then any reason to believe that further experience with the Tiger class twin 6 wouldn't have given an improved system?

 

In the post-WW2 history of the USN, intense fire support necessities were always answerable by un-mothballing the Iowa-class BBs, something the RN lacked.

Had the RN found itself, over the same timeframe, in situations where shore fire support was needed, then perhaps Tiger and her sisters would've been kept around longer, and the twin 6 mounting would've seen improvements such as other navies implemented into their naval guns.

Being 50-caliber length barrels, utilizing the emerging ballistics technologies that were coming into play through the late 1970s (the onset of Bull's SRC-designed GC45, and further improvement to RAP ammunition), perhaps the RN could've had a much more formidable shipborne fire support capability going into the Falklands campaign (quite possibly would've resulted in 30+km ranges over the original guns' (as reported by NavWeap) range of just under 23km).

 

On the note of the Belgrano not being able to go toe-to-toe, with its escorts, versus the RN surface fleet and its air elements, that's why I suggested, "Good thing for the Brits that the Belgrano was hulled early enough in the conflict that it never had a chance to bring her guns to bear on UK forces ashore."

The British forces' shore elements had only 105mm howitzers (don't recall ever reading anything about 155mm howitzers, but then again I never really studied the Falklands in depth), which would've been woefully under-performing in replying to the Belgrano's 6inch turrets.

And fortunately for the RN,

the Argentinian Navy was rather pitiful at naval warfare: had they planned it out much more thoroughly, I'd guess that the RN en route to the Falklands would've found not just the Belgrano and her escorts lying in wait, possibly in shallower shoals where subs couldn't transgress without being very close to the surface, but numerous other assets already landed and a defensive perimeter established that they (British forces) would've had to contend with.

 

And fortunately, the Argentinians weren't masters of amphibious operations, to the point that they seized the islands sufficiently quickly enough, with sufficient forces to rapidly erect a more defendable position: if the RN wasn't able to land British elements, and the UK had to fight the conflict solely from the sea and long bomber flights from home, the seige may have lasted considerably longer, at least until the UK was able to fully cut off the Argentinian logistics which would've supported their landed and established elements.

(The whole operation, on the part of the Argentinians, should be a lesson in how not to conduct an amphibious raid to seize territory...)

 

On a similar note to the Falklands,

and in some part akin to both the US "excursions" into Grenada and Panama,

I wonder how scattered (distributed?) the staging areas are for iranian surface raiders...?

If laid out separate and away from the major naval installations,

and assuming (extrapolating from intel?) that they are minimally defended (no heavy AFVs, minimal rapid response air support) as opposed to the larger military installations,

then they may very well be susceptible to attacks from covert raiding teams of SAS and other SpecOps teams, sneaking in in small "parties" to rapidly seize, cut off, and terminate operations prior to any planned offensive or defensive strikes.

Sorry, I just skim read your post and assumed you were mentioning the Belgrano in the context of a threat to the RN fleet, as is often mentioned.  The Argentinians planned to use the Belgrano and escorts as one half of a pincer atack against the British fleet, with the other half containing the carrier I believe, or at least that was the RN's assumption.

 

I don't know what the outcome would have been had the Belgrano instead been used to provide naval gunfire support.  Had she operated out of the numerous fjords and between East and West Falkland, although confined, I imagine she would have been somewhat troublesome to deal with.  I don't know how well submarines would operate in the restricted waters, or how well ship-launched Exocet would have handled the land mass.

 

I recently read a book called "Letters from Iwo Jima", written by a Japanese (sociologist?) after the Clint Estwood film.  The Japanese action and defence makes the Argentinians look like kids playing at war in comparison.  So do the RN when compared to the American naval gunfire support, air-raids and general mobilisation of the different era.  I mentioned it in that Charlie Wilsons War thread on the USA board, and how it compared to the Falklands Conflict.  If Japan could sustain 22,000 conscripts on 22 square Km's of hot sulphur rock for 36 days holding off over 60,000 combat troops supported by God knows how many Battleships (8?) and Cruisers (32?), then you would think Argentina could have done an awful lot more with an island chain the size of Northern Ireland just a few 100km's from their coast.

Systems such as Exocet and Harpoon are easily moved around on trailor launchers, and outrange NGS by a significant margin.  This is while a ship operating near land does have a much reduced warning time of enemy attack.  I don't think having fewer hulls these days is a good enough excuse to put the assets we have at unreasonable risk.

 

I would bet my money on the land based missiles and tube artillery we didn't know was there over our ship, regardless of its 48 missiles and cannon.

Are you suggesting naval gunfire support has had it's day and we should perhaps pull the turrets and replace them with say the 57mm Bofors which has some great capabilities versus air targets and small surface vessels?

Ian

For our air-warfare destroyers I don't think that would be a bad idea.  However the 4.5inch gun is of more use as an anti-ship weapon than a 57mm.  I don't fancy our chances of the Type 45's being equiped with Harpoon.

 

NGS has not had its day by any means.  Any artillery gun which can move rapidly up and down the coast is great when the enemy are near the coast, after all!  However when we only have six assets, which are vital in protecting our 2 aircraft carriers, our 2 LPD's, our 3 RFA LPD's, our LPH and other RFA's and any troop ships taken up from trade, I think it foolish to equip them for a particularly risky mission which isn't their own!

 

Were the enemy to have a battery of old 122mm howitzers just a few km's inland on the reverse of a hill (undetectable by radar), how many lucky hits could the Type 45 sustain before it became a mission kill with its radars and electronics out of action?  One?  Two?