And now for something completely different...RAAF chooses EE Lightning over Mirage.

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Subject: And now for something completely different...RAAF chooses EE Lightning over Mirage.
Volkodav 5/24/2009 4:55:42 AM

The Lightning was a contender for RAAF how serious a contender I don't know. The main choice always seemed to be between the Mirage and the Lockheed Starfighter with the Phantom and Lightning being only bit players. The Lightning was apparently ruled out due to it's lack of ground attack capability, not that the Mirage was a wiz in the air to ground department either. The RR Avon and Ferranti Airpass radar of the Lightning were actually considered for the baseline Mirage III EO as they would have offered significantly improved performance. Imagine now that the RAAF had selected an evolved derivative of the Lightning. Would we have used it in Vietnam? What modifications and improvements would it have incorporated? What upgrades would it received during its life? What weapons would it have been certified for,i.e. Sidewinder, Paveway? What would the sale to Australia have meant for the program as a whole and then for the British and Austrlaian aviation industries?

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Herald12345 6/12/2009 1:55:53 AM

Herald, Ikara was fitted to each beam of the Perth Class inplace of the ASROC, 14 m beam, with no issues and in cutouts on the starboard side of the quarter deck of the Rivers,12.49m beam. Are you saying that a modified County, with beam of 16m and huge amounts of internal volume freed up through the deletion of the Seaslug magazine, couldn't have accommodated a pair of Ikara launchers and a couple of dozen missiles?

The Adams layout and the American missile weapons systems in general were going vertical. Perth used a deckhouse and offset canted loading to assemble, load, and shoot, Ikara. The British layouts were horizontal.

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k279/shipbucket/USADDG-2CharlesFAdams1.gif" width="1000" height="370" />

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k279/shipbucket/AusDDGAdams_Perth1.gif" width="1000" height="370" />

Where inside that County deckhouse do you find that space? It had to be built ON TOP of the Adams between the funnels. As I said, I worry about topweight. That is a lot of it.

Also while I acknowledge that Terrier was a good missile I can not see the reason to compromise the County by trying to work in both the Terrier and Tartar, surely one or the other would suffice. If you want Terrier then why not go for a minimum change from the original design simply replacing Seaslug with Terrier. If both are needed then build the ships to operate in pairs, one with Tartar and two Wessex and the other with Terrier and one Wessex.

Terrier is longer than Tartar because of that first stage booster. It can reach out 50,000 + meters as an area defense SAM. To install it VERTICALLY, I need the space in C position that is DEEP.between the two engine rooms. The Tartar is short enough in missile length and good enough to replace SEACAT as a point defense missile. It reaches out about 20,000+ meters. Why two different missiles? Because I want more than 30 Seaslugs and 24 Seacats.and I want to blow a Badger out of the sky and then blow a Sverdlov into floating scrap in the same action. These missiles had PKs of 66% and 57% single shot respectively against SUPERSONIC targets. Not exactly worldbeating by present day standards, but if you have a Badger coming at you, wouldn't you start throwiung rockets at it before it casme close enough to bomb you? The long range rocket is for long range, the close in rocket is for close in? Why not do that? That is the whole point of a two zone missile defense.

As to the comment that the County is more expensive than the Adams, steel is cheap and air is free so logic dictates that if you limit what you try to squeeze into this larger hull it should not cost much more than the smaller ship. Add to this the savings in training and logistics that County would deliver through its common heritage with the RAN's existing Destroyers and Frigates. The 1200psi steam plant, the complex Mk42 5" gun mount, and the cramped conditions onboard the Adams added many unseen costs to ownership that a modified County would not have had with its common steam plant to the Rivers and many other familiar systems already in service with the RAN.

Electronics is NOT cheap. I just laid out a Yellow River illuminator setup that was designed for Bloodhound and Thunderbird. It isn't a cheap system and you need it for TWO missile launchers not one. (four illuminator trackers and a giant 3d search radar?) Since I want to also install a fighter director center into the missile CIC where are you going to stuff the admiral and his staff again?

The Mark 42 gun mount was/is an automatic that works. I want to use it in place of the 4.5' Mk 6 twins, because it is lighter, mopre reliable, and uses fewer men. Complex comes with the gun, sorry about that, but we are also trying to save manpower here.

Mark 6

'These weapons were first used on the Daring class destroyers, about which was said: "At last the RN had a modern destroyer with a longitudinally framed, welded hull, efficient and compact machinery, AC electrics and an effective dual-purpose armament. These 'innovations' were introduced a decade lat

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gf0012-aust 6/12/2009 2:48:47 AM

Already ran you surname past my parents when you mentioned the Darwin connection a while ago as my parents lived there on and off through the 60's and retired there in the late 90's. Your name didn't ring a bell but I don't doubt our families have crossed paths at some point.

ah grasshopper, thats because the name you should run by for Darwin is different. :) will send later on. If they're long term Territorians then they're highly likely to know this name.

we're an old terittory family - close to 130 years in that loc...

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Aussiegunneragain GF 6/12/2009 3:39:03 AM

ah grasshopper, thats because the name you should run by for Darwin is different. :) will send later on. If they're long term Territorians then they're highly likely to know this name.

we're an old terittory family - close to 130 years in that loc...

That's a young territory name then ... the old one's up there are closer to 40,000 years in that loc ;).

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gf0012-aust 6/12/2009 3:52:16 AM

That's a young territory name then ... the old one's up there are closer to 40,000 years in that loc ;).

we certainly had aboriginal stockmen who would regard us as newbies... :)

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StevoJH 6/12/2009 4:12:17 AM

No disagreement as to the ship's plants, BUT.......you wanted Terrier/Talos, and that means you have to accept what actually goes with it. A County hull was designed to shoot its FEW (24) heavy missiles off its aft end and shoot its guns forward. This same space I exploit differently to practically increase missile loads by 40 missiles over what the Counties actually carried. I want to put the Ikara mount where it will work and not interfere with accommodations, with radars, the sonars, the two helos, and the gun. This is a missile destroyer with a huge ASW capability. Nothing about the Counties in its British version was cheap. As to service life......The Counties were withdrawn from RAN service in the mid 1980s. What was the service life of the Adams? Built earlier in the early 1960s than most of the Counties, and served the USN well into the early 1990s, they did. The steam plants were old fashioned, but the electronics and the weapons were first rate for the time introduced, and held up well. These were AAW ships. That was what they were supposed to do. They carried ASROC or IKARA also without complaint. If DASH had worked then it would have given the Leanders a good run for it. But DASH failed, so we had what we had. The Can launcher for ASROC could have served as the basis for a Sea Sparrow launcher if we had been smart about it. (We weren't.).

You coiuldn't afford and can't six of what you wanted here. The British couldn't really afford ot either, though, they built eight of them. How many Darings are they building now? Six?

Herald

Remember that the RN retired the Counties because Sea Slug was obsolete and had been replaced by the T42's with Sea Dart. The Last two Counties were only retired by Brazil in 2006 after transfer from the UK in the 1980's. Chilie refitted them into DDH's with Sea Slug removed. They carried a pair of Cougar's each, not exactly small. Sea Slug and Sea Cat were both replaced by the Barak point defense missile system.

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Aussiegunneragain GF 6/12/2009 4:24:52 AM

IF you are going to hit a Badger you would want a Talos, not a Terrier. The later had a 17nm range and the AS-1 missiles carried by the Badger K's flown by Indonesia had almost a 50nm range. The Talos could have hit it though as it had a 50 to 100nm range depending on version. It also had a 300 lb warhead, very handy against surface ships. It would have been too big for a reasonable number on the Counties though so we would have had to settle for hitting the missiles. With that in mind I think that defending against any more than 1 Badger K would have been beyond the RAN at the time.

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Volkodav 6/12/2009 8:58:06 AM

With Talos you are back to a full cruiser.

It all comes down to priorities if you need to take out the launchers you need CAP with AEW which means (during the 60's and 70's) you also need a mininmum 35,000t carrier. The alternative is a minimum 15,000t CG or CAG equiped with state of the art radars and armed with something akin to the Talos. The USN could afford both, the RN could have and would have but for the Radical Review, the RAN would have to choose one or the other.

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Volkodav 6/12/2009 8:58:37 AM

With Talos you are back to a full cruiser.

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Herald12345 OInion versus Badger 6/12/2009 11:13:50 AM

Terrier is longer than Tartar because of that first stage booster. It can reach out 50,000 + meters as an area defense SAM. To install it VERTICALLY, I need the space in C position that is DEEP.between the two engine rooms. The Tartar is short enough in missile length and good enough to replace SEACAT as a point defense missile. It reaches out about 20,000+ meters. Why two different missiles? Because I want more than 30 Seaslugs and 24 Seacats.and I want to blow a Badger out of the sky and then blow a Sverdlov into floating scrap in the same action. These missiles had PKs of 66% and 57% single shot respectively against SUPERSONIC targets. Not exactly worldbeating by present day standards, but if you have a Badger coming at you, wouldn't you start throwing rockets at it before it came close enough to bomb you? The long range rocket is for long range, the close in rocket is for close in? Why not do that? That is the whole point of a two zone missile defense.

Indonesia flew some of the Badger B which was the only type Badger that I know which could carry Kennel. Only about 100 of that type Badger were ever made. I think about 20 Badgers were in Indonesian service, Were all of them Badger Bs?

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Tartar is the missile with the 17 nautical mile eange missile. (~25,000-30,000 meters).

Source.

Terrier

Data for RIM-2B/D/F:

	RIM-2B	RIM-2D/F
Length (incl. booster)	8.25 m (27 ft 1 in)	8.0 m (26 ft 4 in)
Wingspan	1.20 m (47.3 in)	0.61 m (24 in)
Finspan	1.03 m (40.5 in)	1.07 m (42.3 in)
Diameter	0.34 m (13.5 in)
Weight (w/o booster)	480 kg (1060 lb); booster: 584 kg (1290 lb)	535 kg (1180 lb); booster: 825 kg (1820 lb)
Speed	Mach 1.8	Mach 3.0
Ceiling	12200 m (40000 ft)	24400 m (80000 ft)
Range	19 km (10 nm)	RIM-2D: 37 km (20 nm); *RIM-2F: 75 km (40 nm)1**
Propulsion	Solid-fueled rocket booster Solid-fueled rocket sustainer
Warhead	100 kg (218 lb) controlled-fragmentation warhead; RIM-2D (BT-3A(N)): W-45-0 nuclear warhead (1 kT)

Main Sources

[1] Norman Friedman: "US Naval Weapons", Conway Maritime Press, 1983
[2] Bill Gunston: "The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Rockets and Missiles", Salamander Books Ltd, 1979
[3] James N. Gibson: "Nuclear Weapons of the United States", Schiffer Publishing Ltd, 1996

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*1 those are the missiles you use on the Adams/Perths (1960 onward) until the Standards come into service (1967-1970). These are also the missiles I use on the Counties, which of the first won't be rea

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gf0012-aust 6/12/2009 6:58:11 PM

don't forget that during Konfrontassi we also had Bloodhounds in place. Badgers had to go continental if they intended to do a Pearl, and the only valuable property within their range was also within Bloodhound range.

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