falling military expenditure ah, :haha:


http://img819.imageshack.us/img819/7633/bulldozerq.jpg

:down:

I'm afraid that good Lt Commander is either misinformed, exploiting the elasticity of the facts, or, more likely, being disingenuous. Either way he is talking crap. The number of ships he quotes (inaccurately as it happens) represents almost the entire Task Force, yet he clearly gives the impression that they were all dedicated to tracking down one Argentine sub.

The rest of the paper is a mess. He claims the Argentines wanted, and executed, a "bloodless" invasion, which fails to explain why they fired white phosphorous into the (empty) Moody Brook barracks in the dead of night. He naively swallows the conceit that the Argentines only invaded to force a diplomatic resolution, and only planned a temporary stay. Their various military claims are accepted uncritically, such as the bizarre idea that the Santa Fe remained on the surface while under helicopter attack because it was "safer", rather than it being due to the fact that she had been repeatedly hit by AS12 missiles, depth charges, and hundreds of rounds of 7.62mm. Moreover, he uses outdated sources from the early-mid 80s over better and more recent works whenever they support his contentions. Then there are silly little errors, torpedoes mistakenly described as "exploding under (Belgrano's) keel", etc.

For all the praise of the Argentine subs, successful ASW is determined by numbers of ships lost, not enemy submarines sunk, and by any measure it was a British success. Another reason for this might be revealed by looking at the difference between the two forces in terms of aggression and determination to prosecute the kill: San Luis fired from 10,000 and 5,500 yds in her attacks - much too far away, scoring no kills - Conqueror getting two good hits at 1,500 before escaping unmolested.

The optimum distance to fire torpedoes is a function of the amount of improvement of pK achievable from a closer shoot versus the probability of counterdetection and counterattack from the other side.

Conqueror had to close to 1,500 because her homing torpedoes are anti-sub, have small warheads, slow, and are not the most reliable things forcing a reliance on straight running torpedoes for which closing to less than 2,000. Further, she was able to close because the Argies have crappy ASW in general.

If Conqueror had Spearfish torpedoes (after their reliability had been improved), if she still shot at 1,500 it might have worked because the Argies sucked but it'll still be foolhardy.

If Conqueror shot at 1,500 against a British formation, it will likely have been termed somewhere between stupid and suicidal.

Tigerfish isn't exactly an "anti-sub" torpedo. They just chose not to fire them.

Tigerfish if I remember correctly doesn't have warhead big enough to sink a cruiser decisively.

It's relatively small and has short leg. :DL

Almost every guided torpedo can be used against both surface and subsurface targets, just that not every one would be of the same effectiveness against one or the other.

So a primarily anti sub torpedo does offer an anti surface capability though it usually means shorter engagement range and more needed to ensure a kill against large surface warship.

Tigerfish is an ASuW torpedo that's about 21 feet long. It has both legs and bite.

Well its payload is only 134 kg and its range is a mere 6.9nm(nautical miles) at max speed.

For comparison a heavy torpedo usually carry over 200 or even over 250 kg of warhead and has a range of over 10nm even to 20nm range at max speed.

Mark 8 torpedoes which were used had a warhead of 175kg in comparison.

edit: But to be fair perhaps Tigerfish then was considered a heavyweight torpedo and considered to have a long leg.