Navy Admiral Rates 8 Navy Warship Battles In Movies | How Real Is It? | Insider

As soon as a .50 caliber bullet hits water, it usually rebounds. Therefore, it is very unlikely that any type of steel hull will penetrate. My name is Admiral Jamie Foggo and I served in the Navy for almost 40 years. When I retired, I took on the role of dean of the Naval League Maritime Strategy Center here in Washington, DC. Today we will look at scenes of

warship

s from

movies

and judge how

real

istic they are. King Kong covers his ears, as expected. Hearing protection and conservation is an important issue in the United States Navy. And if you're a gunner's mate or someone who's been on a boat firing a small caliber gun at a 5-inch gun, it's loud.

So without a doubt the only damage we did to King Kong was probably breaking his eardrums. Now, an American aircraft carrier displaces 90,000 tons. According to Google, King Kong weighs 50,000 tons. That's a lot of weight, half the weight of the aircraft carrier, landing on her deck. But we make our aircraft carriers battle-ready and battle-hardened. So my bet is that the carrier makes it to King Kong and the 50,000 tons of her land and don't go through that deck. It is not part of our tactical training in the Navy to fight either of those two creatures. Many weapons were used.

I see deck guns, I see anti-submarine rockets, more or less

real

istic. Now, when they launch something called a Hedgehog from the starboard side of one of the ships, we don't have them anymore, but some of our allies and partners do have them in Europe. This is a weapon normally used against submarines. We have a more sophisticated and modern method. It's an anti-submarine rocket. Usually a light Mark 54 torpedo. It is launched into the air. When it hits the water, it sepa

rates

and that torpedo then behaves like a torpedo. And the reason you do it is to go after a submarine, not necessarily to go after Godzilla.

Godzilla grabs one of the ships and turns it over. That's pretty hard to do when you're talking tens of thousands of tons of displacement and a hull shape designed to withstand bad weather. Now, for an aircraft carrier that displaces 90,000 tons, it is very unlikely. For added realism, it is quite fictional here. 1 out of 10. Cradle lowered. Okay, now ram the projectile. Easy. When you hit that powder, you do it with ease. Very easy. This is one of the most accurate

movies

on how a 16-inch shell is loaded into a 16-inch gun. That projectile weighs 2,000 pounds. Basically, you're loading a Volkswagen Beetle into the chamber of that gun and firing it at the enemy.

And you notice that the projectile is followed by these gunpowder charges. This was a very accurate representation of how that gun is loaded. There are spark-proof tools, and everyone is very careful, because, you know, that gunpowder is obviously explosive and volatile, and any mistake or spark or flame could set it off and blow up that turret. 204 degrees, Calloway. Sailor 1: 204 degrees. Sailor 2: 204 degrees. This very shiny brass device is the sight of a gun. And that's to allow the gun captain to look and see the direction that he's shooting. That's the way we used to do it, before we had these very sophisticated fire control radars and weapons directors that are on top of the turrets today.

Alright, fire to the hole. I chuckled at the fact that Tommy Lee Jones runs up to the 16-inch turret right before it fires. We had procedures on the

battles

hips to prevent sailors from being on the surface near those turrets when the guns were firing, because the overpressure of the explosion pushed it back, you know, a dozen feet or so. And that's probably pretty accurate. Even today, with our missile systems, if you launch from the foredeck of a destroyer, there's no one up there when you launch it, because there will be a lot of flashes going off when the gun comes out of the tube, and you don't want anyone coming out. hurt.

I would give it a 7 out of 10. "Battleship" happens to be one of my favorite movies. These are ships from the World War II era. They are no longer part of the active fleet, but these ships are built to fight. And when you're on one of those

battles

hips and you have a belt of armor around you that's 12 to 17 inches thick and 50,000 tons of steel to protect you, that's pretty reassuring. Drop the anchor forward. That? The deck officer on the bridge uses the battleship's anchor to avoid being hit by some of the alien weapons. Frankly, that's pretty dumb.

The amount of chain on a battleship or aircraft carrier connected to the anchor is quite long. It's probably at least 1,000 feet. But we don't use anchors for that reason. We use anchors to moor the boat in port. And this is in the Pacific Ocean, which is very deep. One thing viewers may not notice is that it is so powerful that the ship moves sideways by several meters. When you fire a volley, she can move significantly and you have to correct course there. I'd probably give it a 2. I think Hollywood took a little poetic license with the host in this case.

Torpedo! This clip is difficult to watch. Probably the biggest fear any sailor has is being trapped in a compartment filling with water and not being able to get out. The ship is capsizing. Artillery is exploding on board. And if you get out, great, but then you'll jump into the frigid waters of the Atlantic. And you're still wearing your boots and your gear, which is, if you're not a good swimmer, it's pretty hard not to sink. One of the enemies of your escape route are these watertight doors. Watertight doors are heavy and designed to contain water that could leak into a compartment.

Or, if there was some kind of catastrophic explosion, the reason they are heavy is to contain the overpressure from the explosion in the compartment. Today, most ship or submarine doors have two types of locking mechanisms. There is something called a latch or dog. We call him dog. And when you're in normal steam mode, you simply push the door closed and it closes the same way a screen door does. In the event that you are in a more prepared condition, you will turn that wheel to block that door. And the only way to open it is to open it counterclockwise.

As you can imagine, you are at an awkward angle, your hands are slippery because there may be oil in the compartment, there is water in the compartment and you are panicking. You know, it's a life or death situation. You're trying to get out. I think the realism factor here is a 10 out of 10. Second torpedo to starboard beam! 120 bearing! Hard right rudder, hard! "Greyhound" is an absolutely phenomenal movie. It tells and describes with great historical precision. The film shows the Germans deploying wolf pack tactics, and two torpedoes are seen coming from different directions. You know, that's more than one submarine shot, and these tactics were extremely effective.

Secure that, secure that! Get to know her. Get to know her! Secure, meet her, meet her! So what you see on the ship's bridge is an attack on the destroyer. You know, I think that was very realistic. And you see the wake of the torpedo coming towards you. Propellers do something we call cavitation. They create bubbles as they pass through the water and that creates a trail behind the torpedo. Therefore, an attentive lookout can notice that early and gives the commanding officer an advantage in carrying out those drastic evasive maneuvers. If it was night, it was often even easier to see the torpedo due to the phosphorescence of the water.

It shines when it comes towards you. Many of these torpedoes were electrically powered. They had batteries and electric motors and would head toward the target. Today we have torpedoes that are propelled by fuel and have a very long range. So it was a different game, but in this case, absolutely accurate. Regarding the maneuverability of this destroyer, it must be taken into account that it is not a battleship that displaces 50,000 tons. They are lighter boats. Today, a US Navy heavy destroyer weighs between 7,800 and 8,000 tons. The propulsion systems of these destroyers, the engines, propellers and rudders, are made for speed and maneuverability, particularly because in the Second Battle of the Atlantic, they were not only going after surface ships, but they were going after submarines.

And that means you have to be able to turn a dime. It depends on the bullets actually hitting the water or penetrating it, whether they actually cause any damage or not. As soon as a .50 caliber bullet hits water, it usually rebounds. If you go below the waterline you will lose speed very quickly. Therefore, it is very unlikely that any type of steel hull will penetrate. But again, you never know. So, it has to come to the surface, because the water is coming in. And then, while he's on the surface, they finish him off in a pretty brutal way.

But you see what look like anti-aircraft guns descending to the level of the deck plate. When this projectile entered and exploded, it may have caused secondary explosions. First there is an initial boom and then a massive boom. There's so much oil, fuel and weapons on board that submarine that, you know, once it took that initial penetration into the hull and those shaped charges went in, it exploded. This movie gets absolutely top marks from me. As for realism, 10 out of 10. Are we absolutely sure of our position? Yes sir. An exact location of the satellite. It is Her Majesty's ship Devonshire that believes she is operating in international waters.

The bad guys have somehow interfered with that ship's navigation system, and she's actually operating a mile inside Chinese territorial waters. Devonshire doesn't know. Now, that's not unrealistic in today's digital war. We just had a situation in the Black Sea where someone faked the automatic information system of a couple of NATO

warship

s and represented them off the coast of Sevastopol in Crimea, where there is a Russian naval base. That is a dangerous activity. This scenario is quite realistic. English is the international language for communication in air or maritime space. But many times someone on the bridge of a ship may not speak English, so we have other methods of communication.

We have flashing lights, we have signal flags and we have agreements to avoid mistakes. Sound the general alarm. The ship has been flown over by two Chinese planes. We believe they have hostile intentions. The commanding officer directs a general alarm. So that's a call to action stations, battle stations. There are also a series of red lights that go off. Usually on a surface ship at night, you are in a dark ship state, so there is very little light in the compartments. There are key points along the hallways that are illuminated, but not necessarily red lights. So there's a bit of Hollywood poetic license here.

The unrealistic part of this scenario is something that looks like a drill. Penetrating the hull of a warship in this way will not sink it. Now, in this case, the bad guys discovered that by piercing the hull at a weak point and penetrating along or along the keel of the ship to pass through various compartments, and at that time, HMS Devonshire was overwhelmed with water displacement and sank down. For realism, a 1 out of 10. Sir, I'm picking up low-latency mobile bandwidth transmissions. It could be a data link from a UAV. You know, "The Last Ship" is a show that I'm very familiar with.

In the clip they talk about a UAV. It means unmanned aerial vehicle. Therefore, it is an intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance tool. Over the last decade, we have seen UAVs evolve from simply being a sensor that takes a video or photo and sends it back to the mothership to becoming UAVs with real weapons on board. Enable spy radar. But sir, if the Russians detect it, they will follow our guidance. We have 30 seconds and then we turn it off. Mister? I gave an order. The spy radar, which is part of the Aegis weapons system or ship's radar system.

And the radar that looks to the horizon, over the horizon, in the air and on the ground over 100 miles is the SPY-1 radar. It is the best radar in the world and gives us essentially 100% situational awareness. I had four of these destroyers at my disposal when I served in Europe and they were absolutely fantastic. There are actually two areas of the ship that are areas where the ship is controlled. One is the bridge. So that's where you steer the ship. That's where you control speed, rudder, course and direction. The ship's true heart for fighting is in the combat information center.

You see sailors following their skipper's instructions and carrying them out effectively. What I like about the show and the scene is the calm professionalism you would expect. I give it high marks. I give it, for realism and professionalism, I give it a 9 out of 10. General quarters. A healthy headquarters. All engines forward at full speed. Yes, sir. You know, you hear whistling from the bridge. In this particular case, these guys are in battle positions. They want to get people's attention. And in the NavyCurrent surface, tradition says that when someone wants to address the crew through the general announcement system, the bosun often blows his pipe to get everyone's attention.

Prepare to launch depth charges. Accelerating toward the submarine, the submarine dives and launches a series of depth charges. So those depth charges are in canisters, they look like 50 gallon drums, at the stern of the ship, and they were actually rolled off the ship after a gunner's mate prepared the charge to explode and set the depth at which it would explode. . You had to estimate how deep you thought the submarine had gone after coming down from the surface to try to evade you. And it was a bit of a guessing game, but, you know, there are limits to how deep the submarine can go.

For historical accuracy, 10 out of 10. Thanks for watching. And if you enjoyed the video, click the link above.