Фридман о западном взгляде на линкоры в первые послевоенные годы
Любопытная выдержка из книжки живого классика (Postwar Naval Revolution) по любимой теме))
Unlike battleships at their peak, carriers never combined ultimate offensive and defensive power. Under the appropriate circumstances, a battleship could still surprise and sink a carrier, as in the case of HMS Glorious off Norway in 1940 and USS Gambier Bay off Samar in 1944. Nor was it clear that small numbers of carriers could always concentrate enough weapons to sink modern battleships. After all, it took the entire striking power of Task Force 58 to sink the Japanese Yamato in April 1945. This consideration explains why early postwar US, British, and French fleet planners all expected to support future carrier task forces with fast battleships. As late as 1955, the design of the US fast carrier escorts (which became the Farragut class) included anti-ship torpedo tubes specifically to deal with possible enemy surface attackers, as off Samar.
Given its wartime experience facing heavy German raiders, the Royal Navy was perhaps particularly alert to this problem. Its postwar concentration on anti-bomber and anti-submarine weapons left it without very many anti-ship (strike) aircraft or modern air-launched anti-ship weapons. The Soviets, however, presented a two-fold threat in the north with fast gun-armed cruisers as well as submarines. If ASW-oriented carrier aircraft were really unsuited to deal with the cruisers (which, with no more battleships, were equivalent to battleships) then the carriers might well find themselves in jeopardy. It was not so much that the Soviet cruisers were formidable in themselves, as that, as survivors of an earlier age, they had largely outlived the countermeasures that earlier age had provided. In the late 'forties, then, the Royal Navy seriously contemplated modernization of the surface fire control systems of its cruisers. It later justified guns in missile cruisers on much the same theory: without an effective anti-ship weapon, it could not maintain the ASW/AAW power of its carriers. Soviet submarines and aircraft were a far more efficient threat to shipping, but the British feared that cruisers, like the Tirpitz, could uncover shipping to their attacks.
This was still a valid fear in 1982, in the Falkland Islands. The two British carriers were the primary ASW and AAW shield of the invasion fleet. Their specialization in that role precluded (at the time) any substantial anti-ship capability. Nor do the British appear to have trusted ship-launched Exocets in the Task Force to deal with the relatively well-protected Belgrano, whose 6in guns, immune to electronic countermeasures, could surely have dispatched the two carriers. It was therefore essential to sink her, even though mos of the world saw her as a relic.
Акценты, кмк, расставлены здорово, в частности:
1. Отмечена внезапность при потоплении "Глориеса" и в бою у о. Самар. Причём во втором случае американцы ухитрились потерять крупное соединение противника, прошедшее через узкий пролив в центре зоны боевых действий, при наличии многочисленных разведчиков (в том числе - ночных). Естественно, этот факт вносил неопределённость в планирование операций АУГ при угрозе со стороны крупных артиллерийских кораблей.
2. Заслуживает внимания и бОльшая обеспокоенность британцев - у которых был второй в мире флот, но был он существенно меньше американского. "Асимметричность" проблемы "самолёт против линкора/крейсера" всегда создаёт неопределённость в смысле достаточности сил и средств, и если очевидного или почти очевидного избытка оных (как у американцев) нет, то неопределённость вызывает беспокойство.
2'. В этом контексте ещё интересней французы (любопытно, что там теоретизировали у них) - в их послевоенном флоте "Жан Бар" и "Ришелье" выглядят главной противокорабельной силой.
3. Ну и, наконец, линкор/крейсер оказывается "уязвим"/"малоэффективен" только до тех пор, пока противник видит в нём главную угрозу. В условиях же угроз "многомерных" и дефицита средств сосредоточение основного внимания на других измерениях (борьба с ПЛ и самолётами) автоматически создаёт окно возможностей для надводных кораблей (крейсеров или линкоров). Либо требует создания/выделения специфических сил и средств и отвлечения ресурсов от борьбы с главными угрозами.
