Laka Strolistandiler wrote:Gallia- wrote:A deck gun can clear out the rent-a-cops that might deter Somalis with their .50 cals and FN SCARs. What merchant ship, or piracy target, is armed with anti-shipping missiles? If you're in a submarine you're not looking to fight warships, and you usually have the luxury of being able to observe and match a ship's equipment fit with particular classes of warship, unlike Somali pirates.
Professional boarders, or submarine pirates or whatever, shouldn't have any trouble controlling a dozen or so merchantmen who crew modern cargo ships. Especially not after hitting the superstructure with whatever-flavor-of-medium-caliber-cannon you want.
Historic U-boat crews would just surface and fire deck guns at a merchant ship. Then board it. That was before people started putting big deck guns on a merchant ship, but no one does this these days, and probably wouldn't when there are better options (like helicopters).
While a torpedo that drops a limpet mine on the side of a boat is entirely doable, I don't see what it adds for a pirate gang. It might be useful for some sort of sabotage in a lock or narrow region of water (it detonates when the ship is in a canal or something) it isn't going to help you be a pirate. Just shoot a normal torpedo at the boat. Or surface and fire a deck gun, since you'll need to surface to board the ship anyway because you need to get up on the side of the ship with ropes or grapnels or nets or something. Both are actually things that will stop the ship and make it easier to board.
Ideally the deck gun is most useful since it damages only the superstructure and not the running gear, which you need to be able to abscond with your booty of name brand T-shirts and tinned canteloupes.
Well, the problem is that the piracy thing is going to happen while a conventional WW3 (yay u-boat privateers) and as such we can expect the pirated vessels to be quite heavily protected- probably some kind of CIWS systems, or at least the equivalent of Bofors 40 mm or something.
When I spoke of ASMs I meant that when the attacked ship will start to scream and shout at the radio, the enemy might and will send something to help him. This “something” is very likely to be a missile boat or a missile carrier plane that can easily send our surfaced and vulnerable boat to pieces.
Your proposal of using a boarding party gave me quite and idea... Equip the frogmen with C-4 explosive, have them follow the attacked ship using a mini-submarine or a underwater scooter or something, attach the explosive than take the vessel hostage and force it to stop and allow the frogmen to board it... Is this absurd?
A piddly 20mm chaingun isn't a serious threat if your deck gun is like a T-12 Rapira or something meaty. Considering it's all of which is what the typical merchantman will be "armed" with, if anything at all, and .50 cals can be ignored until your RHIBs start shooting at them, and they should have machine guns or bazookas to shoot back plus the deck gun, the merchantman's not really a threat to the sub unless it accidentally rams the boat. A submarine surfacing in threat of air attack isn't going to surface, it'll just sink the ship. Privateers aren't hugely worried about capturing cheap goods like $0.05 T-shirts or masonry bricks that are usually shipped on CONEX boxes. Modern pirates want the crews, and possibly the ship, which are greater bounties than the cargo, for the ransom. Privateers got paid by ships sunk or captured, so I'm not sure they care much.
Again re: putting things on the hull, that's just a limpet mine. Catching up to a ship and slapping a limpet on the side is possible, but I don't think anyone actually does this. Most limpet attacks are done while it's moored simply because you have to physically get out and plant the bomb on the side of the hull. It's hard for a man to do this when he has to move at 20-ish knots and avoid being sucked up into an intake or or simply overtaken by the ship, or drawn into the props or whatever.
You take the vessel hostage by boarding it, shooting anyone who opposes the boarding, and locking the crew in a storeroom, bound and gagged and under armed guard, and proceed to pilot the ship normally. To do this you have to eliminate deck defenses, which might be a CIWS (20-30mm cannon) and a couple machine guns, and whoever is on deck to shoot them.
A medium caliber (76-105mm) deck gun accomplishes the latter nicely and a boarding team armed with submachine guns (Uzis or PP-19s or something) and flashbangs does the former.
Posted: Tue Apr 20, 2021 12:44 am