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Those shells will do nothing to stop the ship but will just kill a lot of people for no gains. If they wanted to seize the ship, they should have brought a boar

Those shells will do nothing to stop the ship but will just kill a lot of people for no gains. If they wanted to seize the ship, they should have brought a boarding party with them, I'm sure they have trained sailors for that. Source: I'm a former naval officer and I served as an ordnance officer on a ship with that exact 76mm gun. I also acted as the officer of the deck for quite a few boardings.

greedo 7y ago
Would the shells be able to breach the hull and sink it? I know the cruiser had a hardened hull, but I assume that's not exactly shell proof?
- battery_cowboy 7y ago
  No, you can punch holes, but it's almost a certainty that the bilge pumps will keep up. Also, you can't easily shoot below the water line.
elorant 7y ago
So how do you stop a cruiser like that?
- FireBeyond 7y ago
  With a boarding party via helicopter or specialized boarding craft (fast boats and rapeling?).
  - derefr 7y ago
    And how do you stop a ship if you consider it a biohazard and don’t want it to get near your dock (and also don’t have the equipment to safely board it without effectively throwing your sailors’ lives away), but it’s insistently coming in anyway? (Perhaps because it’s a “ship of the dead”, drifting unmanned toward your port. Or because it’s, say, just a big barge carrying a pile of tires that’s on fire.) ...would a sufficient number of depth charges work?
    - battery_cowboy 7y ago
      You wouldn't you'd just let them try to dock and not supply any personnel to take the docking lines. If they try to do it by sending their own folks to shore, you arrest them as if you would arrest any other trespasser. If it is an empty ship, you take some tugboats and redirect it to sea or whatever. The military is a lot less militant than you'd think. At least in the Navy, we train hard for everything but we also ensure that we use force correctly and in proportion. We would never try to shoot at or harm a bunch of civilians, they're the people we were trying to protect, Americans or not. Maybe not every branch thinks like that, or things have changed in ~10 years I've been out, but I'd like to think any professional Navy would act the same.
    - dodobirdlord 7y ago
      This is an astonishingly contrived hypothetical. If it's drifting and for some reason you magically cannot board the ship, you get on the radio and ask for a tug.
    - LegitShady 7y ago
      its called a tugboat. a depth charge is something you drop at submarines - a charge at depth. You can sink surface vessels with any combination of regular munitions.
- mardifoufs 7y ago
  Antiship missiles (AShM) or torpedeos would be the fastest way to get rid of a big ship. But in this case they'd have a really hard time explaining why they thought that a cruise ship was enough of a menace to warrant launching AShMs at it.
  - battery_cowboy 7y ago
    Actually, the fastest might be boarding it and planting charges. Everything that's remote ordnance based (shells, missiles, torpedoes, etc.) can take hours, if not more, for the vessel to sink.
hirundo 7y ago
How about a shot across the bow as a persuader? Maybe I've read too much Hornblower and Aubrey. Do navies still do that?
- battery_cowboy 7y ago
  Nah, it's to dangerous to shoot near a civilian ship.

greedo 7y ago

Would the shells be able to breach the hull and sink it? I know the cruiser had a hardened hull, but I assume that's not exactly shell proof?

battery_cowboy 7y ago
No, you can punch holes, but it's almost a certainty that the bilge pumps will keep up. Also, you can't easily shoot below the water line.

elorant 7y ago

So how do you stop a cruiser like that?

FireBeyond 7y ago
With a boarding party via helicopter or specialized boarding craft (fast boats and rapeling?).
- derefr 7y ago
  And how do you stop a ship if you consider it a biohazard and don’t want it to get near your dock (and also don’t have the equipment to safely board it without effectively throwing your sailors’ lives away), but it’s insistently coming in anyway? (Perhaps because it’s a “ship of the dead”, drifting unmanned toward your port. Or because it’s, say, just a big barge carrying a pile of tires that’s on fire.) ...would a sufficient number of depth charges work?
  - battery_cowboy 7y ago
    You wouldn't you'd just let them try to dock and not supply any personnel to take the docking lines. If they try to do it by sending their own folks to shore, you arrest them as if you would arrest any other trespasser. If it is an empty ship, you take some tugboats and redirect it to sea or whatever. The military is a lot less militant than you'd think. At least in the Navy, we train hard for everything but we also ensure that we use force correctly and in proportion. We would never try to shoot at or harm a bunch of civilians, they're the people we were trying to protect, Americans or not. Maybe not every branch thinks like that, or things have changed in ~10 years I've been out, but I'd like to think any professional Navy would act the same.
  - dodobirdlord 7y ago
    This is an astonishingly contrived hypothetical. If it's drifting and for some reason you magically cannot board the ship, you get on the radio and ask for a tug.
  - LegitShady 7y ago
    its called a tugboat. a depth charge is something you drop at submarines - a charge at depth. You can sink surface vessels with any combination of regular munitions.
mardifoufs 7y ago
Antiship missiles (AShM) or torpedeos would be the fastest way to get rid of a big ship. But in this case they'd have a really hard time explaining why they thought that a cruise ship was enough of a menace to warrant launching AShMs at it.
- battery_cowboy 7y ago
  Actually, the fastest might be boarding it and planting charges. Everything that's remote ordnance based (shells, missiles, torpedoes, etc.) can take hours, if not more, for the vessel to sink.

hirundo 7y ago

How about a shot across the bow as a persuader? Maybe I've read too much Hornblower and Aubrey. Do navies still do that?

battery_cowboy 7y ago
Nah, it's to dangerous to shoot near a civilian ship.