Polaris tubes stay on Cruisers?

isayyo2

isayyo2

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Before Polaris was put out to sea, submarines weren't their only host platform; the USN had their Long Beach and Albany cruisers "fitted for, but not with" with eight Polaris tubes. Also, the Italian Navy and their Cruisers held provisions for Polaris tubes. Still, these plans were dashed after the Cuban Missile crisis and the quick build-up of American SSBNs.

So, what if the surface navy kept their nuclear missiles?

Personally, I think if the SWO's got their way, we might see the Long Beach turn into a class of ships that led independent Surface Action Groups. The "DLG Frigates" would still be procured for air defense, but CGN (CAGN) Cruisers would be built in the 60s and continue their historical roles; more or less, these are the "Strike Cruisers" but built to 60s standards so Talos, Mk11 launchers, Asroc, and probably no guns, unfortunately. But what other offensive weapons might arise if the surface navy got more of the budget? Something of the equivalent to Styx or Moskit anti-ship missiles? How much earlier could Tomahawk or an equivalent come into service?
 
uk 75 said:
Italy could have put this baby on its cruisers
Italian SLBM ALFA Missile
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A definite loss of national deterrence and prestige, perhaps other nations would continue their nuclear programs if Italy had been successful?
 
isayyo2 said:
So, what if the surface navy kept their nuclear missiles?
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Most likely they would be eventually removed during first refit to save money and free displacement for more useful equipment. A few missiles on escort ships just arent practical in comparsion with 41 dedicated boomer.
 
Ninja'd, damn it.

I would extend the whatif to "ballistic missiles without nuclear warheads for everything".

One example: loaded with conventional explosives and used as "surrogates" strike vehicles or bombers.

Another example: let's suppose a very different Falklands. Port Stanley airfield must be wrecked.
So the British send a R-class nuclear submarine, it fires a Polaris, except with a very different warhead: some kind of "ballistic Durandal" or "conventional explosive cluster bomb". The Polaris warhead explodes over the airfield and rains thousands of bomblets all across the tarmac, thoroughly devastating it.

In a few words "Prompt global strike" ICBM plans touted by Bush 43 circa 2004 (from memory).

thoughts ?
 
uk 75 said:
Italy could have put this baby on its cruisers
Italian SLBM ALFA Missile
Click to expand...
Italy needs either to feel considerably more threatened, frex by a hostile Warsaw pact Yugoslavia on its border or to somehow avoid Italian (and West German) participation in the French nuclear weapons program being cancelled after De Gaulle returns to power. Or maybe both.
 
Lascaris said:
uk 75 said:
Italy could have put this baby on its cruisers
Italian SLBM ALFA Missile
Click to expand...
Italy needs either to feel considerably more threatened, frex by a hostile Warsaw pact Yugoslavia on its border or to somehow avoid Italian (and West German) participation in the French nuclear weapons program being cancelled after De Gaulle returns to power. Or maybe both.
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The return of the Kingdom of Italy and hopefully more sane (and longer lived!) governments would also help. (Flees back to fallout shelter)
 
Archibald said:
Ninja'd, damn it.

I would extend the whatif to "ballistic missiles without nuclear warheads for everything".

One example: loaded with conventional explosives and used as "surrogates" strike vehicles or bombers.

Another example: let's suppose a very different Falklands. Port Stanley airfield must be wrecked.
So the British send a R-class nuclear submarine, it fires a Polaris, except with a very different warhead: some kind of "ballistic Durandal" or "conventional explosive cluster bomb". The Polaris warhead explodes over the airfield and rains thousands of bomblets all across the tarmac, thoroughly devastating it.

In a few words "Prompt global strike" ICBM plans touted by Bush 43 circa 2004 (from memory).

thoughts ?
Click to expand...
My thoughts exactly.

Conventional theatre ballistic missiles with cluster munitions and FAE clearing the way for carrier launched strike planes during Desert Storm, or launching Prompt Global Strike deep penetrators at Tora Bora?
Ship launched ballistic missiles could fling satellites to keep communications going, or their large tubes could carry ABM missiles.

There was also talk of shooting scramjet ballistic missiles out of 16" guns, ~400nm in 9 minute!
 
Archibald said:
One example: loaded with conventional explosives and used as "surrogates" strike vehicles or bombers.
Click to expand...

Considering low accuracy of 1960s ballistic missiles, it would be an exemplification of inefficient waste of money.
Archibald said:
So the British send a R-class nuclear submarine, it fires a Polaris, except with a very different warhead: some kind of "ballistic Durandal" or "conventional explosive cluster bomb". The Polaris warhead explodes over the airfield and rains thousands of bomblets all across the tarmac, thoroughly devastating it.
Click to expand...

Polaris missile CEP is about 940 meters. I.e. the chances of hitting the tarmac is pretty low. With the payload mass of 0,75 ton, it would just not be efficient.
 
Grey Havoc said:
Lascaris said:
uk 75 said:
Italy could have put this baby on its cruisers
Italian SLBM ALFA Missile
Click to expand...
Italy needs either to feel considerably more threatened, frex by a hostile Warsaw pact Yugoslavia on its border or to somehow avoid Italian (and West German) participation in the French nuclear weapons program being cancelled after De Gaulle returns to power. Or maybe both.
Click to expand...
The return of the Kingdom of Italy and hopefully more sane (and longer lived!) governments would also help. (Flees back to fallout shelter)
Click to expand...
Essentially Italy had an ambitious nuclear program that reached its peak in the early 60's with the Jupiter IRBM handled by USAF and AMI in Puglia and the Italian Navy conversion of the old Giuseppe Garibaldi cruiser into a modern unit, in particular Garibaldi cruiser was equipped with four vertical launch tubes for Polaris A1/Alfa missile.

They were the very first "hot tubes" and in a single occasion the Garibaldi launched a Polaris mock-up the 31st August 1963 from La Spezia gulf:

1614789185669.png

Since the "hot tubes" proved successfully they were included into the design of the next Italian flagship: the Vittorio Veneto crusier. There were room for four tubes (like the Garibaldi), into the middle section among the two macks rather than the stern accomodation of the Garibaldi.
Since the Polaris acquisition vanished and the Alfa program slowed down, with the change of political attitude at the end of the 60's the four Veneto's tubes were never used and the space above them was exploited to place a crane and several lifeboats.

The tail of the Italian nuclear progam (except for the never were Guglielmo Marconi nuclear submarine class) was the trial of Alfa missile that happened at least three times from Salto di Quirra launching site in the mid-70's.
 
I imagine that the change of NATO strategy away from large numbers of nuclear weapons being used early on in favour of flexible response by the second half of the 60s played a part. It also helped that Yugoslavia became a non aligned but more anti Soviet nation.
Nuclear proliferation also became less attractive to countries as the costs and complexity of weapons increased.
There is a thread on Italy and Switzerland's nuclear programmes
 
Archibald said:
Ninja'd, damn it.

I would extend the whatif to "ballistic missiles without nuclear warheads for everything".

One example: loaded with conventional explosives and used as "surrogates" strike vehicles or bombers.

Another example: let's suppose a very different Falklands. Port Stanley airfield must be wrecked.
So the British send a R-class nuclear submarine, it fires a Polaris, except with a very different warhead: some kind of "ballistic Durandal" or "conventional explosive cluster bomb". The Polaris warhead explodes over the airfield and rains thousands of bomblets all across the tarmac, thoroughly devastating it.

In a few words "Prompt global strike" ICBM plans touted by Bush 43 circa 2004 (from memory).

thoughts ?
Click to expand...
Not necessarily bomblets, but a dispersal of ballistic penetrator KEWs to wreck the airfield.
 
I don't think the Polarismissiles of the 60s were accurate enough to be useful with non-nuclear warheads.
 
Dilandu said:
royabulgaf said:
I don't think the Polarismissiles of the 60s were accurate enough to be useful with non-nuclear warheads.
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They weren't exactly accurate even with nuclear warheads...
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High accuracy wasn't needed for their intended targets especially with the Polaris A2 being equiped with the W-47Y2 warhead (It had a yield of 1.2MT).
 
NMaude said:
High accuracy wasn't needed for their intended targets especially with the Polaris A2 being equiped with the W-47Y2 warhead (It had a yield of 1.2MT).
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If I recall correctly, their main targets were airfields, naval bases, radar installations, and (in case of retaliation strikes) population centers?
 
It was primarily a countervalue rather than a counterforce weapons system, so primarily cities, industrial areas and other civilian/non-military targets, though the others you mention would have been important secondary targets where possible (with preference given to relatively non-hardened facilities). Though the USN may have allowed some confusion on Congress' part to develop over exactly what Polaris was intended & capable of taking out, in order to keep the program going. If Congress had known the full truth of affairs it is highly unlikely they would have allowed Regulus II to be cancelled to in order free up more funds for the ever ravenous Polaris, for example.
 
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sferrin said:
JohnR said:
There is also a danger of escalation. How does the target nation know if the ballistic missile heading their way is conventional or nuke???
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How do they know a cruise missile is conventional or nuke?
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Which is a completely valid point.

The answer is the current strategic context at that point in time, and that's very different now than it was when Polaris launch tubes were a thing.

It's going to become an issue again if the USN goes ahead with putting Intermediate-Range Conventional Prompt Strike/Common Hypersonic Glide Body launch tubes on the Zumwalts, because the numbers will be so low compared to Tomahawk magazine capacity spread across a SAG that they almost have to assume any weapon fired will be nuclear (because they likely will conclude some of them will be, whatever the weapon is called).
 
archipeppe said:
Since the Polaris acquisition vanished and the Alfa program slowed down, with the change of political attitude at the end of the 60's the four Veneto's tubes were never used and the space above them was exploited to place a crane and several lifeboats.
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Here it is my interpretation of the original Vittorio Veneto design equipped with 4 Alfa missiles in the middle of the ship, between the two maks (conceived in this way exactly for such reason).

1674026251145.jpeg
 
The thought that comes to my mind is if this had proceeded would there have been follow on designs with Trident? Would the earlier designs have been retrofitted with Trident, say as part of NTU.

Now assuming the USN and possibly some NATO navies have these large escorts with these tubes, when the Cold War ends the newer ships, logically, would have been looked at for a guided missile conversion with seven Tomahawk per tube.
 
Volkodav said:
The thought that comes to my mind is if this had proceeded would there have been follow on designs with Trident? Would the earlier designs have been retrofitted with Trident, say as part of NTU.
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I don't think so.

In first place Italy was forced to develop the Alfa missile since USA denied the delivery of the Polaris ones.

So it is likely to guess that also the more advanced Tridents would be out of question, on the other side once that Alfa would become operational Italy would continue for sure its development in order to save money and gain more know-how (exactly like France did with its M4 missile family).

In any case the real Vittorio Veneto (even without the four Alfa MRBM) could be equipped with Tomahawk during the 80's, but I never saw a word about such possibility.
 
One of the great success stories of the 1960s was the agreement of Nations to avoid a feared proliferation of nuclear weapons to many countries.
The wake up call of the Cuban Missile crisis in 1962 changed the then prevailing view that nuclear missiles and shells could be used with little thought.
After 1962 NATO moved to "flexible response" from "massive retaliation".
Without the Cuban Missile Crisis things might have been very different. But that belongs in the Alt History realm.
 
Uh, can you imagine the mayhem if Yugo break-up led to factions having ships with such missiles ??
IMHO, OTL was bad enough...
{ Shudder... }
 
Did the USN consider having surface-ships equipped with the Polaris SLBM?
 
I don't see the logic to fitting surface warships for SLBMs let alone with them. They're easier to find than SSBNs and they've got their "proper jobs" to do. Why were the launch tubes fitted in the first place?
 
NOMISYRRUC said:
I don't see the logic to fitting surface warships for SLBMs let alone with them. They're easier to find than SSBNs and they've got their "proper jobs" to do. Why were the launch tubes fitted in the first place?
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Fraid as so often the answer was "politics".

Multilateral Force - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org en.m.wikipedia.org
 
NOMISYRRUC said:
I don't see the logic to fitting surface warships for SLBMs let alone with them. They're easier to find than SSBNs and they've got their "proper jobs" to do. Why were the launch tubes fitted in the first place?
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Because in the 1950s, there was some thought that they could be employed as theatre weapons, much like Tomahawk is today, in scenarios well short of global thermonuclear war.

If you have that view, having a handful of Polaris missiles on board a cruiser adds a useful capability to a carrier task force.
 
BlackBat242 said:
uk 75 said:
NOMISYRRUC said:
I don't see the logic to fitting surface warships for SLBMs let alone with them. They're easier to find than SSBNs and they've got their "proper jobs" to do. Why were the launch tubes fitted in the first place?
Click to expand...
Fraid as so often the answer was "politics".

Multilateral Force - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org en.m.wikipedia.org
Click to expand...
Cue Tom Lehrer:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3j20voPS0gI
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To be fair to the German people they've been friends of the British for most of history. 1888-1945 was an aberration.

Before people reply I know that's a simplification due the unification of Germany not happening until 1871 and the British state only existing since 1707.
 
Random idea: the PAGE launcher. Where a Polaris second stage gets replaced by an Agena D (same diameter or close, both smaller than the launch tube diameter - d'uh !). End result: an orbital launcher with a small payload out of any Polaris tube. 41 for Freedom had 16 each, 656 total.
Yet preferably on surface ships, TBH: as storable hypergolic props would be too dangerous for a submarine. Doesn't seem to have bothered the Soviets on their early SLBM (R27 ?) in passing.

And btw: EARLY SPRING
 

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