North Korea refloats destroyer that capsized during launch, surprising naval analysts | CNN
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North Korea has successfully refloated a new destroyer that capsized upon launch last month, with state media reporting the damaged vessel will be moved to a dry dock in a different shipyard for repairs.

North Korea says it has successfully refloated a new destroyer that capsized upon launch last month, with state media reporting the damaged vessel will be moved to a dry dock in a different shipyard for repairs.

“After restoring the balance of the destroyer early in June, the team moored it at the pier by safely conducting its end launching on Thursday afternoon,” a report from the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said.

A satellite photo taken by Planet Labs on June 5 showed the formerly stricken vessel righted and seemingly floating in water away from the pier where the disastrous launch took place.

  • cecilkorik@lemmy.caEnglish
    10·
    1 day ago

    The problem honestly isn’t even the seawater, necessarily. Even that is technically fixable.

    Where it gets potentially unfixable is that most naval architects seem to think that the ship probably twisted her keel lying in that position. Non-naval-architects might not appreciate what a catastrophic problem that is, to put it roughly in automotive terms that’s like having a twisted frame on a car (it’s actually significantly worse, but that’s the closest layperson analogy you’re likely to get). There’s nothing you can do to to a twisted frame to exactly straighten it, and it will never drive “properly” again, in fact it can be extremely unstable and unsafe. Cars that this happens to are basically without exception considered “totaled” and for good reason.

    Ships, in general, and warships, in particular, can be put under pretty extreme forces by the water they are in, especially at high speeds or heavy seas, and even small imperfections in the shape of the hull can cause very serious hydrodynamic drag and forces. These effects can be even stronger and more dramatic than aerodynamic effects on cars or airplanes since the water itself is so much thicker and heavier as a fluid. A ship with a twisted hull is almost certainly a write-off, and if you stubbornly refuse to accept that and do everything you can to mitigate it, even if you are lucky it will still likely be a poor, dangerous sailer that can never safely approach anything near the sort of speeds it was originally designed to achieve. A warship that can only go half the speed, and half the range it was designed to, with a non-negligible chance that it may be so poorly handling that it is at least uncomfortable and hard to crew, if not actually dangerous or even doomed in heavy weather, is not a very useful warship, no matter how hard you are committed to putting it into service despite the damage.

    Yeah, maybe it still floats, but that’s only a small part of what a ship is actually expected to be able to do in the real world, and “modern warship” is a pretty unforgiving role that needs every bit of performance the ship is supposed to be able to provide. It’s not a situation where you can accept having a scratch-and-dent salvage title if you want it to actually be good at its job. That’s why people are considering this a total loss (and it still will be no matter how much work they put into it).