Some articles claim USS Iowa can exceed 35kt. Navsource claim the speed of USS Enterprise is 35+kt and the speed of USS Nimitz is also 35+kt. Which one is the fastest capital ship?

This assumes the acceptrance of the aircraft carrier as a 'capital ship'. Some would claim that a capital ship can onbly be a battleship, or perhaps include battlecruiser, whilst others take another tack and claim that the nuclear submarine is the battleship of today.

If a 100,000 ton super carrier isn't a capital ship, I'd like to know what on Earth is! The true top speed of the nuclear carriers has always been classified (and common sense would suggest often widely exaggerated), but at this moment in time they are without doubt considerably faster than Iowa which isn't going anywhere.

Friedman gives a reported trial speed of Nimitz of 31.4kts. The practical speed of the Iowa's is also often exaggerated, 32.5 design, unlikely they exceeded it by such a big margin in design condition. It's always possible to go faster with unrealistically light load, but the USN wasn't in the habit of running such unrealistic trials for larger ships. Iowa and NJ chased the Japanese DD Nowaki at Truk and the action report doesn't quote any speed higher than 30, though Nowaki was going around 32, opening the range.

The speed 'secret' for CVN's is particularly pointless. They are no longer accompanied by nuclear powered escorts. That was once the goal, to have several fully nuclear task groups, and it was demonstrated a few times with limited escorts from the relatively few DLGN/CGN types ever built: at least one CVN did a transoceanic 30kt voyage with a couple of nuclear escorts. But with conventional escorts, 30kt transits run the escorts out of fuel in almost no time, and no oiler can keep up. A speed something like 30kt is handy to generate wind over deck for high gross weight launches and higher bring back weight of ordnance for a/c even in fairly light winds, just as for a non-nuclear carrier; but a few extra kts is no fearsome secret capability. The whole idea of not releasing speed/power data for nuclear surface ships was mainly a tease by the Rickover Nuclear Navy to generate speculation for PR purposes, IMO.

Joe

FWIW, I worked with a guy a long time ago (now deceased) who claimed to have been a Enterprise plankowner. His first assignment in the Navy was fire extinguisher duty while the welders were finishing up. According to him, on the shakedown cruise he heard the following over the ship's PA system: "30 knots"........ then "40 knots"........ then "Going to full power", after which there were no further announcements. Can't say he wasn't BSing me, or maybe that stuff was actually announced for misinformation purposes. Just passing on what I was told.

He also said after going to full power they did a series of high speed turns, followed by going to full reverse!

There is a nice article about that here:

http://www.navweaps.com/index_tech/tech-028.htm

Greetings,

Aglooka

And here:

http://www.navweaps.com/index_tech/tech-095.htm

Aglooka

From the POV of submariners that extra knot or three can make a big difference if the CVN tried braking contact through speed however, and if there is that doubt in the mind of a Soviet SSN or SSGN captain it opens up the ocean massively for possible intercept point he has to consider.

Not unless the carrier is by itself, which it wouldn't be. Its escorts are known to be capable of practical speeds in the low 30's and are more subject to being slowed down by rough weather because smaller. And their endurance at such speeds is very limited by fuel. Also going at high speed for either surface ship or sub extends the passive acoustic detection range enormously. So no, the extra speed would not be that useful, and it seems there are official sources as linked above confirming it doesn't exist anyway, the ships are capable of around 30kts, practically.

"FWIW, I worked with a guy a long time ago (now deceased) who claimed to have been a Enterprise plankowner. His first assignment in the Navy was fire extinguisher duty while the welders were finishing up. According to him, on the shakedown cruise he heard the following over the ship's PA system: "30 knots"........ then "40 knots"........ then "Going to full power", "

It's not worth much with all due respect to everyone on the planet. Exaggerated stories of the speeds of fast ships by those who 'were there' (but still don't really know what they're talking about) is standard stuff. Same with the SS United States, same with, more obscurely but from more direct experience, the 33kt design speed SL-7 type containerships (now T-AKR fast transports for MSC), besides carriers and the Iowa's. Along a cubic speed power curve, going from 30 to 40 knots would be increasing power by a factor of 2.4, and for a big fast ship at top speed the curve is usually steeper than cubic. The idea that that kind of reserve capability is built into the ship's turbines (or boilers in that case, but in the nuclear case the reactor is more likely to be viewed as some secret magical machine) is ridiculous. As I said I've heard it from peope who sailed SL-7's, and I know the design of SL-7's machinery pretty well, they're just full of it. Something about fast ships, the need to say they're faster than the are.

Joe

Come the Red Storm Rising scenario, I wouldn't discount all sorts of seemingly wild scenarios, up to and including a mad scramble by all ships once the Battle Group's integrity has been severely compromised, with every ship going for broke and anyone who gets left behind fending for themselves to save the CVN.

Also the possibility of a ship like Enterprise escorted by CGN's in a small SAG doing a similar dash.

Interesting article, thanks. One part caught my attention in particular:

I am curious as to the truth here. It makes great logic to operate on 6 reactors, given the luxury of E's plant. But did some bureaucrat, located anywhere from NavSea to Public Affairs, urge the party line of 8 all the time [a new version of 'we want eight and we won't wait!"??] to avert charges of excess spending on the last refueling brouhaha? I have seen some of the same from inside the DON....Joe Brennan?

I read somewhere that a group of VIPs, perhaps Congressman or some gold breaded admirals where on the deck of the Enterprise (’65) at cruising speed and saying something like "what’s so special about this?" then the ship was put to full speed and the acceleration was enough for the VIPs to loose their footing.

True or apocryphal?

Like dear old Reagan, I hate it when the truth gets in the way of a good story.

Maybe they made her turn. I've seen videos of CVNs making really tight turns and I'm amazed at the list they make.

No more true than for a cruise ship. What is the likely de/accelleration for an 80,000 ton object in the water?

I don't know now if it was in the old warships1.com forum or in the navweapons site that one tin can sailor whose ship used to escort Enterprise said that the notable thing about the carrier was its acceleration, and she could easily left her escorts behind when preparing for air operations. After some time, escorts would catch her.

That story is in one of the links above in this thread.

.navweaps.com
"Speaking of the Enterprise, she left Bainbridge behind just as she did to many ships during the Vietnam War. When she was launching planes, she accelerated very quickly and kept at high speed for hours on end. Those techniques made her look much faster than she actually was. To really understand this, you have to be along side Enterprise (or a Nimitz) when they accelerate. It is impressive. The Bainbridge could out accelerate the Big E easily, but no conventional steam-powered ship has a chance. You see, you just can't wing the throttles open in a tin can like you can in a "nuke." Heat input is too low. Steam pressure falls off, you lose critical heat, the boilers depressurize and cool down, and the steam bubble collapses… nastily. You have to increase speed slowly on a conventional critical steam plant. You have to build up heat (actually heat flow), and maintain temperature and pressure as you slowly accelerate in a tin can."

Mike

So does that mean that if a DD cruises along merrily and suddenly SONAR reports a pair of torpedoes coming in awfully fast, she can't just go to flank speed and start maneuvering at the drop of a hat? She'd have to accelerate slowly and 'build up heat'?

Oops!

Which would have sucked real hard for that Soviet boat when the one of two USN Attack boats that's trailing the CVN maintains it's slower speed and quiet and gets a solid bearing on the Soviet boat.

Probably why they like Gas turbines in some cases in spite of the fuel consumption.

On deceleration:



http://www.navweaps.com/index_tech/tech-054.htm

If we're talking in terms of fantasy novels OK, but in the real world an extra several knots above 30 is way more costly to the design than it's worth, and that's the logical reason it doesn't exist, those are ca. 30kt ships in practical operations, at best. The CGN's of course no longer exist either, but they also tended to have less power than their 32-34 knot conventional contemporaries and were larger, so they were again ca. 30kt ships.

On acceleration CVN's have order of 280k shp for 100k ton, <3hp/ton; DDG's ca. 100k shp for 9k ton, ~10hp/ton, well powered modern tanks order of 30, fairly fast cars like 150, high performance a/c like 2,000. CVN's are big for various reasons, but a very important reason for other very big ships, tankers, bulkers or containerships to exist is that you need so little power per ton at that scale and the economics that flow from that. The whole idea of huge ships rapidly accelerating, as to throw somebody off their feet, is kind of silly. A CVN can heel a good deal in a high speed turn though. Gas turbine ships can bring full power to bear quickly, whereas steamships are wisely operated more circumspectly wrt throttle movements, and the finicky 1200psi/950degF oil fired steamships built by USN in the 50's/60's especially so; even compared to a relatively low pressure saturated steam nuclear ship.

Joe

Tony DiGiulian on the navweaps site quotes a figure of 35.2 knots for Big J at her machinery trials in 1968. It is my understanding that a similar speed was achieved in 1982, but that vibration issues were of such severity they thought the better of ever trying it again.