Friedman's British Destroyers and Frigates has some discussion of this; the 'tube' was considered by DNC to require a considerably larger ship, but was the preference of DNO. Ultimately DNO won.
Well, AFAIK the "lane" magazine (I prefer "lane" to the "tube"... because it was square, after all) was preferred because it didn't create any single point of mass detonation, in case of ship being hit. The long longitudal magazine could be easily separated by blast doors in several sections, and even in case of missile exploding in the magazine, the damage could be realtively easily contained.
I seriously doubt that subsonic Martel/Sea Eagle body would survive the acceleration that four Seaslug launch boosters would provide. Those accelerated missile, several times as heavy as Martel, to twice speed of sound in mere seconds, don't forget. Martel body would likely just crumble under such acceleration.
The range of surface-launched Martel would likely be seriously limited. It's engine isn't exactly very powerful:
A surface-launched Martel would likely have range of 15-20 km at most. No altitude to glide from, and engine would burn out very quickly climbing on any altitude.
Surface launched Sea Eagle did use parallel boosters, though IIRC only two of them. Could work just fine with attention to the load paths.
I.e. seeking only in azimuth?
Apologies for the delay @Dilandu, but I have attached a drawing of a boosted Seaslug showing the shoes which engaged guideways in the launcher. All four boost motors had aft shoes but only the left and right had motors had forward shoes. The missile's orientation was boosts to top/bottom/left/right on board the ship, but in flight the control surfaces were to top/bottom/left/right.
Thank you very much! Now at least I could figure out how missile is fixed inside launcher (the launcher itself still seems to be a VERY overcomplicated thing)
Seaslug was heavy, over 2 tonnes, and needed electrical and air supplies so it had to be kept still or the connector would be damaged. I think those specifying the requirements (for both this and the candle flame issue) were over worried, but the missile did work.
Generally yes, especially if the missile is sea-skimming, or able to entering a smooth descent at pre-determined distance from target. There is still a risk of overshooting the target, of course, but for anti-ship missiles its not exactly the problem.
Allow for more than sea-skimming, for example; a pop-up attack.
My main questions are about this area, marked by red frame:
I think the only axis of rotation is the smallest red circle…but I’ll have a check over the weekend.
Datalink mainly required when a missile flight time is long enough that target could avoid the missile search area. In general, over-the-horizon shoots are made by calculating target speed and bearing, and firing missile at azimuth that would lead it close to predicted target location. If we have range data also, we could set seeker to activate at last possible moment (thus making missile apperance to be a surprize for target), if not - the seeker should be activated earlier (thus warning target about the missile approach).
The arrangement shown on that drawing in Friedman's British Destroyers and Frigates is not the Girdle Ness arrangement. The Girdle Ness arrangement used a tilting structure combined with very high elevation in the launcher to load the missiles into the launcher from the deck immediately below it. This can be seen in Friedman's The Post War naval Revolution.
The intention of the tube magazine design was for the entire missile outfit to be held as fully assembled (e.g. no manual adding of wings and fins) missiles on a continuous conveyor leading to the loader so that during an engagement missiles would be fed continuously to the launcher to support a high rate of fire for the duration of the engagement or until the magazine was empty. Those missiles would also be easily accessible for maintenance within the tube increasing the probability of them working once on the launcher. The planned cruiser fit was very well thought out, intended to provide a high rate of continuous fire, two Type 901s to provide maximum utilisation of the launcher reload cycle and two missiles fired at each target for a high kill probability with the earliest possible provision of 3D data via Type 984.
Thank you for the data!
Took it out, I suppose. This datalink was specifically for TV guidance version; it transmitted the camera picture to operator screen, and transmitted back the control commands for camera position (operator used joystick to keep camera crosshair centered on target, and the missile autopilot adjusted the missile flight path so the missile's longitudal axis always were parallel to camera's).
Otomat's datalink AFAIK is only used to provide missile with mid-course corrections, using either ship's own or helicopter-blased radar to track the missiles (presumably by their transponders). It basically only tell autopilot when and at which angle to turn.
