Quote:
Originally Posted by tomaz_423
What I do not understand is how ice can hole an icebreaker. I thought they were designed to hit ice.
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There are all different types of icebreakers with very different capabilities. Some are designed to run into the ice and have the bow ride up on the ice while large, very large
pumps suddenly add weight in the bow tanks to cause the bow of the ship to drop onto the ice and break it that way. There are other ships designed to run at speed and use momentum to break the ice as they move. But all icebreakers are vulnerable to being pinched or hit by ice on the sides of the ship. None of the icebreakers are armored on the sides.
The only thing that most of the modern icebreakers share is the diesel electric propulsion system so they have as much maneuverability as possible.
As far as the “only” hole being the size of a fist keep in mind that the news media is sometimes not very accurate. When the dust settles it will turn out that the hole(s) were larger then described and the sudden listing of the ship interfered with pumping because the system was set up with a level ship in mind. Remember the Stockholm and Andrea Doria collision in 1956? The Andrea Doria was struck in a tank, which was off center. The sudden list prevented pumping the small amount of water that was coming in so the ship ended up rolling over and sinking. You can see in the pictures that the same thing is happening here and the ship is rolling over instead of just sinking from the ingress of water. The greatest danger in something like this is delaying deploying lifesaving equipment until the equipment on the high side is trapped by the list and cannot be launched. A delay may mean you lose half of your
liferafts and lifeboats even in dead calm waters.
All the best,
Robert Gainer
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