The United States Navy and its allies recently laid siege to a retired frigate in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It was all part of a SINKEX, or sinking exercise, that tested the missiles and big guns of modern navies against an actual warship.

Every two years, as part of the multinational Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercises, the US Navy tows a retired warship out to sea. Then the U.S. military, along with allied forces, blow it to smithereens.

The USS Thach was an Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigate. Commissioned in 1979, it was named after Jimmy Thach, a World War II F4F Wildcat pilot who invented the famous "Thach Weave" fighter formation to counter the Japanese Zero fighter.

USS Thach being towed out to sea for the SINKEX.

Thach was retired from service in 2013 and then sunk Thursday off the coast of Kauai, Hawaii. Stripped of weapons, ammunition, fuel and pollutants, the ship was towed into water two to three miles deep and bombarded from the air, sea, and under the sea.

Thach absorbed an enormous amount of punishment, starting with a Harpoon missile launched by a South Korean submarine, the ROKS Lee Eokgi . Next, the Australian frigate HMAS Ballarat launched another Harpoon, and an Australian SH-60S helicopter shot it with a Hellfire missile. U.S. maritime patrol aircraft then hit it with Harpoon and Maverick missiles.

But Thach wasn't done. The cruiser USS Princeton hit it with yet another Harpoon missile, and an American SH-60S Navy chopper hit it with more Hellfires. US Navy F/A-18 Hornets lobbed a 2,000 pound Mk. 84 bomb at it, and a US Air Force B-52 bomber dropped a GBU-12 Paveway laser guided 500 pound bomb on it. A U.S. Navy submarine got into the action, striking it with a Mk. 48 torpedo .

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Thach was hit with nearly five thousand pounds of high explosive, plus unspent rocket fuel and yet held out for nearly 12 hours. How did it survive so long? Good warship design, which has improved considerably since the days of World War II.

Another reason the ship survived as long as it did was that everything flammable or explosive onboard had been removed. A Perry-class frigate typically carries up to 587 tons of fuel, plus 64 tons of helicopter fuel, in addition to many more tons of missiles and gun ammunition. The video is notable in that not a single fire starts onboard the ship, and there are no secondary explosions. When it comes to actual combat, things can go differently. In 1941, while dueling the German battleship Bismarck, the Royal Navy battlecruiser HMS Hood took a hit resulting a magazine explosion so powerful only three of the 1,421 men onboard survived.

Another sinking is planned on Tuesday, when the USS Crommelin, Thach's sister ship, will be sent to the bottom of the ocean by ships and planes from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Korea, and the United States. The SINKEX will also feature a new version of the Harpoon missile, Block III, which extends the missile's range to 130 nautical miles.

The Rim of the Pacific 2016 exercises are currently ongoing off the coasts of Hawaii and southern California. Australia, Brazil, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Denmark, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, the People's Republic of China, Peru, the Republic of Korea, the Republic of the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Tonga, the United Kingdom and the United States are all participants.

Source: Honolulu Star Advertiser , US Navy

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