On June 21, a German Navy frigate had an SM-2 missile misfire and explode onboard the ship during military drills. Fortunately there were no serious injury to the sailors onboard, and now there’s video of the explosion and subsequent fire.
Here’s the video via Popular Mechanics:
It’s easy to understand why the guy heard in the background of the video would exclaim the German equivalent of, “Oh shit!”
Two German sailors aboard the Sachsen were reportedly stunned by the incident but recovered, according to a statement from the German Navy, and fortunately there were no serious injuries nor critical damage to the ship.
You can see from the video the missile doesn’t appear to have left the launch system before exploding, followed by an extended flame that scorched the deck of the ship.
The ship’s construction prevented this incident from being much worse, according to Popular Mechanics:
The Sachsen class frigates are designed to intercept enemy missiles and aircraft, and are equipped with 32 Mark 41 vertical launch silos built into the bow, just in front of the bridge. It was there the launch took place, and photos show the exterior of the bridge suffered extensive scorching.
[…]
As bad as the incident looks, it could have been a lot worse. The explosion and fire could have spread to other missiles in the silo field but did not. The Mark 41 launcher is armored and designed to work even after the ship suffers damage in combat, a factor that almost certainly limited the damage in this incident.
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The ship had been firing a sequence of missiles prior to the failed launch, according to Naval Today, and the system had been inspected prior to the drills and determined to be functioning without issue.
The RIM-66 Standard Missile 2 is primarily a medium-range surface-to-air missile (although it does have anti-ship capabilities) that’s deployed across a wide variety of global navies, from the Chilean Navy to the United States Navy. Here’s what it looks like when SM-2 missiles fire off normally, from a U.S. Navy exercise:
A similar incident to the one aboard the Sachsen occurred onboard a U.S. destroyer back in 2015. Here’s more on that incident from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (or CSIS), a think tank:
In 2015, an unspecified number of SM-2 missiles were declared Wartime Use Only after a July 18 launch incident that damaged the USS Sullivans (DDG-68). The failure of the Block IIIA caused the Navy to reexamine all of the SM-2 missiles with Mk 104 Mod 2 Dual Thrust Rocket Motors (DTRM) to determine the cause of the failure. The SM-2 is in service with the United States Navy as well as 15 other allied navies, although the United States plans to phase out the interceptor in favor of the SM-6.
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It’s still not clear what may have caused last week’s incident, but the ship was able to pull into a Norwegian port and the damage is being investigated. It’s just incredible to see the ship take an explosion like that and come away with no serious injuries.
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