Simple, cheap, solution to Europe's problem with N. Africans coming in boats

Already satellite and air searches find boats overloaded with immigrants, not long after leaving the African coast line. A small torpedo which homes on the noise of the propeller could be air dropped near the stern of the boat to disable its self motion, without any risk to the illegal migrants. A soon as possible, one of the waiting tugs could first pull boat back to the nearest African shore line, then convert to "pushing mode" and shove the boat up on the beach at local high tide.

Leaflets, in several languages, are then dropped telling the passengers to get off onto the beach (even a folding ladder if none soon appears) and go far from the grounded boat as it will soon explode. (Bombs dropped on it. Perhaps a few small ones into the near by water and sand to make the message very clear.)

The owners of the these boats and the paying passengers will soon cease to be a significant problem for Europeans after two or three boat have been destroyed this way.

True, this does not fixed the terrible conditions that make many thousands risk their lives. It just end most of Europe's illegal immigration problem. Fixing the causes of this migration at its source is a much harder problem to solve.

 

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When a people are being treated wrongly they should combine themselves together and overthrow whoever is treating them badly. Running away from a problem never solves anything.

 

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Maybe just a tad easier said than done:

If I understand the circumstances:
My great great...etc grandfather fled Scotland in the 17oos and came to America. I think he may have tried to "combine themselves together and overthrow whoever is treating them badly." It didn't work out as was hoped for-------- and then: He ran away.

Is it better to run away early, or stay and fight, then limp away later?

 

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It is better to stay and fight for what is yours rather than run away to die somewhere else like in the ocean when your boat overturns.

 

(wild guess du jour)
His boat made it safely here.
Many generations of sweaty sex later, her am I.

 

How about we just torpedo the assholes that propose to shoot weapons at refugees?

 

In Southeast Asia, local nations simply refuse to allow boats laden with illegal aliens entry into their territorial waters. Patrol boats tow them back out to sea.

The idea is that if the boats are allowed to land, the scale of the boat migration will turn into a flood. They believe that a message needs to be sent, 'Don't try it'.

Italy could try the same thing.

It's ironic, but compassion in these matters is perceived as weakness and is exploited as such. An ultimatum is sent, 'Give us what we want, or else we will suffer'. And the response is typically, 'Oh no, suffering! We surrender!'

 

So you propose a torpedo that will destroy a boat's engine, made of aluminum and steel, and not harm the guy operating it?

Let's do an experiment. We will get a few hand grenades. You sit next to an outboard boat engine. We will have volunteers try throwing the grenades so they land in the perfect place to destroy the outboard engine without harming you. Would you be up for that experiment? That way we could validate that there will be no risk to the illegal immigrants.

Well, it does, by ending their lives. (No more terrible conditions if they are dead.)

 

Read the OP again. I said nothing about any engine. I said damage the propeller, so boat could no longer advance towards Europe, during the period it took a tug boat to reach it and tow it back to the nearest African coast line, where the tug switches to pushing it up the beach at high tide. Here is what I said:

" small torpedo which homes on the noise of the propeller could be air dropped near the stern of the boat to disable its self motion, without any risk to the illegal immigrants. "

Note the word "small" before torpedo. It can be carried and dropped by a helicopter. Note I said "air dropped near the stern." One that does not even blow the propeller off - just bend its blades so it is no longer balanced - will self destruct more if it runs.

Also one does not pack even a couple of dozen people, much less a few hundred, in any boat powered by an out board. There is a shaft from the larger / more powerful than car engine INSIDE the steel hull, that separates engine from propeller by more than a dozen meters. A small torpedo, which can immobilize the ship via propeller damage, probably with not even bend the shaft.

Perhaps I was not completely clear about why a torpedo that homes on the propeller is to be used. I assumed it was obvious, but I could have explicitly said we don't want to explode against the hull (although that would just at worst dent it slightly inward) but against the propeller. Propeller homing torpedoes were used in last phases of WWII to immobilize enemy ships. Then they were effectively out of the war without lose of life.

BTW a propeller noise homing torpedo, is very different from a "wake homing" torpedo. The USSR made some monstrous ones of those - bigger than typical WWII submarine! They could be fired up to about 30 miles behind a US carrier and were fast enough to catch and disable it. To sink a big ship, like a carrier, one has the torpedo (a large one) run UNDER the ships' center at least 50m below the center where it explodes. This makes a big gas bubble under the center but the two ends of the ship are still in water. The ship's center buckles into the gas hole and the whole ship goes to the bottom.

 

Yes. And this is a prop designed to strike things like submerged sticks and sandbars and keep running. It would take something the size of a hand grenade to damage it. Again, run the test yourself - get an outboard motor and some explosives and determine how much explosive you need to damage it.

The head of our proto lab escaped from Vietnam about 40 years ago, along with ~35 family members, in a small overcrowded boat powered by a small outboard motor. It broke twice along the way. Fortunately they were able to fix it.

 

No. Not true; the propeller is not the lowest part of a big ship, the bottom or keel is. Typically as seen in photo below, there is a taper at stern so all parts of the propeller are in stream line flow. If flow thur the top half were blocked by the stern not only would the efficiency be less and the turbulence be greater but also there might be corrosive cavitation at top speed near the higher speed edges or "tips" of the prop that would damage the prop. (More likely with more turbulence.)

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Stern of one ship shown is on left, Bow of another shown on right.
Man has his hand on the trailing edge of the prop I.e. seen from behind rear of ship it turns clockwise. I think this is a big ship "assembly line."
Note the lowest part of the prop is at least a foot above the ship's bottom.

Small out board motors also are careful to have only streamlined flow thru the prop, but achieve this with a vertical drive shaft extending deeper down* into to the water where a right angle gear turns the prop's drive shaft 90 degrees to get horizontal thrust. Their props are the lowest part of the boat - do hit sand bars and rocks, but always have a "shear pin" that breaks before prop is damaged. (I've broken several.) Some slightly larger ships than those with an out board have an "inboard motor." These ships often have a slightly tilted motor and straight drive shaft also tilted slightly down ward at same angle - cheaper, less weight and drag with no right angle gears and only a tiny fraction of the prop's thrust is trying to lift the rear of the boat instead of push it forward. They are usually diesel engines inboards as the slower RPM speed than a gasoline engine is more suitable for direct drive of a slightly larger prop (more torque / less RPMs).

* The drag on that vertical shaft structure is at least compensated by less tendency for the pressure behind the prop to lift the surface of the water - a waste of energy. If vertical part is too long there is too much drag. I think the length of the vertical part is an optimized trade off between "lifting water surface" loss and drag loss.

Very few have ever thought about, or even recognized, there is this trade off to make, but material cost and lighter carrying weight bias the choice to shorter than optimum depth.

 

If the oppressed would get help with weapons and support they could give a good fight and even win the battle for their freedom. The problem is that those people would be called terrorists and not many countries want to help terrorists. So while there is a way to help can it actually be done for it would be the dictators against terrorists and that's a no win situation. When you arm a group of people they can easily become fanatics as much as those who rule over them and create havoc and genocide against their foes.

 

You are OK with infringing the territorial rights of others, then?

 

I didn't say it was the lowest part of a big ship. I said it was designed to strike things like submerged sticks and sandbars and keep running - which is why they are made out of rather tough steel. Which you apparently understand:

Again, if you think a small, risk-free torpedo can damage or destroy an outboard engine without harming the person operating it, I invite you to experiment on yourself first.

 

I doubt that a torpedo could be made to perform with such amazing precision even under ideal conditions. Since neither the characteristics of the boat nor the propeller can be known with any accuracy, it would be well-nigh impossible to produce such miraculous results. I envision the boat lying on the bottom under a pile of corpses and not a scratch on the propeller.

 

I'm skeptical about using explosives to blow off boat propellers. A more realistic idea might be entangling propellers in nets or cables or something.

The problem with all of these attack-the-propellers ideas is that it just leaves the boats drifting at the mercy of winds and currents unable to move.

I still favor simply refusing them entry into territorial waters, and towing them back into international waters if they attempt illegal entry. That way their propellers are still intact and they can still navigate, back to Libya hopefully, once they realize that Italy isn't an option and that their remaining options are to return to Libya or die at sea.

That probably wouldn't have to happen very many times before the flood of boat-people starts to diminish.

 

I understand from this that you have never been desperate and beyond hope. I don't recommend it, but it does give a different perspective.