Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Igncom1]

From the little I know, the problem with battlecruisers was them getting drafted into the big battle for their guns and being annihilated due to a lack of armour. Basically them not being used properly because they were too big of an investment to leave out of the big battle.

At least from the British side, I think German ww1 BC's were different then ours.

[Thaago]

The "British Battlecruiers are made of paper" is actually a myth! The British admiral had decided that rate of fire mattered more than anything, including safety, so they no longer practiced safe ammo handling practices like closing flash doors and not storing spare rounds in the turret itself. The Battlecruisers who obeyed these directives did have increased rate of fire but any hit on a turret had handy primer rounds to amplify the first blast and then a handy open passageway straight to the magazine. At the Battle of Jutland this led to the loss of many ships in spectacular explosions.

However, there were Battlecruisers in other squadrons that were not subject to this order, and a few in Beatty's that quietly disobeyed, and they took numerous hits (including turret hits) without going down. They weren't as heavily armored as Battleships so the hits they took did more damage, but they had decent enough protection to keep them alive.

[Igncom1]

Huh, today I learned!

And if anything it makes me wish I could give orders like that to my fleet in SS  Higher fire rate but catastrophic damage whenever a turret gets disabled by enemy fire!

[Thaago]

Haha new Hullmod: Jutland Fire Control Procedures: Increase rate of fire by 10%. Reduce hull integrity by 90%.

[Nafensoriel]

It also bears mentioning that armor of older hulls was all around greater than most people realize.
To a civilian a modern-day Arleigh Burke would be a safe bet against an Iowa class yet in a practical fight it is unlikely the destroyer would be able to sink or even disable the Iowa(the converse would also be true). Design with armor can make absolutely astounding feats of engineering. When you see or hear a story about a ship that dies in one hit its generally a "shooting the golden rivet" event or a design/user error.

There were many examples in WW2 of ships quite figuratively shot to pieces(some with holes large enough to drive a car though) that were returned to active service(sometimes even with field repairs!)

Also fun fact... A modern missile is actually a terrible weapon to use against WW2 era ships as its intended target is the polar opposite of what existed back then. While you would score nearly 100% hits on targets the armor profiles of a WW2 naval ship would negate much of the advantages of a modern warhead. So in the earlier case of the Destroyer vs Battleship example you'd really be down to the destroyer trying to torp the battleship or a long-ranged gun duel where the destroyer prays it doesn't get smacked by a car weight of metal shell.

[calvin1211]

It also bears mentioning that armor of older hulls was all around greater than most people realize.
To a civilian a modern-day Arleigh Burke would be a safe bet against an Iowa class yet in a practical fight it is unlikely the destroyer would be able to sink or even disable the Iowa(the converse would also be true). Design with armor can make absolutely astounding feats of engineering. When you see or hear a story about a ship that dies in one hit its generally a "shooting the golden rivet" event or a design/user error.

There were many examples in WW2 of ships quite figuratively shot to pieces(some with holes large enough to drive a car though) that were returned to active service(sometimes even with field repairs!)

Also fun fact... A modern missile is actually a terrible weapon to use against WW2 era ships as its intended target is the polar opposite of what existed back then. While you would score nearly 100% hits on targets the armor profiles of a WW2 naval ship would negate much of the advantages of a modern warhead. So in the earlier case of the Destroyer vs Battleship example you'd really be down to the destroyer trying to torp the battleship or a long-ranged gun duel where the destroyer prays it doesn't get smacked by a car weight of metal shell.

This isn't entirely true. Wile the main engine rooms and magazines on a battleship are likely too well protected, battleships are also reliant on their gun director optics and radars on the superstructure, and those cannot be armoured, and are further vulnerable to blast shock on top of that. Dumping missiles into the superstructure will still render a battleship (mostly) impotent. There's even been instances of battleships knocking themselves out with the blast from their own main guns.

[Igncom1]

"Mission kill" or something like that right? To make it unable to perform it's role?

[calvin1211]

Yep, that's exactly it. A battleship with no fire control is one that's stuck in a yard for a few months getting replacements.

[Nafensoriel]

It also bears mentioning that armor of older hulls was all around greater than most people realize.
To a civilian a modern-day Arleigh Burke would be a safe bet against an Iowa class yet in a practical fight it is unlikely the destroyer would be able to sink or even disable the Iowa(the converse would also be true). Design with armor can make absolutely astounding feats of engineering. When you see or hear a story about a ship that dies in one hit its generally a "shooting the golden rivet" event or a design/user error.

There were many examples in WW2 of ships quite figuratively shot to pieces(some with holes large enough to drive a car though) that were returned to active service(sometimes even with field repairs!)

Also fun fact... A modern missile is actually a terrible weapon to use against WW2 era ships as its intended target is the polar opposite of what existed back then. While you would score nearly 100% hits on targets the armor profiles of a WW2 naval ship would negate much of the advantages of a modern warhead. So in the earlier case of the Destroyer vs Battleship example you'd really be down to the destroyer trying to torp the battleship or a long-ranged gun duel where the destroyer prays it doesn't get smacked by a car weight of metal shell.

This isn't entirely true. Wile the main engine rooms and magazines on a battleship are likely too well protected, battleships are also reliant on their gun director optics and radars on the superstructure, and those cannot be armoured, and are further vulnerable to blast shock on top of that. Dumping missiles into the superstructure will still render a battleship (mostly) impotent. There's even been instances of battleships knocking themselves out with the blast from their own main guns.

I think you need to look into just how much armor those things carried. The Con tower had as much forward-facing armor as the turrets themselves and was quite well protected. They were also designed so that no single direct strike could criple fire control(early models included 2 fire control towers which were also armored). To take out all fire control on an Iowa you would have to hit it from multiple vectors several times. Additionally, early upgrades gave each turret its own fire control radar and equipment. Hell if you went and used a 1980s Iowa they also carried CWIS batteries.

Modern missiles are absolutely terrible at penetrating thick armor since no one on the planet uses thick armor as a defense anymore. Most modern missiles striking an Iowa turret would just cause a fuel-related fire at worst because the missile itself would be incapable of detonating at its programmed depth. All contact detonation warheads currently in use would barely scuff the paint and would not cause spalling. Even HEAT rounds are not designed to penetrate armor that thick and would be ineffective. Could you easily design a modern missile that would go through 450+mm of armor like a hot knife through butter? Yes. In weeks if not hours. They don't exist in the current arsenals, however. This is predominately why Russia had a fit when the Iowas were modernized in the 1980s. If you coated a Burke in Chobham or some other modern metal-ceramic material they would be massively more immune to current arsenals. They would lose any possibility of outmaneuvering an enemy ship and cost an absurd amount more. Being able to take hits doesn't do you any good when you cant maneuver to avoid taking said hits hence the current "armor light speed is life" doctrine.

Mission killing an Iowa would take an absurd amount of ordnance... all while in range of guns that have the effective throw weight of a car being shot out of a cannon and surprisingly good accuracy to boot.

Of course, this does ignore that Burke can just lob a tactical nuke for funzies.

[Igncom1]

Of course, this does ignore that Burke can just lob a tactical nuke for funzies.

Ahh yeah, everything was tipped with a nuke in the cold war wasn't it? 

Why bother with armour when the air is lava!

[pedro1_1]

Modern day missiles are tested againd armor that rated +450mm of steel, because most of the time ships carry composite, and even old composite can get to upwards of 400mm of steel, as for other shell types, HEAT is at 650+ mm of steel, but the composites are made to defeat HEAT shells, exeding 1600+ mm of steel, APFSDS goes to 450+, HESH is at 450+, but we have no idea on how efective composites handle HESH, the theory is very well, and that's way it is only used by UK currently

[Nafensoriel]

Modern-day missiles are tested againd armor that rated +450mm of steel, because most of the time ships carry composite, and even old composite can get to upwards of 400mm of steel, as for other shell types, HEAT is at 650+ mm of steel, but the composites are made to defeat HEAT shells, exeding 1600+ mm of steel, APFSDS goes to 450+, HESH is at 450+, but we have no idea on how effective composites handle HESH, the theory is very well, and that's way it is only used by UK currently

Not quite a comparable metric.
Iowas broadside armor scheme was designed to protect against direct impacts and your typical arcing type shots(plunging) from 16inch/45cal shells.
While the "armor" might be 450mm+ in measured thickness it was also nickel-steel and you would have a hard time ever striking it at that angle. Additionally, the structure of the armor is built to enhance its natural resistive nature. 450+mm of armor on a weapon of war is considerably more "armor" than a plate of steel used in penetration tests.

To give a bit of example in how effective the Iowa classes belt armor and turret armor was... a 16inch/45cal round produces muzzle energy in excess of 300MJ. An M829 is around 12MJ IIRC.
A pinhole impact on a ship 1/4th of a KM long better be damned accurate to hit that fire control. I've actually seen a harpoon tested against similar armor to an Iowa. It did not fare well.

To be fair I have never said an Iowa would win or that you could not render it mostly mission ineffective. The issue is even if you dismiss a cold war era Iowa(which would annihilate an entire task group of Burkes) to mission kill one would require expending nearly your entire missile inventory and then charging in for a torpedo strike. The main issue is the 16/45s could be fired manually and their gun crews were not all that shabby especially with that nice heavy stable platform.

If a completely unrealistic scenario was given where you(the Burke) had to stop an Iowa from bombarding a shipyard the only really functional way you could stop that ship is to blow your wad of harpoons and then pray you could charge the prick with your torps before one of their gunners sent a 16inch shell through your entire command like it was made of paper.
Inversely if you were an Iowa trying to kill a Burke you would sit like an angry troll and hope they ran into your shells because you sure as hell would never be able to force action.

[calvin1211]

I think you need to look into just how much armor those things carried. The Con tower had as much forward-facing armor as the turrets themselves and was quite well protected. They were also designed so that no single direct strike could criple fire control(early models included 2 fire control towers which were also armored). To take out all fire control on an Iowa you would have to hit it from multiple vectors several times. Additionally, early upgrades gave each turret its own fire control radar and equipment. Hell if you went and used a 1980s Iowa they also carried CWIS batteries.

Modern missiles are absolutely terrible at penetrating thick armor since no one on the planet uses thick armor as a defense anymore. Most modern missiles striking an Iowa turret would just cause a fuel-related fire at worst because the missile itself would be incapable of detonating at its programmed depth. All contact detonation warheads currently in use would barely scuff the paint and would not cause spalling. Even HEAT rounds are not designed to penetrate armor that thick and would be ineffective. Could you easily design a modern missile that would go through 450+mm of armor like a hot knife through butter? Yes. In weeks if not hours. They don't exist in the current arsenals, however. This is predominately why Russia had a fit when the Iowas were modernized in the 1980s. If you coated a Burke in Chobham or some other modern metal-ceramic material they would be massively more immune to current arsenals. They would lose any possibility of outmaneuvering an enemy ship and cost an absurd amount more. Being able to take hits doesn't do you any good when you cant maneuver to avoid taking said hits hence the current "armor light speed is life" doctrine.

Mission killing an Iowa would take an absurd amount of ordnance... all while in range of guns that have the effective throw weight of a car being shot out of a cannon and surprisingly good accuracy to boot.

Of course, this does ignore that Burke can just lob a tactical nuke for funzies.

The conning tower armour only protects a hilariously tiny portion of the superstructure, namely a compartment in the bridge containing basic steering and nav equipment. (This is why it can get so thick; it's only a small portion, hence cheap mass-wise). Actual important stuff like the lenses for rangefinders and the radars themselves are all unarmoured or only given minimal splinter protection, because armour plate blocks EM radiation and consequently they can't be placed behind armour and still work. Same applies for the turrets; lenses, radars etc still stick outside the armour protection and are thus vulnerable.

I also wouldn't count out fire either; jet fuel fires are ridiculously dangerous and hard to put out, especially in the confined spaces on a ship where space and supplies are harshly limited and there are nicely flammable things like fuel and ammo stored. Most of the British losses in the Falklands came from jet fuel fires just burning ships down to the waterline, and those were relatively dinky Exocets; by the 1980s the Russians were starting to field the SS-N-19/P-700 with warhead alone larger than an entire Exocet or Harpoon missile. In size and speed(and thus resultant kinetic energy) it's pretty comparable to the 800mm shot of Schwerer Gustav, and is specifically designed to spew leftover jet fuel onto its target with the warhead behind the engine and fuel tanks.

[Morrokain]

Cool discussion- It's very interesting and informative. This is slightly off topic, but I feel it's relevant and interesting to think about. Military history and what is considered obsolete/the progression of innovation, etc, has always been an intriguing concept for me. I wish I could find the quote my professor shared to make sure I get it right, but it was something like this: (Its been 10 years so I remember the lesson but not the words)

"For everything we know of history, and for all the vastness that it encompasses, the most harrowing truth a historian comes to learn stems from sleepless nights contemplating the even greater expanse representing the spaces in between- where no knowledge of what occurred or what could have been will ever exist again, but remains forever lost to the inertia of time and the volatility and ego of humanity."

This applies more and more the further back you go, and it has been theorized that even the technology of today could be improved by ancient civilizations' knowledge that was never recorded or lost in war or catastrophic civilization collapse. In this era, it's the opposite. There is so much recorded that it's hard to sift through the data.... which is why Big Data management is so important right now.

To apply this to warships, it's important in my mind to note that much about what we think of as being obsolete stems from what worked in the moment. Using WWII as an example, if something would have caused a situation where a battleship squadron cornered and killed all the carriers in a fleet then proceeded to win the sea war, we would still likely be in a battleship arms race and carriers would have been tossed aside as a "bad and costly idea" and not developed further- theory crafting be damned. This does not actually make carriers the weaker warship, per say, but that impression could have certainly killed the desire to continue innovating them under the right circumstances. Maybe it would have been picked up again later.. or maybe not.

Mostly, this makes sense from a psychological viewpoint. Someone isn't going to spend the costly time and resources building something again if it performed poorly during its initial test in the field. You probably won't be this guy: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w82CqjaDKmA

If something works in the moment- especially if it works very well, it becomes an arms race on who can innovate and improve it faster. Similarly, due the importance of defense, technology often changes at a rate that many military strategists can't keep up with. The decade in between WWI and WWII showcases the dangers of relying on old strategies/tools. Even in WWI, the machine gun was something the military minds at the time often just didn't know how to handle because it was new and unprecedented in its destructive capability- which caused defensive trench warfare, etc.

I think the arms race situation and how innovations change what is and is not viewed as viable can be simplified to offense and defense. If you can't stop the offense and the defense is ineffectual, the tool won't likely work. But if you develop a better defense that stops the best of their offense- you win. Though simple of the surface, the typical speed (and the fact that these are obviously hidden if possible) of innovations make this judgement call very difficult to make, and oftentimes therefore the best evidence is what worked in the past. This means that innovations that could actually be better than the current meta of military understanding can be lost due to that special moment in history another teacher described as: "Sometimes... *** just happens." (He was describing William III's death for anyone curious.) You don't really get a lot of tests with warships since as it has been mentioned already most sea wars come down to a few decisive battles after a lot of tactical posturing and attempted resource denial. So new innovations often get a very limited opportunity to prove themselves in actual combat. If something unexpected goes wrong it can kill the confidence in the innovation completely regardless of how well it could perform when optimized or under differing conditions.

If they had discovered a lighter, stronger way to make a knight's suit of armor resistant to the crossbow and longbow, those weapons could possibly be an afterthought in history. Agincourt remains a testament to the longbow still, though. Even then, there were many other factors such as muddy terrain which slowed the knights charge, etc. Had that battle not occurred or gone differently (everyone at the time expected the French to easily annihilate the English due to their numbers), the longbow could have been abandoned (armor costs way more but was also a status symbol so it served two roles, and training archers on the longbow was reportedly extremely time intensive- iirc a decade or more to hone the skills and build the arm strength to be effective with it so its widespread yearlong practice was encouraged among civilian populations to make recruitment easier), so it had its drawbacks as well.

I'd be really curious to see what kind of ship would be made today if the rule was still "bigger- more guns- better guns." Dreadnoughts likely would be a designation all on it's own, and the designation of battleship might be more like the cruiser designation of today. Or the designations of today would apply but everything would be bigger. It's fun to speculate!

For a book series of crazy alternate history that does a good job of describing an innovative arms race, the Destroyermen Series is pretty interesting.

[Nafensoriel]

@morrokain

Most people forget that humans are anything but logical . As a species, we try to apply logic to things while behaving entirely illogically on just about every level of society.
A very long time ago an engineer who mentored me always said: "Remember the Rednecks" when trying to solve a problem. He did not mean it derogatorily but more to remind us that the "simplest" thoughts can lead to the most profound solutions. It was a running joke of the day that the first person to invent a working FTL drive would precede the statement with "Hey Yall watch this!". A mind that doesn't know its limitations can always find a way around the logical.

A good example of what you are talking about was submarines. The first versions sucked so everyone ignored them as a pipedream of mad inventors(who often killed themselves with their inventions) until the germans figured out the secret sauce to making them brutal weapons of war. It's an ever-changing arms race that still goes on to this day as world powers play one-upmanship in technology and technique. What if the early Hunley submarine didn't sink?  What if it not only didn't sink but performed well enough the confederation invested heavily into them?