"Relative Armour Performance" Topic
6 Posts
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Pontius | 14 Sep 2016 2:17 a.m. PST |
While reading David Brown's book Warrior to Dreadnaught I found the following interesting sentence in a section dealing with the introduction and manufacture of Krupp armour from 1896. "The basic Krupp armour process remained in use until the end of the battleship era, a remarkable achievement, though Britain and Germany (but not the USA) improved performance by about 30% c1930 by improved heat treatment and minor changes in composition which enabled a still more gentle transition from hard face to the back." Now this is the first time I have seen this and normally I would take it with a pinch of salt until I verified it from another source, but David Brown was Deputy Chief Naval Architect and his information is generally taken from impeccable sources. Now this may make me change how I treat armour in future. It appears to say that (discounting any benefits from sloped armour) a 12" belt post 1930 is equivalent to 15.5" on a WW1 era ship. |
hindsTMP | 14 Sep 2016 10:47 a.m. PST |
This article, originally in "Warship International", says something similar: link Mark H. |
Blutarski | 14 Sep 2016 3:36 p.m. PST |
Fair Warning! If you decide to seriously peer into the topic of armor versus projectiles, prepare for a complicated journey wherein a seemingly obvious assumptions turn out to be not so accurate after all. And the history of AP projectile development is, if anything, more complex than that of armor. I've been studying this (for naval wargaming purposes) for a L O N G time and there are still things the pop up to surprise me. If you do decide to take the plunge, I would suggest that a very good start would be to read anything you lay hands on written by Nathan Okun, "delcyros" or "Bill Jurens" (current editor of "Warship International" journal) on the Navweaps Technical pages and the Navweaps 'Battleship versus Battleship' chat forum. These three gentlemen are highly knowledgeable and, very importantly, do not have any flag-waving personal agendas. You will probably also run across posts by a guy named Blutarski on the BvB chat forum. Don't trust anything he writes. B |
Pontius | 14 Sep 2016 11:51 p.m. PST |
I've been looking at projectiles v armour for a while in order to come up with a new set of rules. My old set, which basically I wrote 30+ years ago as student, have been bugging me a bit and I have started afresh and tried to produce something simpler and playable for those who are not familiar with the intricacies of naval warfare. In essence I am attempting to allocate two armour classes (belt & deck) to all ships rather than use the actual thicknesses. The aim is to use six classes ranging from unarmoured to Very Heavy. Whether this is achievable remains to be seen. You will probably also run across posts by a guy named Blutarski on the BvB chat forum. Don't trust anything he writes. I try to steer well clear of him :-) |
Mobius | 15 Sep 2016 4:22 a.m. PST |
Years ago I made a computer program using Nathan Okun's formulas. It seems the US has it's own ideas on bestest homogeneous armor and that is reflected in Okun's ideas and formulas. The US is of the opinion that 240 BHN armor (Naval Class 'B' armor) is the ideal hardness and this is rated as 100% of strength. Every other countries armor is rated at less than this. However, outside the Navy we find something different. US Army tests show that 320-350 BHN is equivalent to 20% more armor than 240 BHN armor. British Ordnance Board was using MQ 280 BHN as its test armor then sometime 1943-1944 seems to have switched test armor to become more like the US. This boosted the penetration numbers of guns by about 10%. (It is possible the Brits also changed penetration criteria but I don't have the documents for this if they are available.) Other countries have a completely different idea of what the ideal homogeneous armor hardness should be. For example in the 1950s the Yugoslavs tested different countries tanks and guns. So comparisons could be made mano-y-mano. The softer 240 BHN class 'B' like US armor proved to be weaker than harder Soviet armor. There was the case where in a battle in WWII 8" class 'B' US cruiser turret face was penetrated by a Japanese cruiser shell but a 6.5" class 'A' face-hard turret defeated another shell. Bottom line is I'd go along with David Brown;s opinion than others mentioned. |
Ottoathome | 16 Sep 2016 3:30 p.m. PST |
Well, not to be contrarian, but I do wish to say that I, like others on this list have been bedeviled by this question for decades and made up several sets of rules featuring them, and eventually tossed them. The reason was somewhat simple. After reading all the accounts I could lay my hands on I realized that the vast number of ships were destroyed by fire. Often these fires were caused by the defeat of armor by a shell, but far more often shells found their way into unarmored spaces (like fuel storage and paint lockers) and started nasty fires which soon burned out of control. I am not here making a sophistic statement like the Invincible was destroyed by fire, because the magazine blew up after it caught fire from a penetrating shell, only that I did not find that the origin of the fire from penetration was automatic or necessary. Nor am I arguing that penetration is not important. After all, in my latest set of rules, "Jayne's Frightening Ships" I use armor as one means of determining penetration, but this "armor" is more rated on the "robustness of the ship." The factors of the ship, that is the ship stats are derived from its armament, but these, all of them, from guns to speed are degraded by distance from commission date, modified by refits. So for example a ship commissioned in 1907, might be (for guns, armor, damage control, and speed) a 9-9-9-7, by 1939 it could be a 2-1-1-3, which would be about the same for a brand spanking new light cruiser-- a very SLOW light cruiser. |
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