It's time once again for our regular Open Thread. Talk about whatever you want, so long as it isn't Culture War.
The DSL meetup in Tucson was great (look for reviews of Pima and the Titan silo soon) and has me thinking about the meetup I'm trying to put together for the Iowa, probably in June. Before I start seriously trying to book things, I'd like to gauge interest. The basic schedule would run Friday night through Sunday noon-ish, with the main event being most of the day on the battleship. I'm not sure how much of the ship we'll be able to see, but I'm working on that.
Overhauls are Military Procurement - Pricing, Survivability - Fire and for 2022, Letters of Marque Today and Early Lessons from the War in Ukraine.
Comments
Two armour questions ...
1) For battleship era ships ... is it true that armor penetrated by a shell does very little to reduce the damage from that shell.
2) Given modern metalurgy, how much better could we make armor today? I'm aware of the 'chobham' composite armor. Could one buy a battleship of that for under a billion $$$$? Would that technique be effective is scaled up to battleship thickness? And if that's not the right technical path, could modern metalurgy produce significantly better armor than the 1940s?
We are no longer needed or have value! Here is ChatGPT's answer to the question. Can anyone think of anything to add?
It is true that armor penetrated by a shell may not necessarily reduce the damage from that shell in battleship era ships. When a shell strikes an armor plate, it creates a hole that can allow fragments and other debris to enter the ship. This debris can cause additional damage to the ship's structure and crew. Additionally, the impact of the shell can create shock waves that can damage the ship's machinery, electronics, and other systems. However, the armor plate can still absorb some of the energy of the shell, reducing the amount of damage caused by the impact.
Modern metallurgy has advanced significantly since the battleship era, and it is possible to produce significantly better armor today. Chobham composite armor is just one example of advanced armor technology. Other materials, such as ceramics and advanced alloys, have also been developed that offer improved protection against modern threats. However, it is difficult to say exactly how much better armor could be made, as this would depend on the specific requirements and constraints of the application.
As for the cost of producing a battleship with modern armor technology, it is difficult to estimate without more information. The cost would depend on a variety of factors, including the size and complexity of the ship, the specific armor technology used, and the production process. However, it is likely that such a ship would cost significantly more than $1 billion. Additionally, battleships are no longer considered a practical or effective military asset, so there is little demand for them in modern naval warfare.
We are no longer needed or have value! Here is ChatGPT's answer to the question. Can anyone think of anything to add?
It is true that armor penetrated by a shell may not necessarily reduce the damage from that shell in battleship era ships. When a shell strikes an armor plate, it creates a hole that can allow fragments and other debris to enter the ship. This debris can cause additional damage to the ship's structure and crew. Additionally, the impact of the shell can create shock waves that can damage the ship's machinery, electronics, and other systems. However, the armor plate can still absorb some of the energy of the shell, reducing the amount of damage caused by the impact.
Modern metallurgy has advanced significantly since the battleship era, and it is possible to produce significantly better armor today. Chobham composite armor is just one example of advanced armor technology. Other materials, such as ceramics and advanced alloys, have also been developed that offer improved protection against modern threats. However, it is difficult to say exactly how much better armor could be made, as this would depend on the specific requirements and constraints of the application.
As for the cost of producing a battleship with modern armor technology, it is difficult to estimate without more information. The cost would depend on a variety of factors, including the size and complexity of the ship, the specific armor technology used, and the production process. However, it is likely that such a ship would cost significantly more than $1 billion. Additionally, battleships are no longer considered a practical or effective military asset, so there is little demand for them in modern naval warfare.
It depends. If there's more armor behind, then usually yes. If the shell breaks up while penetrating, then definitely yes. If neither of those is the case, then no, because most of the damage comes from the explosive charge, which isn't affected unless, as mentioned, the shell breaks up.
It's not quite clear. Tank armor faces a rather different set of threats than battleship armor, and I'm not sure that we'd gain a lot from those techniques. We would undoubtedly be able to do significantly better in general, thanks to improvements in metallurgy (at a guess, 25-50%), but I'm not sure we'd see the sort of composite stuff we see on tanks, just because keeping out heavy shells isn't a particularly complicated job. But I'm also not an expert in metallurgy, so I don't know for sure.
At some limit, wouldn't any armor that forced them to fire AP shells reduce damage just by going from a 150+lb bursting charge to a 30-40lb one? (Did anyone use HE on destroyers, or was AP strictly better after all?)
AP shells occasionally got fired at destroyers, e.g., at Samar. The problem is that there’s nothing in a destroyer except maybe the turbine reduction gears that’s strong enough to set off the AP fuse, so you’re really relying just on punching an 18-inch-wide hole through the ship. Which might not be enough.
I think the original design goal of chobham armor was to counter high explosive anti-tank (HEAT) ordinance, especially the warheads of anti-tank missiles. HEAT uses a shaped charge to create a focused jet of fast-moving molten copper which is fantastic at penetrating rolled steel armor. But it's much less effective against ceramic composites because ceramic is more heat resistant and because it shatters.irregularly in a way that unfocuses the copper jet. Later iterations of composite armor also added features to counter high-density high-hardness kinetic projectiles (tungsten or depleted uranium APDS rounds and similar) through a combination of very-high hardness ceramics that shatter the penetrator and high-density metal rods that dissipate the kinetic energy further.
I don't know enough about modern anti-ship ordinance to say with confidence, but from what I do know I'd guess chobham-style armor to have some benefit but much less so than on a land vehicle. Anti-ship weapons do have modes that are conceptually similar to what chobham is designed against, but they're much less extreme than the anti-tank weapons: AP shells and "penetration blast" warheads do use hardened cases to kinetically penetrate armor before going boom, but that's different from the dart-like kinetic penetrators used against tanks. And there are shaped-charge anti-ship warheads, which like HEAT uses molten copper to burn through the armor, but naval HEDP (high-explosive dual purpose) shaped charge weapons rely lot less purely on a tightly focused copper jet than HEAT and use the blast of the shaped charge directly to do some of the damage.
Also, a big, dumb explosive shell seems like it'd be great against ceramic armor that's designed to defeat shaped charges by shattering strategically. Even on tanks, one of the big disadvantages of composite armor is that it gets a lot weaker when hit repeatedly in the same area because the ceramics break. Put chombham or similar on a battleship, and I'd worry about it getting pounded into sand by repeated hits from big, dumb high explosive shells.
After Crossroads, uparmouring a capital ship has been the difference between getting 500% overkilled and 200% overkilled, perhaps.
If we stick to conventional warheads, I imagine that a thin layer of ultra-hard ceramics, some compartmentalised storage space and then an inner layer of tough armour would work quite well.
Lets give you two choices: You can have a quad turret of British 14" guns, or a triple turret of American 16" guns.
1) Both range beyond 30,000 yards (I don't think you can successfully target anything beyond that)
2) Throw weight 4,800lbs vs 5,400 lbs.
3) The guns in total weigh 240T in either case. I think turret weight would be similar, 1,500T vs 1,700T.
Assuming the both turrets and guns are reliable (designed without wartime pressure, with good engineering, etc) which would you pick?
Cobham-style tank armor seems to offer little advantage over good steel when it comes to keeping out big SAP rounds, i.e. most modern antiship missile warheads and bombs. Also little advantage against fragmentation either internal or external. And while it might help against HEAT, the antiship missiles with HEAT warheads tend to have really big ones that will outmatch any practical armor (but be less likely to penetrate deep into the interior than SAP).
Kevlar and the like might be advantageous in this capacity, but is going to be pricey in warship-armoring quantities.
And, definitely interested in a June meetup.