robert132 wrote:Joat42 wrote:Which reminds me of a question regarding the shells used on ships, I know there are 2 basic types (not counting smoke etc); AP and HE. What kind of refinements are there on these 2 types, for example - tanks use HE, HEAT, AP, APCR (and the British HESH which causes massive amounts of spalling) and all their cousins.
So what types do ships have? Analogues but bigger variants of the tank shell examples I gave?
Hi Joat. Sorry for taking so long in getting back to you, life has a tendency to get in the way from time to time.
In my experience the lighter naval guns like the USN family of 5" (127mm) have variants including the ubiquitous smoke and fragmentation rounds, combined with VT fuses the frag rounds most common use is in AAA although when set to burst at a very low altitude it makes a dandy anti-personnel round, better than detonating on contact with the ground in fact. There's also the conventional HE round (still referred to as HE to my knowledge,)illumination rounds and armor piercing.
To my uncertain knowledge the 16" rounds used during the last commission of the Iowa class ships were limited to simply HE (hellofa big bang) and armor piercing (though not many of those) for use against well dug in targets like command centers that conventional bombs and artillery had trouble breaching during Desert Storm.
The U.S. used a different type of shell than ordinary HE it was HC or High Capacity. HC carried slightly less explosive filler for slightly more armor penetration. IIRC the differences in explosive filler and armor penetration was HE 900 lbs HC 800 lbs AP HE 1-2 inches HC 2-3inches FYI the U.S. standard HE/C round weighed 1900 lbs.