Mk16G = 12" / 50 mark 8 naval gun or 8"/55 RF Mark 16

Daryl wrote:Back to the discussion on ordinance, a question I'd like answered is how would missiles like Exocet or Harpoon go against BB armour?

To quote the captain of the USS New Jersey shortly after the USS Stark was hit by 2 Exocet ASM. Quote Pipe Sweepers Unquote. The armor of a Iowa class battleship ranges from 6 to 22 inches thick.

TFLYTSNBN wrote:

kzt wrote:When you get the huge Russian missiles that are moving above Mach 2, well they are not an Exocet missile...

Even without AP projectile they can be equipped with shaped charges. Just for comparison, when slope is factored in modern tank is equivalent to about 4 FEET of steel.

Though unless the shaped charge hits something like a turret you could consider the interior of a battleship to be almost nothing but de facto spaced armor. (See spaced armor; against HEAT.

The plasma jet will tear the hell out of the first compartment it reaches, even through the armor belt. But oddly, then the several feet of open air of the compartment will tend to disrupt the shaped plasma jet significantly more than another foot or three of steel would -- after that it will have a much harder time penetrating even common bulkheads of the inboard wall of the compartment. With most critical components buried several compartments inboard of the hull even an enormous shaped charge is going to have real trouble cutting its way to them.


(But if you can precisely target things like the bridge or the turrets a good sized shaped charge can seriously impair a battleship's combat effectiveness even though it has virtually no chance of sinking the BB)

saber964 wrote:

Daryl wrote:Back to the discussion on ordinance, a question I'd like answered is how would missiles like Exocet or Harpoon go against BB armour?

To quote the captain of the USS New Jersey shortly after the USS Stark was hit by 2 Exocet ASM. Quote Pipe Sweepers Unquote. The armor of a Iowa class battleship ranges from 6 to 22 inches thick.

But please note that much of the ship is NOT protected by the armor belt -- the whole superstructure, the bow and stern, all the top quarters... the all-or-nothing armoring scheme was designed to keep the ship's vitals (engines, turrets, magazines) safe from 16" AP shell. Exocets won't get through that. But a hit could do damage almost anywhere it hit. Enough surface damage can be a mission kill (the bridge, the fire directors, the radar antennas) and it might still make the ship go back for repairs even if it wasn't in danger of sinking or losing its main armament.

Jonathan_S wrote:
The plasma jet will tear the hell out of the first compartment it reaches, even through the armor belt. But oddly, then the several feet of open air of the compartment will tend to disrupt the shaped plasma jet significantly more than another foot or three of steel would -- after that it will have a much harder time penetrating even common bulkheads of the inboard wall of the compartment. With most critical components buried several compartments inboard of the hull even an enormous shaped charge is going to have real trouble cutting its way to them.


(But if you can precisely target things like the bridge or the turrets a good sized shaped charge can seriously impair a battleship's combat effectiveness even though it has virtually no chance of sinking the BB)

You underestimate a bit what LARGE HE/shaped-charge warhead - like half-meter P-15M "Termit" (Styx) warhead - could do with a ship. Especially considering that the shaping cone was placed so that when missile hit the ship's deck, the cone would be aimed almost directly downward.

In short, it is a HEAVY jet of metal, which have enough kinetic energy to go through armor deck and then downward through bulkheads and decks like through paper. Of course, the the affected area is not very large (since it's a metal jet, after all!), but since the missile aimed toward the center of target, it was assumed that there are a good probability that jet would hit something valuable - machines (loss of speed and power), boilers (quite impressive BOOM!), magazines (VERY impressive BOOM, with bow and stern of the ship thrown apart). And let's not forget, that the HE charge was also pretty significant.

In short, it was assumed that after 4-6 hits of P-15 missiles, the "Iowa"-class battleship would be a flaming wreck, with powerplant taken down, superstructure and fire control gone, and turrets jammed. Oh yeah, about jammed turrets - during live missile tests in 1950s, our Soviet engineers noticed interesting thing; the turrets on WW2 era warships were NOT able to stand against the shock of heavy missile impacting ship at transsonic speed. They jammed simply because of shock transmitting through hull.

Daryl wrote:Back to the discussion on ordinance, a question I'd like answered is how would missiles like Exocet or Harpoon go against BB armour?

Well, they aren't exactly designed to deal with that kind of threat (albeit Italian "Otomat" was designed to penetrate cruiser-grade armored deck, about two inch of hardened steel), but they could be quite fast refitted to handle the armored warships.

Possible solutions:

* Install HE/shaped charge warhead. The effect would not be as impressive as for P-15M "Termit", because the diameter of "Harpoon" or "Exocet" is much smaller, but still enough to do serious damage. Especially with modern imaging seekers, which allow missile to chose the point of impact.

* Install hardened penetration warhead - made from depleted uranium, of something. Maybe a dual warhead - shaped-charge one to make a hole in armor plate, and hardened penetrator to break through the hole inside the hull.

* Install "diving", submersible warhead, designed to hit not the ship but the water and detonate near the hull, creating a water "hammer" effect. Basically you need only a small reprogramming to the missile (so in the last seconds before impact it would dive) and delayed fuse for warhead.

* Just use the old-fashioned tactical nuclear warhead. It would do the trick against any kind of armor.

And the best of all - all this refits could be completed MUCH faster that it would take to build even one armored ships. So in short - there is no reason to have anything more than anti-splinter armor on modern warships. Armor is heavy, and too easy to penetrate.

Dilandu wrote:

Daryl wrote:Back to the discussion on ordinance, a question I'd like answered is how would missiles like Exocet or Harpoon go against BB armour?

Well, they aren't exactly designed to deal with that kind of threat (albeit Italian "Otomat" was designed to penetrate cruiser-grade armored deck, about two inch of hardened steel), but they could be quite fast refitted to handle the armored warships.

Possible solutions:

* Install HE/shaped charge warhead. The effect would not be as impressive as for P-15M "Termit", because the diameter of "Harpoon" or "Exocet" is much smaller, but still enough to do serious damage. Especially with modern imaging seekers, which allow missile to chose the point of impact.

* Install hardened penetration warhead - made from depleted uranium, of something. Maybe a dual warhead - shaped-charge one to make a hole in armor plate, and hardened penetrator to break through the hole inside the hull.

* Install "diving", submersible warhead, designed to hit not the ship but the water and detonate near the hull, creating a water "hammer" effect. Basically you need only a small reprogramming to the missile (so in the last seconds before impact it would dive) and delayed fuse for warhead.

* Just use the old-fashioned tactical nuclear warhead. It would do the trick against any kind of armor.

And the best of all - all this refits could be completed MUCH faster that it would take to build even one armored ships. So in short - there is no reason to have anything more than anti-splinter armor on modern warships. Armor is heavy, and too easy to penetrate.

Tactical nukes?
I like the way you think.

TFLYTSNBN wrote:
Tactical nukes?
I like the way you think.

They are compact, reliable and devastating. Basically all Soviet anti-ship missiles (with little exceptions) have both a conventional and nuclear version.

Dilandu wrote:

TFLYTSNBN wrote:
Tactical nukes?
I like the way you think.

They are compact, reliable and devastating. Basically all Soviet anti-ship missiles (with little exceptions) have both a conventional and nuclear version.

Yes, it is true. The soviets even put nuclear warheads on some of their S-200 anti-air missiles and on their 240 mm mortars. Talk about overkill!

Moreover, the soviet military doctrine emphasized using nuclear warheads even at the tactical level. Every soviet division had its own rocket battalion of six launchers armed with nuclear and chemical weapons. The rocket battalion was the divisional commander's main trump card and he was expected to use it in full against a peer opponent. All soviet commanders of armies and fronts also had independent rocket regiments/brigades under their command. These nuclear rocket units were under the command of the Land Forces, and separate from the more widely known units of the Strategic Rocket Forces.

Hegemon wrote:
Yes, it is true. The soviets even put nuclear warheads on some of their S-200 anti-air missiles and on their 240 mm mortars. Talk about overkill!

Well, who doesn't? The USA have nuclear-tipped Nike-Hercules SAM, nuclear variants of "Talos" and "Terrier" naval SAM, 203-mm and 155-mm nuclear artillery shells, and even nuclear air-to-air missiles. Basically, it was typical overkill for the 1960s, when the guidance systems still weren't reliable enough, and small nuclear warhead were the best way to compensate for the guidance system inaccuracy. Or provide additional firepower for artillery - one nuclear shell could won the artillery duel in seconds.

Dilandu wrote:

Hegemon wrote:
Yes, it is true. The soviets even put nuclear warheads on some of their S-200 anti-air missiles and on their 240 mm mortars. Talk about overkill!

Well, who doesn't? The USA have nuclear-tipped Nike-Hercules SAM, nuclear variants of "Talos" and "Terrier" naval SAM, 203-mm and 155-mm nuclear artillery shells, and even nuclear air-to-air missiles. Basically, it was typical overkill for the 1960s, when the guidance systems still weren't reliable enough, and small nuclear warhead were the best way to compensate for the guidance system inaccuracy. Or provide additional firepower for artillery - one nuclear shell could won the artillery duel in seconds.

Yes, a little known fact is that soviet Land Forces doctrine during the Cold War envisioned the use of nuclear weapons essentially as a more powerful and less resource intensive replacement of their huge World War II artillery barrages (some of those used more than a million shells in a few hours). Also, like in World War II, it dictated the launch of massive combined arms assaults immediately after the barrage had lifted.