Bismarck’s armour scheme has been long expected as an upgrade to Scharnhorst, which already had been complaint for years of being too OP. However, I realised that Bismarck’s armour scheme, namely the notorious turtleback, is probably not going to be as OP as people expected.
Scharnhorst’s turtleback is OP due to its very special shape: it is not only highly obliqued but also curved. The average angle of Scharnhorst’s turtleback at its lower portion is ~65°, while nearing its upper edge it starts to curve towards horizontal plate which drastically increase the angle to beyond 70° or even 80°. At this angle any shell, including Yamato’s 460mm will almost always auto ricochet.
Furthermore, due to its very deep draft, the turtleback hides under the waterline in most of the time , which further increase its effectiveness.
While Bismarck’s armour scheme looks to be even more OP on paper: angle of the turtleback increased from 65° to 68° and the thickness was increased from Scharnhorst’s 105mm to 110mm (machinery) and 120mm (magazine), it does not have the privilege of curved turtleback. Even worse, at the magazine sections, due to narrowing of the hull and the larger volume of space that 38cm magazines take, the slope deck has to get steeper, that the angle actually reduced down to 59° near turret B and 57° abreast turret A:
This drastically reduces its effectiveness despite the thickness increased to 120mm. Based on WT’s slope multiplier, Bismack’s magazine protection (320mm + 120mm@57° + 45mm) roughly equals to 600~630mm of armour, and it does not gives the ricochet chances like Scharnhorst’s turtleback.
For those of you who don’t know the penetration capability of the upcoming ships’ weapons:
Yamato at 10km:
Spoiler
Iowa at 9.1km:
Spoiler
Littorio at 10km:
Spoiler
