Bismarck's armour scheme might not be as OP as expected

Machinery of War Discussion Navy
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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.

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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:

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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:

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Iowa at 9.1km:

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Littorio at 10km:

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What’s Vanguard’s Supercharge like?

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Just a bit under 5km

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Actually, angling doesn’t work as just cos(degree). Only 45 degree of armor gives twice the practical penetration needed due to APCBC’s weakness against sloped armor. So it would be not completely ‘immune’ to AP like Scharnhorst do without angling, but definitely not 600~630 ish. I expect about 700mm.

Also, Bismarck is something that cannot angle, actually much better at angling for survival than all those three ships mentioned. Turtleback would be not super level of OP, but still would be OP.
Barbette fire would be bigger problem for Bismarck, as it’s typical layout of every german battleship design.

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How do you think the draft change will affect scharnhorst if it comes? (Report was put in basically it’s accurate in the hangar but suddenly decides to drop like 2m in naval battles).

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What does that even mean?

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There probably nerf for Scharn could arrive.
https://community.gaijin.net/issues/p/warthunder/i/1oUfrcJ9n5st

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It’s hard to tell for now. It’s certainly going to reduce its invincibility but by how much, I don’t know. Fix to Scharnhorst’s draft will likely be deployed upon the next major so we will see.

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To have 630+mm pen

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Interesting.

I have one question:)

Have you calculated the penetration capability of Richelieu?

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lol.

Dear lord Royal Navy why did you refuse to make super heavy shells (relative to the competition) post WW1

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source used is this one :
http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNFR_15-45_m1935.php

For APC Modèle 1936 on a 10km shot, it gives this :
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TLDR, it seems to fall short; although not by much, and the fall angle might be enough to pen anyway

Also, did Vanguard while we are at it, with a 9.1km shot and the 879kg shell using supercharge :

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same source : 15-inch (38.1 cm) Mark I - NavWeaps

I don’t know how the supercharge works, but falling from 630mm @5km to 530mm @10 km seems rough, it’s possible i missed something here

And bismarck herself, 10km :

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Then again it seems low, and the shell seems excessively light, maybe i missed something ?

still the same good old navweaps :
http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNGER_15-52_skc34.php

All in all, the Japs and the US will have the best shells : highest pen and nice explosive mass, while the rest has to sacrifice something due to the use of a lower caliber :

The italians sacrified the explosive mass, but get a very nice pen, and can be up there with the big calibers in that regard
The germans and the brits seems to have sacrified the pen, but kept a very good explosive mass
The french shell fares not too bad, having still a good explosive mass while being halfway “in the middle” in terms of pen (which i can’t really explain tbh, just the shell weight maybe ?)

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now adays scran isnt even op anymore its guns do little damage and dont pen to much armor and all it has is good survivability

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survivability is all it has

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Thank you :)

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Also do note that navweap’s range table of 15’’ supercharge is of ‘average’ gun, not ‘new’ gun, which is about 34 m/s faster

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Is there any discussion on swapping the demarre formula with another for naval weapons?

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14" for those interested

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Reading this made my day better, let’s hope Gaijin gets it right

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