You’re overestimating the 16" Mark 7’s for WT purposes.
The guns will have some of the highest pen ingame, with floaty arcs leading to them having a better chance of falling into the magazines instead of sailing over them, but they also arent exactly special bursting charge-wise, at around 18kg tnt equivalent and a 30 sec reload.
For compairison, the Bismark classes 15" guns are also 18kg bursting charge. They have flatter arcs, and worst pen, bust still more pen than anything currently ingame, and have as low as a 20 second reload.
The flatter arc on the bismark guns are also interesting to note. On one hand, floaty arcs like the USN’s superheavy shells are better for penning magazines and the likes, on the other, they make shots annoyingly hard to hit on occaision.
Im sure the Iowa class will be good ingame, but mostly as a mix of all-around performance and incredible AA (which will be needed as these ships will begin to see jet bombers and the likes…)
On the gun side of things though, the Sovestky Soyuz class the russians will get will have similar pen with flatter arcs and better bursting charges (25.7kg on AP, and a whopping 88kg on SAP…), likely giving them the best guns ingame. Likely also just the best overall BB tbh, russian dreamboat style.
Don’t try to hide the simple fact that KGV has sole 343~374 mm armor, which is surpassing the minimum effectiveness of Iowa class armor in simple mathematic calculation.
And when counting ‘overmatching’ mechanism, things become worse. War Thunder’s sloped armor got it’s effectiveness reduced when shell’s caliber is 1.3 or more bigger than the armor. And 307 mm means that every 16’’ will get this ‘reduced sloping effect’ on Iowa’s armor.
Actually, when I calculate, 400 mm RHAe is what Iowa could gain with all its STS(de capping plate, back plate, etc) implemented. pretty much the same with KGV and Lion’s main belt. And when angling started, Iowa’s effectiveness become even worse than those two.
This does also mean that it will lose penetrative ability faster over distance.
And the Bismarck doesn’t have a sustained 20 second reload rate…and they have effectively a ready rack in their turret, I’m sure that will be coded ‘not’ to instantly cook off it’s turrets on demand.
But of course! Shell rooms with fire suppression and a load of metal separating the boom-makers from each other means it’s a literal powder keg, but ready ammo is practically inert until it flies down your citadel.
The Duke of York is the reason why that happened however.
The biggest issue here is the ham-handed nature of how different ships coded durability is getting used. A la the Kron (until recently) where you could all the 14"+ rounds into the magazines you want and it wouldn’t explode. Meanwhile you hit the shell room on a USN Battleship? instant karma.
You do realise 343mm vertical belt first appeared on US standard battleships and those were designs from 1910s? Having a 1930s design with same standards of protection doesn’t seem great to me. Ofc magazine protection with 374mm belt with a slightly inclined angle was much better but it was in exchange with poor machinery protection. Nagato also had excellent protection for her magazine but no one would even nominate her in the list of thebest protected battleships given the poor machinery armouring.
Correct conclusions won’t come out simply from “simple facts”. Since you mentioned overmatching and calculations, I did the calculation for you with gaijin’s formula: against 16in shells with 7deg angle of descent (typically corresponding to range of around 10km), 307mm@19deg would be of 397mm RHA equivalence while 349mm@0deg equals to 389mm RHA; When the angle of descent increases to 15 deg the advantage of 307mm@19deg over 349mm@0deg gets significantly greater to 450mm RHA vs 401mm RHA.
I also calculated the scenarios with heading angles, and 307mm@19deg appears to be superior to 349mm@0deg until 55 deg to normal attack (and at this angle both would be equivalent to well over 900mm RHA so it’s really pointless to discuss at this point) You heavily underestimated the effect of that 19 deg of inclination because you overlooked a fact that the integrated angle of attack is contributed by the angle of descent, while slope effect is almost negligible at any angle below 10 deg, the extra angle of attack provided by the armour inclination combined with the angle of descent made significant difference in the final equivalence of protection. And don’t forget that I didn’t even count the external decapping STS plates in my calculation, the actual gap between the two would have been even greater.
I think calculation is little wrong? 26 degree is not that effective in WT for now. I’ve consider integrated angle of attack but still not this effective.
This is actually what I’m consider(and feel worthless) about ‘severe and impractical’ angling. Yes, maybe 55 degree angling could make your side armor good. But what about bow bulkhead? Iowa class has thinner bow bulkhead than even Arizona now is(Of course Missouri and Wisconsin got 387 mm above waterline but under waterline it is still thin). Making 55 degree of angling makes makes your ship more vulnerable, especially considering the fact that US battleships store charges around the waterline. Even now it is so easy to detonate wrongly angled Alaska, Kronshtadt, and even Scharnhorst sometimes when they show bow too much. And all US fast battleships we would see retains the internal structure that Alaska has.
On the other hand, KGV and Lion has bow deck armor that would ricochet flat angled round, and super low shell room and magazine deep below the waterline.
Oh, and finally, neither US fast battleships and KGV&Lion won’t use steep angling as they have serious firepower reduction over 45 degree. US battleships would suffer the problem what USS Mississipi currently has as they all have bofors quad mount near third turret, and KGV&Lion cannot rotate their turret over ±150 degree.
Again, sticking on a sole number without any meaningful calculation to back your statement certainly would not make you look smart here.
But since for obvious reason you can’t do the calculation properly, I did it for you again: Against UK‘s late 15" 6crh, minimal immunity of 349mm@0° is 25500 yd vs 20500 yd for 307mm@19°. As comparison, the North Carolina’s 305mm@15° had a minimum immunity range of 22500 yd.
And minimum range of immunity against 460mm Type 96 APC:
Iowa: 24500m
KGV: 31000m
North Carolina: 27000m
We all know North Carolina was often pranked by people for poor armouring, while some people believe KGV’s armouring was great because it has big numbers of thickness on paper. It turns out KGV’s protection was even worse than North Carolina :)
Thanks for proving my point, the only scenario where KGV’s thick vertical belt being more effective is when the ship’s heading angle is greater than ~55deg
They are cemented plates so both got *1.1 multiplier. Slope multiplier in WT only begins to have considerable effect when the attack angle s greater than 20deg, so having 19deg of armour inclination vs none does have a big impact. You can calculate it yourself with this link: https://acsbicicoop.altervista.org/WT/index.html
Don’t forget to change the armour quality to “Modern rolled high hardness” (*1.1 RHA)
Ofc I won’t be surprised to see KGV to have decent survivability in this game given the current meta we have atm. But also keep in mind the DM in naval changes significantly every major update, and the recent changes in shatter count had made it dangerous to have your armour penetrated from above waterline because the shatters now have a good chance to spread into the vital modules. For example I have detonated a lot of PKs via over waterline penetration recently which would have been almost impossible to do in the past.
P.S. Discussions on KGV’s armouring also reminds me of how pathetically terrible Bismarck’s design was. Having the entire citadel submerged, the legendary 110-120mm turtleback contributes nothing to the protection of the ship’s reserves buoyancy, whereas the 320mm vertical belt is a big joke to any WW2 battleship batteries.
Is this for in-game as I read in a book that IRL it was closer to 17000 yd on the KGV against the 15" 1,938lb projectile though i’m not sure which one, but surely the 6crh cap wouldn’t make 8000 yd’s difference?
The calculation here was based on the actual firing trial after the WW2 against armour plates removed from scrapped HMS Rodney (ADM 281/40). The minimum velocity required for penetrating 14" armour with 30° angle of attack for the 15" APC ranged between 1450~>1500ft/s depending on manufacturer (FYI at 26kyds the 15" 6crh fired with worn barrels would have 28° angle of descent and 1450ft/s remained velocity). As far as I know some sources use USN empirical formula to estimate the performance of the WW2 UK 15" and one have to take a huge grain of salt on those. In fact, the improved version of 15" APC was produced only for a limited number. Post war DNO also discussed about the existing inventory of 15" APC and they decided not mass produce the improved version of 15" projectiles as for obvious reason the era of battleships had gone and the high performance was no longer needed. So in general the majority of 15" shells used by British ships during the WW2 and after are unlikely to have such performance anyway.
Yeah improved APC was limited to something like 60 rounds per ship IIRC.
I’ll take your word for the calculations as to be honest, I don’t want to even try and run them myself i’m sure you’ve done your due diligence.
But if i’m not mistaken Nelson/Rodney use Vicker’s Cemented Armour, whereas KGV used British Cemented armour with 33% face hardening.
Garzke & Dulin’s “Allied BB’s of WW2” gives an immunity zone of 17,200 yd. Rather than 25,500, though this could be for a 4 crh and not the 6 crh MK.XVIIb
Also its the source for the ‘25% more effective than CA’ though I don’t believe it will contribute more than a secondary source in-game (plus such differences slightly irritatingly aren’t modelled).
I do not want to make comments on Garzke & Dulin due to lack of explanation of their method of calculations. In addition, I would take a large grain of salt on the statements of quality superiority of British Cemented Armour. ADM 281/40 explicitly stated an conclusion that the armour plates used on Rodney in 1923 was of no significant difference compared to the modern cemented armour except the consistency of quality:
Spoiler
Besides, Nathan Okun’s FACEHARD programme also gives a similar result to the firing trials in ADM 281/40:
For my own amusement I’ve done a calculation of the minimum immunity range of side protection of WW2 battleships against 15" 6crh Standard Charge, don’t take it too seriously tho:
I. Yamato (410mm@20°) - 14100 yd
II. Littorio (70mm@11°+280mm@11°, successful de-capping) - 19000 yd
III. Iowa (38mm+307mm@19°) - 20000 yd
III. South Dakota (32mm + 310mm@19°) - 20000 yd
III. Bismarck (320mm + 110mm@68°) - 20000 yd
VI. Richelieu (10mm + 327mm@15°) - 21000 yd
VII. North Carolina (305mm@15°) - 22500 yd
VIII. Littorio (70mm@11°+280mm@11°, unsuccessful de-capping) - 24000 yd
IX. King George V (349mm) - 25500 yd
X. Bismarck (320mm) - 28000 yd
This was calculated using the USN empirical formula, manually adjusted according to the trial results from ADM 281/40
By the way, my calculation of Bismarck’s immunity range of side protection (320mm armour belt + 110mm turtleback) was very close to the Kriegsmarine’s estimate in GKdos 100, where the Germans estimated the minimum immunity range against British 15"/42 to be about 21km vs. 20kyd in my calculation.
I was also impressed by how crucial the functionality of the de-capping system was in the case of the Littorio. It makes the Italian design either the second best or one of the worst, depending solely on whether the incoming shell was de-capped. Unfortunately, de-capping was a rather unpredictable phenomenon that various navies had looked into but didn’t come to a common understanding. The British, for example, believed that a 1-inch plate was sufficient to decap a 9.2-inch shell, while the Germans’ experiments showed that even a 100mm plate was insufficient to decap a 38cm shell.
