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.
Scharnhorst got torpedoed by more than a dozen.
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.
A feature missing on the Scharnhorst as well.
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.
The USS Iowa in question…
343 mm vertical as ‘poor’? Funny, keep going on.
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.
Ironic as the current debate in this thread is about the protection of USS Iowa.
Best quote I’ve seen in a minute on these forums.
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:
Besides, Nathan Okun’s FACEHARD programme also gives a similar result to the firing trials in ADM 281/40:
There’s no way that KGV would be immune to the 15" 6crh down to 17kyds without heading angle.
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.
For naval RB I always set them for 4m deep, since they dont restock outside control zones, I only use them against big and/or slow targets.
It can be explained by the fact that the first torpedo will have been stopped by the anti-torp bulge. The second will have detonated against the side of the hull, absorbed mostly by the fuel tanks and mostly stopped by the 45mm wall of armour behind them. It makes perfect sense considering it’s armour layout. Even if a breach was made it would possibly be small which would be repairable. However the structural integrity of the middle section would have been worse. If you ever use torps against WW1 Dreadnoughts you will easily find many will survive 2-4 torp hits into the side because of the protection the bulge and coal bunkers produce.
This is actually why i wish War Thunder naval had a more advanced buoyancy system to actually reflect this. Right now, all that matters is magazine sniping and thats something German WW2 BBs does a good job of preventing. If Bismark was added in Navals current state it would’ve been the most broken and most powerful ship in the game, even if Yamato was added as a counter.
However, if said Bismark now pays for being immune to magazine strikes by being really easy to flood through belt pens. Thats a gameplay dynamic that’ll fix a lot of problems and we dont have to witness another German battleship that can absorb the firepower of every single player in the match.
Reminder Bismark would still be hard to flood in that case due to its absurd level of comparmentalization, which is the real reason why its proportion of weight dedicated to armor is so high:
We’re talking over 500 compartments, armored to varying degree’s, many of which are watertight.
The reason the Scharn is so well protected in WT is
When I remember correctly, both…Scharnhorst and Bismarck couldn’t be sunk by gunfire. RN scored dozens of main calibre hits, but at the end both had to be torpedoed by cruisers to actually sink. Bismarck was sunk by HMS Dorsetshire, since the disabled ship couldn’t be sunk with gunfire. For Scharnhorst Adm Fraser ordered HMS Jamaica and HMS Belfast as well as 4 destroyers to fire torpedos. He realized it won’t sink by just gunfire. Scharnhorst was sunk by 14 torpedo hits.
This buoyancy theory lacks historic evidence. Just look at the technical sketches. Both ship classes were extremly compartmentalized. Were talking about hundrets of compartments. Buoyancy wasn’t just connected to the citadel.
