Battleships. All? Or nothing? Reservation scheme for the “ideal” World War II battleship. Reservation Why modern ships are not armored
Despite many problems and limitations, installing armor on modern ships is possible. As already mentioned, there is a weight “underload” (in the complete absence of free volumes), which can be used to enhance passive protection. First you need to decide what exactly needs to be protected with armor.
During the Second World War, the reservation scheme pursued a very specific goal - to preserve the buoyancy of the ship when it was hit by shells. Therefore, the hull area in the area of the waterline (slightly above and below the overhead line level) was armored. In addition, it is necessary to prevent detonation of the ammunition, loss of the ability to move, fire and control it. Therefore, the main battery guns, their magazines in the hull, the power plant and control posts were carefully armored. These are the critical zones that ensure the combat effectiveness of the ship, i.e. the ability to fight: shoot accurately, move and not drown.
In the case of a modern ship, everything is much more complicated. Application of the same criteria for assessing combat effectiveness leads to an inflation of the volumes that are assessed as critical.
The battleship of the past and the rocket tin of the present. The first could have become a symbol of the weakness of the Soviet anti-ship missiles, but for some reason it went into eternal storage. Did the American admirals make a mistake somewhere?
To conduct aimed fire, it was enough for a WWII ship to keep the gun itself and its ammunition cellar intact - it could conduct aimed fire even when the command post was broken, the ship was immobilized, and the centralized fire control control center was shot down.
Modern weapons are less autonomous. They need target designation (either external or internal), power supply and communication. This requires the ship to retain its electronics and energy to be able to fight. The guns can be loaded and aimed manually, but the missiles require electricity and radar to fire. This means that you need to reserve the radar and power plant equipment rooms in the building, as well as the cable routes. And devices such as communication antennas and radar tracks cannot be booked at all.
In this situation, even if the volume of the SAM cellar is reserved, but the enemy anti-ship missile hits the unarmored part of the hull, where, unfortunately, communications equipment or a control center radar, or electric generators will be located, the ship’s air defense system will fail completely. This picture fully corresponds to the criteria for assessing the reliability of technical systems based on its weakest element. The unreliability of a system is determined by its worst component. An artillery ship has only two such components - guns with ammunition and a power plant. And both of these elements are compact and easily protected by armor. A modern ship has many such components: radars, power plants, cable routes, missile launchers, etc. And the failure of any of these components leads to the collapse of the entire system.
You can try to assess the stability of certain ship combat systems using the reliability assessment method. For example, let's take the long-range air defense of artillery ships of the WWII era and modern destroyers and cruisers. By reliability we mean the ability of a system to continue operating in the event of failure (damage) of its components. The main difficulty here will be determining the reliability of each component. To somehow solve this problem, we will accept two methods of such calculation. The first is equal reliability of all components (let it be 0.8). The second is that reliability is proportional to their area reduced to the total lateral area of the ship's projection.
As we see, both taking into account the relative area in the lateral projection of the ship, and under equal conditions, the reliability of the system decreases for all modern ships. No wonder. To disable the long-range air defense of the cruiser Cleveland, you need to either destroy all 6 127-mm AU, or 2 KDP, or the power supply (supplying electricity to the KDP and AU drives). The destruction of one control center or several control units does not lead to a complete failure of the system.
For a modern Slava-type missile launcher, for a complete failure of the system, it is necessary to hit either the S-300F volumetric launcher with missiles, or the illumination-guidance radar, or destroy the power plant. The Arleigh Burke destroyer has higher reliability, primarily due to the distribution of ammunition among two independent airborne launchers and a similar separation of the illumination-guidance radar.
This is a very rough analysis of just one ship's weapon system, with many assumptions. Moreover, armored ships are given a serious head start. For example, all components of the given system of a WWII-era ship are armored, but modern ships have antennas that are not fundamentally protected (the likelihood of them being damaged is higher). The role of electricity in the combat effectiveness of WWII ships is disproportionately less, because even when the power supply is turned off, it is possible to continue fire with manual supply of projectiles and rough aiming by means of optics, without centralized control from the control tower. The ammunition magazines of artillery ships are below the waterline, modern missile magazines are located immediately below the upper deck of the hull. And so on.
In fact, the very concept of “warship” acquired a completely different meaning than during WWII. If earlier a warship was a platform for many relatively independent (closed on itself) weapon components, then a modern ship is a well-coordinated combat organism with a single nervous system. The destruction of part of a WWII ship was local in nature - where there was damage, there was failure. Everything else that did not fall into the affected area can work and continue to fight. If a couple of ants die in an anthill, these are the little things in life for the anthill.
On a modern ship, a hit in the stern will almost inevitably affect what is happening at the bow. This is no longer an anthill, this is a human organism, which, having lost an arm or a leg, will not die, but will no longer be able to fight. These are the objective consequences of improving weapons. It may seem that this is not development, but degradation. However, the armored ancestors could only fire cannons within sight. And modern ships are universal and are able to destroy targets hundreds of kilometers away. Such a qualitative leap is accompanied by certain losses, including increased complexity of weapons and, as a consequence, decreased reliability, increased vulnerability and increased sensitivity to failures.
Therefore, the role of armor in a modern ship is obviously lower than that of their artillery ancestors. If we revive the armor, it will be for slightly different purposes - to prevent the immediate destruction of the ship in the event of a direct hit in the most explosive systems, such as ammunition magazines and launchers. Such armor only slightly improves the ship's combat effectiveness, but can significantly increase its survivability. This is a chance not to instantly fly into the air, but to try to organize a fight to save the ship. Finally, it is simply time that may allow the crew to evacuate.
The very concept of a ship’s “combat capability” has also changed significantly. Modern combat is so fleeting and rapid that even a short-term failure of a ship can affect the outcome of the battle. If in the battles of the artillery era, causing significant injury to the enemy could take hours, today it takes seconds. If during the Second World War, a ship’s withdrawal from combat was practically equivalent to being sent to the bottom, then today the removal of a ship from active combat may simply be turning off its radar. Or, if the battle is with an external control center, intercept an AWACS aircraft (helicopter).
Nevertheless, let's try to estimate what kind of armor a modern warship could have.
Lyrical digression about target designation
Assessing the reliability of systems, I would like to move away for a while from the topic of reservations and touch on the related issue of target designation for missile weapons. As shown above, one of the weakest points of a modern ship is its radar and other antennas, the structural protection of which is completely impossible. In this regard, and also taking into account the successful development of active homing systems, it is sometimes proposed to completely abandon our own general detection radars with a transition to obtaining preliminary data on targets from external sources. For example, from a ship's AWACS helicopter or drones.
SAMs or anti-ship missiles with an active seeker do not need continuous illumination of targets and approximate data about the area and direction of movement of the objects being destroyed is enough for them. This makes it possible to switch to an external control center.
The reliability of an external control center as a component of a system (for example, an air defense system) is very difficult to assess. The vulnerability of external control center sources is very high - helicopters are shot down by enemy long-range air defense systems, and they are countered by electronic warfare. In addition, UAVs, helicopters and other sources of target data are dependent on the weather; they require high-speed and stable communication with the recipient of the information. However, the author is unable to accurately determine the reliability of such systems. We will conditionally accept such reliability as “no worse” than that of other elements of the system. How the reliability of such a system will change with the abandonment of its own control center, we will show using the example of the Arleigh Burke air defense EM.
As we can see, the abandonment of illumination-guidance radars increases the reliability of the system. However, the exclusion of proprietary target detection means from the system inhibits the growth of system reliability. Without the SPY-1 radar, reliability increased by only 4%, while duplicating the external control center and the control center radar increases reliability by 25%. This suggests that a complete abandonment of our own radars is impossible.
In addition, some radar equipment of modern ships have a number of unique characteristics, the loss of which is completely undesirable. Russia has unique radio engineering systems for active and passive target designation for anti-ship missiles, with an over-the-horizon detection range of enemy ships. These are the Titanit and Monolit radars. The detection range of a surface ship reaches 200 kilometers or more, despite the fact that the antennas of the complex are not even located on the tops of the masts, but on the roofs of the deckhouses. To refuse them is simply a crime, because the enemy does not have such means. Possessing such a radar system, a ship or coastal missile system is completely autonomous and does not depend on any external sources of information.
Possible booking schemes
Let's try to equip the relatively modern missile cruiser "Slava" with armor. To do this, compare it with ships of similar dimensions.
The table shows that the Slava RKR can easily be loaded with an additional 1,700 tons of load, which will be about 15.5% of the resulting displacement of 11,000 tons. It fully corresponds to the parameters of WWII cruisers. And the TARKR "Peter the Great" can withstand increased armor from 4500 tons of load, which is 15.9% of the standard displacement.
Let's consider possible booking schemes.
Having reserved only the most fire and explosion hazardous areas of the ship and its power plant, the thickness of the armor protection was reduced by almost 2 times compared to the Cleveland missile cruiser, the armor of which during the Second World War was also considered not the most powerful and successful. And this despite the fact that the most explosive places of an artillery ship (the magazine of shells and charges) are located below the waterline and generally have little risk of damage. Rocket ships have volumes containing tons of gunpowder located just below the deck and high above the waterline.
Another scheme is possible with protection of exclusively the most dangerous zones with thickness priority. In this case, you will have to forget about the main belt and the power plant. We concentrate all the armor around the magazines of the S-300F, anti-ship missiles, 130-mm shells and GKP. In this case, the armor thickness increases to 100 mm, but the area of the armor-covered zones in the side projection area of the ship drops to a ridiculous 12.6%. The RCC must be very unlucky for it to end up in these very places.
In both booking options, the Ak-630 gun mounts and their cellars, power plants with generators, helicopter ammunition and fuel storage facilities, steering gear, all radio electronics hardware and cable routes remain completely defenseless. All this was simply absent from Cleveland, so the designers did not even think about protecting them. Getting into any unreserved zone for Cleveland did not promise fatal consequences. The explosion of a couple of kilograms of explosives from an armor-piercing (or even high-explosive) projectile outside critical zones could not threaten the ship as a whole. “Cleveland” could have suffered more than a dozen such hits over the course of a long, hours-long battle.
With modern ships everything is different. Anti-ship missiles containing tens and even hundreds of times more explosives, if they fall into unarmored volumes, will cause such severe injuries that the ship almost immediately loses its combat effectiveness, even if critical armored areas remain intact. Just one hit by an OTN anti-ship missile with a warhead weighing 250-300 kg leads to the complete destruction of the ship’s interior within a radius of 10-15 meters from the explosion site. This is greater than the width of the body. And, most importantly, WWII-era armored ships in these exposed zones did not have systems that directly affected their ability to fight. For a modern cruiser, these are hardware rooms, power plants, cable routes, radio electronics, and communications. And all this is not covered with armor! If we try to expand the armor area by their volumes, then the thickness of such protection will drop to a completely ridiculous 20-30 mm.
Nevertheless, the proposed scheme is quite viable. The armor protects the most dangerous areas of the ship from fragments, fires, and near explosions. But will a 100-mm steel barrier protect against a direct hit and penetration of a modern anti-ship missile of the corresponding class (OTN or TN)?
Rockets
It is difficult to assess the ability of modern anti-ship missiles to hit armored targets. Data on the capabilities of combat units is classified. Nevertheless, there are ways to make such an assessment, albeit with low accuracy and many assumptions.
The easiest way is to use the mathematical apparatus of artillerymen. The armor-piercing power of artillery shells is theoretically calculated using a variety of formulas. Let's use the simplest and most accurate (as some sources claim) formula of Jacob de Marr. First, let's check it against the known data of artillery pieces, whose armor penetration was obtained in practice by firing shells at real armor.
The table shows a fairly accurate coincidence of practical and theoretical results. The greatest discrepancy concerns the BS-3 anti-tank gun (almost 100 mm, in theory 149.72 mm). We conclude that using this formula it is possible to theoretically calculate armor penetration with fairly high accuracy, but the results obtained cannot be considered absolutely reliable.
Let's try to make the appropriate calculations for modern anti-ship missiles. We take the warhead as a “projectile,” since the rest of the missile structure is not involved in penetrating the target.
You also need to keep in mind that the results obtained must be treated critically, due to the fact that armor-piercing artillery shells are quite durable objects. As can be seen from the table above, the charge accounts for no more than 7% of the weight of the projectile - the rest is thick-walled steel. Anti-ship missile warheads have a significantly higher proportion of explosives and, accordingly, less durable hulls, which, when encountering an excessively strong barrier, are more likely to split themselves than to pierce it.
As we can see, the energy characteristics of modern anti-ship missiles, in theory, make it possible to penetrate fairly thick armor barriers. In practice, the obtained figures can be safely reduced several times, because, as mentioned above, the anti-ship missile warhead is not an armor-piercing projectile. However, we can assume that the strength of the Brahmos warhead is not so bad that it cannot penetrate a barrier of 50 mm with a theoretically possible 194 mm.
The high flight speeds of modern anti-ship missiles ON and OTN allow, in theory, without the use of any complex tricks, to increase their ability to penetrate armor in a simple kinetic way. This can be achieved by reducing the proportion of explosives in the mass of warheads and increasing the thickness of the walls of their casings, as well as by using elongated forms of warheads with a reduced cross-sectional area. For example, reducing the diameter of the Brahmos anti-ship missile warhead by 1.5 times while increasing the missile length by 0.5 meters and maintaining mass increases the theoretical penetration, calculated using the Jacob de Marr method, to 276 mm (an increase of 1.4 times).
The task of destroying armored ships is not new for developers of anti-ship missiles. Back in Soviet times, warheads capable of hitting battleships were created for them. Of course, such warheads were installed only on operational missiles, since the destruction of such large targets is precisely their task.
In fact, armor did not disappear from some ships even during the missile era. We are talking about American aircraft carriers. For example, the side armor of Midway-class aircraft carriers reached 200 mm. Forrestal-class aircraft carriers had 76 mm side armor and a package of longitudinal anti-fragmentation bulkheads. The armor schemes of modern aircraft carriers are classified, but apparently the armor has not become thinner. It is not surprising that the designers of “large” anti-ship missiles had to design missiles capable of hitting armored targets. And here it is impossible to get away with a simple kinetic method of penetration - 200 mm of armor is very difficult to penetrate even with high-speed anti-ship missiles with a flight speed of about 2 Mach.
Actually, no one hides the fact that one of the types of warheads of operational anti-ship missiles was “cumulative high-explosive”. The characteristics are not advertised, but the ability of the Basalt anti-ship missile to penetrate up to 400 mm of steel armor is known.
Let's think about the number - why 400 mm, and not 200 or 600? Even if we keep in mind the thickness of armor protection that Soviet anti-ship missiles could encounter when attacking aircraft carriers, the figure of 400 mm seems incredible and excessive. In fact, the answer lies on the surface. Or rather, it does not lie, but cuts the ocean wave with its bow and has a specific name - the battleship "Iowa". The armor of this remarkable ship is amazingly just a little thinner than the magic number of 400 mm.
Everything will fall into place if we remember that the start of work on the Basalt anti-ship missile system goes back to 1963. The US Navy still had good armored battleships and cruisers from WWII. In 1963, the US Navy had 4 battleships, 12 heavy and 14 light cruisers (4 Iowa cruisers, 12 Baltimore cruisers, 12 Cleveland cruisers, 2 Atlanta cruisers). Most were in the reserve, but that’s what the reserve was for, so that in the event of a world war, reserve ships could be called into service. And the US Navy is not the only operator of ironclads. In the same 1963, there were 16 armored artillery cruisers left in the USSR Navy! They were also in the fleets of other countries.
By 1975 (the year the Basalt was put into service), the number of armored ships in the US Navy was reduced to 4 battleships, 4 heavy and 4 light cruisers. Moreover, battleships remained an important figure until their decommissioning in the early 90s. Therefore, one should not question the ability of the warheads “Basalt”, “Granit” and other Soviet “large” anti-ship missiles to easily penetrate 400 mm of armor and have a serious armor effect.
The Soviet Union could not ignore the existence of the Iowa, because if we assume that the anti-ship missile system is not able to destroy this battleship, then it turns out that this ship is simply invincible. Why then didn’t the Americans put the construction of unique battleships on stream? Such far-fetched logic forces us to turn the world upside down - the designers of Soviet anti-ship missiles look like liars, Soviet admirals look like careless eccentrics, and the strategists of the country that won the Cold War look like fools.
Cumulative methods of breaking through armor
The design of the Basalt warhead is unknown to us. All pictures published on this issue on the Internet are intended for the entertainment of the public, and not to reveal the characteristics of secret products. A high-explosive version, intended for firing at coastal targets, can be passed off as a warhead.
However, a number of assumptions can be made about the true content of a “high-explosive cumulative” warhead. It is most likely that such a warhead is a conventional shaped charge of large size and weight. The principle of its operation is similar to how an ATGM or grenade launcher fires a target. And in this regard, the question arises: how can a cumulative munition, capable of leaving a very modest-sized hole in the armor, be able to destroy a warship?
To answer this question you need to understand how cumulative ammunition works. A cumulative shot, contrary to misconceptions, does not burn through armor. Penetration is provided by a pestle (or, as they also say, “impact core”), formed from the copper lining of a cumulative funnel. The pestle has a fairly low temperature, so it doesn't burn through anything. The destruction of steel occurs due to the “washing out” of the metal under the action of the impact core, which has a quasi-liquid (that is, it has the properties of a liquid, but is not a liquid) state. The closest everyday example to understand how this works is the erosion of ice with a directed stream of water. The diameter of the hole obtained during penetration is approximately 1/5 of the diameter of the ammunition, the penetration depth is up to 5-10 diameters. Therefore, a grenade launcher shot leaves a hole with a diameter of only 20-40 mm in the tank’s armor.
In addition to the cumulative effect, ammunition of this type has a powerful high-explosive effect. However, the high-explosive component of the explosion when hitting tanks remains outside the armored barrier. This is due to the fact that the explosion energy is not able to penetrate into the reserved space through a hole with a diameter of 20-40 mm. Therefore, only those parts that are directly in the path of the impact core are subject to destruction inside the tank.
It would seem that the operating principle of cumulative ammunition completely excludes the possibility of its use against ships. Even if the impact core pierces the ship right through, only what is in its path will suffer. It's like trying to kill a mammoth with one blow of a knitting needle. The high-explosive action cannot participate in the destruction of the internal organs at all. Obviously, this is not enough to destroy the inside of the ship and cause unacceptable damage to it.
However, there are a number of conditions under which the above-described picture of the action of cumulative ammunition is violated not to the best advantage for ships. Let's return to armored vehicles. Let's take the ATGM and fire it into the BMP. What picture of destruction will we see? No, we won’t find a neat hole with a diameter of 30 mm. We will see a piece of armor of a large area, torn out with meat. And behind the armor were burnt out, twisted innards, as if the car had been blown up from the inside.
The thing is that ATGM rounds are designed to destroy tank armor with a thickness of 500-800 mm. It is in them that we see the famous neat holes. But when exposed to unusually thin armor (like that of an infantry fighting vehicle - 16-18 mm), the cumulative effect is enhanced by the high-explosive effect. A synergistic effect occurs. The armor simply breaks off, unable to withstand such a blow. And through the hole in the armor, which in this case is no longer 30-40 mm, but the entire square meter, a high-explosive high-pressure front freely penetrates along with armor fragments and explosive combustion products. For armor of any thickness, you can select a cumulative shot of such power that its effect will be not just cumulative, but cumulative-high-explosive. The main thing is that the desired ammunition has sufficient excess power over a specific armored barrier.
The ATGM round is designed to defeat 800 mm of armor and weighs only 5-6 kg. What will a giant ATGM weighing about a ton (167 times heavier) do with armor that is only 400 mm thick (2 times thinner)? Even without mathematical calculations, it becomes clear that the consequences will be much worse than after an ATGM hit a tank.
The result of an ATGM hitting an infantry fighting vehicle of the Syrian army.
For thin armored infantry fighting vehicles, the desired effect is achieved with an ATGM shot weighing only 5-6 kg. And for ship armor, 400 mm thick, you will need a high-explosive cumulative warhead weighing 700-1000 kg. The warheads are exactly the same weight on Basalts and Granites. And this is quite logical, because a Basalt warhead with a diameter of 750 mm, like all cumulative ammunition, can penetrate armor thicker than 5 of its diameters - i.e. minimum 3.75 meters of monolithic steel. However, the designers mention only 0.4 meters (400 mm). Obviously, this is the maximum armor thickness at which the Basalt warhead has the necessary excess power, capable of creating a breach of a large area. A barrier already 500 mm thick will not be broken, it is too strong and will withstand pressure. In it we will see only the famous neat hole, and the reserved volume will hardly be affected.
The Basalt warhead does not pierce an even hole in armor with a thickness of less than 400 mm. She breaks it out over a large area. The resulting hole is filled with explosive combustion products, a high-explosive wave, fragments of knocked-out armor and rocket fragments with remaining fuel. The impact core of the cumulative jet of a powerful charge ensures clearing of the road through many bulkheads deep into the hull. The sinking of the battleship Iowa is the extreme, most difficult case of all possible for the Basalt anti-ship missile system. The rest of its targets have significantly less armor. On aircraft carriers - in the range of 76-200 mm, which, for this anti-ship missile, can be considered just foil.
As shown above, on cruisers with the displacement and dimensions of the Peter the Great, armor of 80-150 mm is possible. Even if this estimate is incorrect, and the thicknesses will be greater, no insoluble technical problem will arise for anti-ship missile designers. Ships of this size are still not a typical target for TN anti-ship missiles, and with the possible revival of armor, they will simply finally be included in the list of typical targets for ON anti-ship missiles with cumulative high-explosive warheads.
Alternative options
At the same time, other options for overcoming armor are possible, for example, using a tandem warhead design. The first charge is cumulative, the second is high-explosive.
The size and shape of the shaped charge can be completely different. The sapper charges that have existed since the 60s eloquently and clearly demonstrate this. For example, a KZU charge weighing 18 kg penetrates 120 mm of armor, leaving a hole 40 mm wide and 440 mm long. The LKZ-80 charge, weighing 2.5 kg, penetrates 80 mm of steel, leaving a gap 5 mm wide and 18 mm long.
Appearance of the KZU charge
The cumulative charge of a tandem warhead can have a ring (toroidal) shape. After the shaped charge is detonated and penetrated, the main high-explosive charge will freely penetrate into the center of the donut. In this case, the kinetic energy of the main charge is practically not lost. It will still be able to crush several bulkheads and explode with deceleration deep inside the ship's hull.
The operating principle of a tandem warhead with an annular shaped charge
The penetration method described above is universal and can be used on any anti-ship missiles. The simplest calculations show that the ring charge of a tandem warhead in relation to the Brahmos anti-ship missile system will eat only 40-50 kg of the weight of its 250-kilogram high-explosive warhead.
As can be seen from the table, even the Uran anti-ship missile can be given some armor-piercing qualities. The ability to penetrate the armor of other anti-ship missiles easily covers all possible armor thicknesses that may appear on ships with a displacement of 15-20 thousand tons.
Armored battleship
Actually, this could be the end of the conversation about booking ships. Everything that needs to be said has already been said. However, one can try to imagine how a ship with powerful anti-ballistic armor could fit into a naval system.
The uselessness of armor on ships of existing classes was shown and proven above. All that armor can be used for is local armoring of the most explosive zones in order to prevent their detonation in the event of a close detonation of anti-ship missiles. Such armor does not protect against a direct hit from anti-ship missiles.
However, all of the above applies to ships with a displacement of 15-25 thousand tons. That is, modern destroyers and cruisers. Their load capacity does not allow them to be equipped with armor with a thickness of more than 100-120 mm. But the larger the ship, the larger the load items that can be allocated for booking. Why has no one yet thought about creating a missile battleship with a displacement of 30-40 thousand tons and armor of more than 400 mm?
The main obstacle to creating such a ship is the lack of practical need for such a monster. Of the existing maritime powers, only a few have the economic, technological and industrial power to develop and build such a ship. In theory, this could be Russia and China, but in reality – only the United States. Only one question remains - why does the US Navy need such a ship?
The role of such a ship in the modern fleet is completely unclear. The US Navy is constantly at war with obviously weak opponents, against whom such a monster is completely unnecessary. And in the event of a war with Russia or China, the US fleet will not go to hostile shores for mines and submarine torpedoes. Far from the coast, the task of protecting one’s communications will be solved, where not several super-battleships are required, but many simpler ships, and simultaneously in different places. This task is solved by numerous American destroyers, the quantity of which translates into quality. Yes, each of them may not be a very outstanding and strong warship. These are not armored, but well-functioning, mass-produced workhorses of the fleet.
They are similar to the T-34 tank - also not the most armored and not the most armed WWII tank, but it was produced in such quantities that the opponents, with their expensive and super-powerful Tigers, had a hard time. Being a piece product, the Tiger could not be present along the entire line of a huge front, unlike the ubiquitous thirty-fours. And pride in the outstanding successes of the German tank-building industry did not help in reality the German infantrymen, who were supported by dozens of our tanks, and the Tigers were somewhere else.
It is not surprising that all projects for creating a super-cruiser or missile battleship did not go beyond futuristic pictures. There's simply no need for them. The developed countries of the world do not sell weapons to third world countries that could seriously shake their firm position as leaders of the planet. And third world countries don’t have the money to buy such complex and expensive weapons. But for some time now, developed countries have preferred not to organize a showdown among themselves. There is a very high risk of such a conflict escalating into a violent one, which is completely unnecessary and no one needs. They prefer to hit equal partners with someone else’s hands, for example, Turkish or Ukrainian in Russia, Taiwanese in China.
conclusions
Every conceivable factor is working against a full-fledged revival of ship armor. There is no urgent economic or military need for it. From a constructive point of view, it is impossible to create a serious reservation of the required area on a modern ship. It is impossible to protect all the ship's vital systems.
And finally, if such a reservation does appear, the problem can be easily solved by modifying the anti-ship missile warhead. Developed countries quite logically do not want, at the cost of deteriorating other combat qualities, to invest effort and resources in creating armor that will not fundamentally increase the combat effectiveness of ships.
At the same time, the widespread introduction of local armor and the transition to steel superstructures is extremely important. This armor allows the ship to more easily withstand anti-ship missiles and reduce the amount of damage. However, such armor does not in any way protect against a direct hit from anti-ship missiles, so it is simply pointless to pose such a task to armor protection.
Booking
Without any exaggeration, the reservation system for battleships of the South Dakota type can be considered very successful. It provided effective protection for the vital centers of the ship from aerial bombs and artillery fire from heavy guns from both short and long distances. At the same time, the distribution of armor over the area and thickness of the plates was well thought out and rational in terms of the tonnage expended.
When developing the project, the designers focused on providing protection against the 16-inch shells weighing 2,240 pounds (1,016 kg), which were fired by the Mk .5 guns of the Maryland-class battleships. According to estimates based on rather rough empirical formulas of the US Navy in the late 1930s, the zone of free maneuvering when fired from such guns extended from 17.7 to 30.9 thousand yards (16.2 - 28.3 km). This was much better than that of North Caroline and Washington, whose ZSM was located in the range of 21.3 - 27.8 thousand yards. Thus, with the same displacement and even 900 tons less armor weight, the designers managed to significantly increase the security of the new battleships - undoubtedly an outstanding result! True, shortly before the war, “our” shell became noticeably heavier. A super-heavy "suitcase" weighing 2,700 pounds (1,225 kg) was developed for the Mk .6 guns of the new battleships. When fired by such shells, the South Dakota ZSM narrowed, especially along the outer limit, and was located in the range of 20.5 - 26.4 thousand yards (18.7 - 24.1 km). Not too much, but it was no longer possible to improve the protection of the ships under construction.
The armor material used on the new US battleships was of good, average quality worldwide. It was an improved version of the Krupp armor KS (Krupp Cemented) and KNC (Krupp Non-Cemented). The suppliers were companies Carnegie Steel Corp., Bethlehem Steel Corp. and Midvale Co.
Cemented plates, in American terminology class “A”, were optimized in terms of ligature and hardness distribution throughout the thickness in comparison with the old KS a/A type armor, which became widespread in the world military shipbuilding since 1898. Approximately similar armor, among which the English one is considered the best (post 30 Cemented Armor), was used in the 1930s - 1940s in all European countries (manufacturers Krupp, Vickers, Colville, Terni, Schneider, etc.). It was not because of a good life that Japan chose a different direction. There they developed their own type of armor, created on the basis of samples from the Vickers company around 1910. The Japanese were able to relatively successfully use alloying with copper, which partially replaced nickel, of which the country was experiencing an acute shortage. At the same time, heterogeneous armor VH (Vickers Hardened) was produced in Japan using original technology with surface strengthening without the formation of cementite. Its shell resistance in terms of thickness equivalent was 16.1% worse than that of the American class “A”.
Homogeneous armor of its own production in the USA was considered the best in the world. Slabs over 4 inches thick were classified as "B" and thinner ones were classified as STS. However, there was not much difference here. For small parts (shield covers, armor caps, etc.) cast armor “Cast” was used on American ships. As a rule, it was homogeneous, but cementation of the surface was also allowed.
In the design of US battleships, the distribution of types of armor material was somewhat different from that accepted in European countries. On the South Dakota, class A armor, as usual, was used in the most critical places - it was used to make plates of the main armor belt, traverses, barbettes, cover for steering mechanisms, and the side and rear walls of the main caliber turrets. However, in general, the proportion of cemented armor was somewhat smaller compared to ships of the Old World. American designers proceeded from the fact that cemented armor exhibits its protective properties most successfully if the projectile that hits it is destroyed upon impact with a particularly hard surface layer. Otherwise, the likelihood of cracks forming in the slab becomes high. This is quite natural - the price for hardness is almost always increased fragility. But armor-piercing shells, especially American ones, by that time had become very durable and had a developed “Makarov cap”. And the frontal plates of the towers, always facing the enemy, are struck by them at an angle close to the normal, that is, they are in the most vulnerable position. Therefore, the Americans made them, slabs, from very thick homogeneous class “B” armor. In this case, cracking was practically eliminated. And the soft armor-piercing tip of the projectile only became a hindrance.
The validity of this decision was confirmed by the incident with the battleship Dunkirk on July 3, 1940. A 15-inch shell fired from the battle cruiser Hood hit the 150-mm roof of the French ship's elevated main-caliber turret at an acute angle. There was a ricochet. At the same time, both the shell itself, which the British had not been very strong, and the cemented armor plate collapsed. Some of the debris went inside the tower. Its right section was completely disabled, and all personnel there were killed. In the case of homogeneous armor, there would only be a long dent, possibly with a small break in the plate. It is likely that there would have been no casualties.
The main belt of the South Dakota class battleships consisted of 310 mm thick "A" class armor on a two-inch cement pad and a 22 mm STS lining. The external inclination was 19°.
The internal arrangement of the belt plates with the thickness of the outer skin between the second and third decks being 32 mm further enhanced the protection. For projectiles flying strictly horizontally, this corresponded to the equivalent of 439 mm of vertical armor.
In the underwater part of the ship, the lower belt of class “B” armor extended to the very bottom, its thickness gradually decreasing from 310 to 25 mm. In this way, protection was provided against the “diving” of shells falling at a high angle near the side of the ship.
The armored citadel covered the central part of the ship from the first to the third main battery turret (the segment between 36 and 129 shp.) and was significantly shorter than on the North Caroline. Its ends were covered with cemented traverse armor 287 mm thick. The bow traverse extended from the second deck to the third bottom (at the bottom it became thinner), and the stern traverse - only in the interval between the second and third decks. Below it was a 16-mm partition. Here, an armored box was adjacent to the citadel, protecting the steering mechanisms and drives. On the sides they were covered with powerful cemented slabs 343 mm thick with an external slope of 19°, and on top with a 157 mm third deck. The tiller compartment was closed by a 287 mm traverse.
The horizontal protection scheme was similar to that used on the previous type of battleships. However, the complex of three armored decks was designed more rationally and reliably. It used the effect of the greater durability of one armor plate compared to two or more of equal total thickness. This was achieved due to the thickened second (main armor) deck, adjacent to the upper edges of the belt. It consisted of two layers - the main one, class “B”, and 19 mm, made of STS steel. In the center plane this gave 146 mm (127+19) versus 127 mm (91+38) on North Caroline. At the sides, the total thickness increased to 154 mm, compensating for the lack of additional protection that the superstructure created in the central part. The upper (bomb) deck was approximately the same as on the previous type of battleships, and was intended for arming the fuses of aerial bombs and shells, as well as for “ripping off” armor-piercing tips.
Between the barbettes of the second and third main battery towers there was a short and narrow 16-mm deck that did not reach the sides of the hull. It, like the third deck located below, was anti-fragmentation.
The conning tower of American battleships has traditionally had very powerful armor. The walls and communication pipe were 16 inches. The roof and floor of the conning tower are 7.25 and 4 inches, respectively. Class B armor was used everywhere, which, in particular, allowed welding, which was extremely problematic on a cemented surface. In this case it was a serious plus. The position of the conning tower in the superstructure required dense external lining with a large number of metal structures (various posts and bridges). There were also many welded joints inside the cabin.
The armor protection of the main caliber artillery was very solid, but in general it differed little from that used on battleships of the North Caroline type. The front, rear and side walls of the towers were made of armor with a thickness of 18, 12 and 9.5 inches, respectively. The roof is made of 184 mm (7.25") homogeneous slabs. The thickness of the barbette armor above the second deck was 439 mm (17.3") on the sides and 294 mm (11.6") in the area of the center plane.
Medium artillery towers were formed entirely from homogeneous 51-mm slabs. This was less than on modern “35,000-ton tanks” from other countries, but due to the low weight, high mobility of the installations was ensured, which is very important when repelling air attacks. Combat experience confirmed the justification of light armor for universal artillery.
In other parts of the ships, armor was present only fragmentarily. It did not cover the turrets of the main caliber directors and their communication pipes very reliably. Outside the citadel, the stern and especially the bows of the ships remained unprotected in accordance with the traditional American all-or-nothing principle.
In general, the vertical and horizontal reservation system provided quite reliable protection against fire from 406-410 mm guns of the American Maryland-class battleships, the Japanese Nagato-class battleships, and the English Nelson-class battleships. It was believed that dive bombers also could not hit the vital centers of the South Dakota, since the likelihood of direct hits from high altitude was assessed as extremely low. Unarmored extremities and superstructures remained vulnerable. In battle, this, of course, could lead to the failure of the battleship, but it would require an extremely large number of hits to sink it. The danger of underwater explosions will be discussed below.
As for the fire of the 14 - 15-inch guns of the new European battleships, the South Dakota's defense system looks simply brilliant. Calculations using very accurate modern methods ( The author of these techniques is N. Okun, a civilian programmer of control systems for the US Navy; detailed information on calculations of armor penetration and free maneuvering zones can be found on the Internet) give ZSM under fire from the battleship Bismarck from at least 15 to 32.5 km. Moreover, even from the shortest distance, most likely not a single 15-inch battleship could hit the magazines or vehicles of the South Dakota with a projectile capable of detonation. Here the point is in the outer skin, which, in combination with the inner belt, constituted an effective spaced reservation system. Numerous post-war experiments indicate that to eliminate armor-piercing tips, a thickness of homogeneous armor of the STS type is required of at least 0.08 of the diameter of the striking projectile (i.e., 8% of the caliber). To activate the fuse, an armor barrier of 7% caliber is sufficient (if deviation from normal is less than 7%). Thus, 15-inch shells reach the main belt armor of the South Dakota, having already been “decapitated”. This sharply reduces their effectiveness, since most often the projectile cup is destroyed and ricochets from the inclined belt armor. When the target angle deviates from the normal, the protective properties are further enhanced.
Let us note that this onboard reservation scheme received a logical development in the design of Iowa-class battleships. Their STS steel casing, increased in thickness to 38 mm, could remove armor-piercing tips of 406 - 460 mm shells with all the ensuing advantages.
The Legend of the Burning Walls
Cloudy morning May 4, 1982. South Atlantic. A pair of Argentine Air Force Super-Etandars rush over the lead-gray ocean, almost breaking the crests of the waves. A few minutes ago, the Neptune radar reconnaissance aircraft discovered two destroyer-class targets in this square, by all indications a formation of a British squadron. It's time! The planes do a “slide” and turn on their radars. Another moment - and two fire-tailed Exocets rushed towards their targets...
The commander of the destroyer Sheffield conducted thoughtful negotiations with London via the Skynet satellite communication channel. To eliminate interference, it was ordered to turn off all electronic equipment, including search radar. Suddenly, officers from the bridge noticed a long fiery “spit” flying towards the ship from a southern direction.
The Exocet struck the side of the Sheffield, flew through the galley and broke up in the engine room. The 165-kilogram warhead did not explode, but the running anti-ship missile engine ignited the fuel leaking from the damaged tanks. The fire quickly engulfed the central part of the ship, the synthetic finishing of the premises burned hotly, and the superstructure structures made of aluminum-magnesium alloys caught fire due to the unbearable heat. After 6 days of agony, the charred shell of the Sheffield sank.
In fact, this is a curiosity and a fatal coincidence. The Argentines were incredibly lucky, while the British sailors demonstrated miracles of carelessness and, frankly, idiocy. Just look at the order to turn off radars in a military conflict zone. Things were not going well for the Argentines - the Neptune AWACS aircraft tried 5 times (!) to establish radar contact with British ships, but each time failed due to the failure of the on-board radar (P-2 Neptune was developed in the 40s and by 1982 was a flying piece of junk). Finally, from a distance of 200 km, he managed to establish the coordinates of the British formation. The only one who saved face in this story was the frigate Plymouth - the second Exocet was intended for it. But the small ship discovered the anti-ship missiles in time and disappeared under an “umbrella” of dipole reflectors.
Battleships of the Russian Navy: a whim or a necessity?
The designers, in pursuit of efficiency, reached an absurdity - a destroyer is sinking from one unexploded missile?! Unfortunately no. On May 17, 1987, the US Navy frigate Stark received two similar Exocet anti-ship missiles from the Iraqi Mirage. The warhead worked normally, the ship lost speed and lost 37 crew members. However, despite heavy damage, the Stark remained buoyant and, after a long period of repairs, returned to service.
The Incredible Odyssey of Seydlitz
The last volleys of the Battle of Jutland died down, and Hochseeflotte, who had disappeared over the horizon, had long ago included the battle cruiser Seydlitz on the list of victims. The British heavy cruisers did a nice job on the ship, then the Seydlitz came under heavy fire from the Queen Elizabeth-class super-dreadnoughts, receiving 20 hits from shells of 305, 343 and 381 mm calibers. Is this too much? The semi-armor-piercing projectile of the 15-inch British MkI gun, weighing 870 kg (!), contained 52 kg of explosives. Initial speed – 2 speeds of sound. As a result, Seydlitz lost 3 gun turrets, all superstructures were severely mutilated, and the electricity went out. The engine crew especially suffered - the shells tore open the coal pits and broke the steam pipelines, as a result of which the stokers and mechanics worked in the dark, suffocating with a disgusting mixture of hot steam and thick coal dust. By evening, a torpedo hit the side. The stem was completely buried in the waves, the compartments in the stern had to be flooded - the weight of the water that entered inside reached 5300 tons, a quarter of the normal displacement! German sailors applied plasters to the underwater holes and reinforced the bulkheads deformed by the water pressure with boards. Mechanics managed to put several boilers into operation. The turbines started working, and the half-submerged Seydlitz crawled stern first towards its native shores.
The heavily damaged Seydlitz returns to port after the Battle of Jutland
The gyrocompass was smashed, the chart room was destroyed, and the charts on the bridge were covered in blood. It is not surprising that at night a grinding sound was heard under the belly of the Seydlitz. After several attempts, the cruiser crawled off the shoal on its own, but in the morning the Seydlitz, which was poorly on course, hit the rocks a second time. The people, barely alive from fatigue, saved the ship this time too. For 57 hours there was an endless struggle for survivability.
What saved Seydlitz from destruction? The answer is obvious - the brilliant training of the crew. The armor did not help - 381 mm shells pierced the 300 mm main armor belt like foil.
Payback for betrayal
The Italian fleet was moving briskly south, intending to intern in Malta. The war was left behind for the Italian sailors, and even the appearance of German planes could not spoil their mood - it was impossible to get into the battleship from such a height.
The Mediterranean cruise ended unexpectedly - at about 16:00 the battleship Roma shuddered from an aerial bomb that hit it, dropped with amazing accuracy (in fact, the world's first adjustable aerial bomb, Fritz X). A high-tech ammunition weighing 1.5 tons pierced through the 112 mm thick armored deck, all the lower decks and exploded in the water under the ship (someone will breathe a sigh of relief - “Lucky!”, but it is worth recalling that water is an incompressible liquid - shock a wave from 320 kg of explosives tore apart the bottom of the Rom, causing flooding of the boiler rooms. 10 minutes later, the second Fritz X caused the detonation of seven hundred tons of ammunition in the main caliber bow turrets, killing 1253 people.
A superweapon has been found that can sink a battleship with a displacement of 45,000 tons in 10 minutes!? Alas, everything is not so simple.
On September 16, 1943, a similar joke with the English battleship Warspite (Queen Elizabeth class) failed - a triple hit by Fritz X did not lead to the death of the dreadnought. "Warspite" melancholy took 5000 tons of water and went for repairs. Nine people were killed in three explosions.
On September 11, 1943, during the shelling of Salerno, the American light cruiser Savannah came under attack. The baby, with a displacement of 12,000 tons, bravely withstood the hit of the German monster. The Fritz pierced the roof of turret No. 3, went through all the decks and exploded in the turret compartment, knocking out the bottom of the Savannah. Partial detonation of ammunition and the subsequent fire claimed the lives of 197 crew members. Despite serious damage, three days later the cruiser crawled under its own power (!) to Malta, from where it went to Philadelphia for repairs.
What conclusions can be drawn from this chapter? In the design of a ship, regardless of the thickness of the armor, there are critical elements, the defeat of which can lead to quick and inevitable death. This is where the cards fall. As for the lost "Rom" - truly, Italian battleships had no luck either under the Italian, British, or Soviet flags (the battleship "Novorossiysk" - aka "Giulio Cesare").
Aladdin's magic lamp
Morning of October 12, 2000, Gulf of Aden, Yemen. A blinding flash illuminated the bay for a moment and a moment later a heavy roar scared away the flamingos standing knee-deep in the water.
Two martyrs gave their lives in the Holy War against the infidels by ramming the destroyer USS Cole DDG-67 on a motor boat. The explosion of an infernal machine filled with 200...300 kg of explosives tore apart the side of the destroyer, a fiery whirlwind rushed through the compartments and cockpits of the ship, turning everything in its path into a bloody vinaigrette. Having penetrated the engine room, the blast wave tore apart the housings of the gas turbines, and the destroyer lost speed. A fire started, which was only brought under control in the evening. 17 sailors were killed and another 39 were injured.
After 2 weeks, Cole was loaded onto the Norwegian heavy transport MV Blue Marlin and sent to the USA for repairs.
Hmm...at one time, the Savannah, identical in size to the Cole, maintained its speed, despite much more serious damage. Explanation of the paradox: the equipment of modern ships has become more fragile. The General Electric power plant of 4 compact gas turbines LM2500 looks frivolous against the backdrop of the main power plant of the Savannah, consisting of 8 huge boilers and 4 Parsons steam turbines. For cruisers during the Second World War, oil and its heavy fractions served as fuel. Cole (like all ships equipped with the LM2500 gas turbine unit) uses...Jet Propellant-5 aviation kerosene.
Does this mean that a modern warship is worse than an ancient cruiser? Of course, this is not true. Their striking power is incomparable - an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer can launch cruise missiles at a range of 1500...2500 km, fire at targets in low-Earth orbit and control the situation hundreds of miles from the ship. New capabilities and equipment required additional volumes: to maintain the original displacement, they sacrificed armor. Maybe in vain?
Extensive way
The experience of naval battles of the recent past shows that even heavy armor cannot guarantee the protection of a ship. Today, weapons of destruction have evolved even more, so it makes no sense to install armor protection (or equivalent differentiated armor) with a thickness of less than 100 mm - it will not become an obstacle to anti-ship missiles. It seems that 5...10 centimeters of additional protection should reduce damage, since the anti-ship missile will already penetrate deep into the ship. Alas, this is an erroneous opinion - during the Second World War, aerial bombs often pierced several decks in a row (including armored ones), detonating in the holds or even in the water under the bottom! Those. the damage will be serious in any case, and installing 100 mm of armor is a useless exercise.
What if you install 200 mm armor on a missile cruiser-class ship? In this case, the cruiser’s hull is provided with a very high level of protection (not a single Western subsonic anti-ship missile of the Exocet or Harpoon type is capable of overcoming such an armor plate). Vitality will increase and sinking our hypothetical cruiser will become a difficult task. But! It is not necessary to sink the ship, it is enough to disable its fragile radio-electronic systems and damage its weapons (at one time, the legendary squadron battleship "Eagle" received from 75 to 150 hits from 3.6 and 12 inch Japanese shells. It retained its buoyancy, but ceased to exist as a combat unit – gun turrets and rangefinder posts were smashed and burned by high-explosive shells).
Hence an important conclusion: even if heavy armor is used, external antenna devices will remain defenseless. If the superstructures are damaged, the ship is guaranteed to turn into an ineffective pile of metal.
Let us pay attention to the negative aspects of heavy armor: a simple geometric calculation (the product of the length of the armored side x height x thickness, taking into account the steel density of 7800 kg / cubic meter) gives amazing results - the displacement of our “hypothetical cruiser” can increase 1.5 times with 10,000 to 15,000 tons! Even taking into account the use of differentiated reservations built into the design. To maintain the performance characteristics of an unarmored cruiser (speed, range), it will be necessary to increase the power of the ship's power plant, which, in turn, will require an increase in fuel reserves. The weight spiral unwinds, reminiscent of an anecdotal situation. When will she stop? When all elements of the power plant increase proportionally, maintaining the original ratio. The result is an increase in the cruiser's displacement to 15...20 thousand tons! Those. our battleship cruiser, having the same strike potential, will have twice the displacement of its unarmored sistership. Conclusion - not a single maritime power will agree to such an increase in military spending. Moreover, as mentioned above, the dead thickness of the metal does not guarantee the protection of the ship.
On the other hand, you should not go to the point of absurdity, otherwise the formidable ship will be sunk with small arms. Modern destroyers use selective armoring of important compartments, for example, on the Orly Berks, the vertical launchers are covered with 25 mm armor plates, and the living compartments and command center are covered with layers of Kevlar with a total weight of 60 tons. To ensure survivability, the layout, choice of structural materials and crew training are very important!
Nowadays, armor has been preserved on attack aircraft carriers - their colossal displacement makes it possible to install such “excesses”. For example, the thickness of the sides and flight deck of the nuclear aircraft carrier Enterprise is within 150 mm. There was even room for anti-torpedo protection, which included, in addition to standard watertight bulkheads, a cofferdam system and a double bottom. Although, the high survivability of the aircraft carrier is ensured primarily by its huge size.
In discussions on the Military Review forum, many readers drew attention to the existence in the 80s of a modernization program for Iowa-class battleships (4 ships, built during the Second World War, stood at the base for almost 30 years, periodically being involved in shelling the coast in Korea, Vietnam and Lebanon). In the early 80s, a program for their modernization was adopted - the ships received modern self-defense air defense systems, 32 Tomahawks and new radio-electronic equipment. A full set of armor and 406 mm artillery have been preserved. Alas, after serving for 10 years, all 4 ships were withdrawn from the fleet due to physical wear and tear. All plans for their further modernization (with the installation of a Mark-41 UVP instead of the aft turret) remained on paper.
What was the reason for the reactivation of old artillery ships? A new round of the arms race forced the two superpowers (which ones exactly do not need to be specified) to use all their available reserves. As a result, the US Navy extended the life of its super-dreadnoughts, and the USSR Navy was in no hurry to abandon the Project 68-bis artillery cruisers (the obsolete ships turned out to be an excellent means of fire support for the Marine Corps). The admirals overdid it - in addition to really useful ships that retained their combat potential, the fleets included many rusty galoshes - old Soviet destroyers of types 56 and 57, post-war submarines Project 641; American destroyers of the Farragut and Charles F. Adams types, aircraft carriers of the Midway type (1943). A lot of rubbish has accumulated. According to statistics, by 1989, the total displacement of ships of the USSR Navy was 17% higher than the displacement of the US Navy.
Cruiser "Mikhail Kutuzov", pr. 68-bis
With the disappearance of the USSR, efficiency came first. The USSR Navy underwent a ruthless reduction, and in the United States in the early 90s, 18 guided missile cruisers of the Legi and Belknap types were excluded from the fleet, all 9 nuclear-powered cruisers were scrapped (many did not even reach half of their planned service life), followed by followed by 6 obsolete aircraft carriers of the Midway and Forestall classes, and 4 battleships.
Those. the reactivation of old battleships in the early 80s was not a consequence of their outstanding abilities, it was a geopolitical game - the desire to have the largest possible fleet. At the same cost as an aircraft carrier, a battleship is an order of magnitude inferior to it in terms of striking power and the ability to control sea and air space. Therefore, despite the solid armor, the Iowas are rusty targets in modern warfare. Hiding behind the thickness of dead metal is a completely futile approach.
Intensive way
The best defense is attack. This is exactly what they think all over the world when creating new ship self-defense systems. After the Cole attack, no one began to attach armor plates to the destroyers. The American response was not original, but was very effective - installing 25 mm Bushmaster automatic cannons with a digital guidance system, so that next time they would smash a boat with terrorists to pieces (however, I am still inaccurate - in the superstructure of the destroyer Orly Burke subseries IIa still received a new armored bulkhead 1 inch thick, but this does not at all look like serious armor).
Anti-aircraft self-defense complex "Broadsword" installed on the R-60 missile boat
Detection and anti-missile systems are being improved. The USSR adopted the Kinzhal air defense system with the Podkat radar for detecting low-flying targets, as well as the unique Kortik missile and artillery self-defense system. A new Russian development is the Broadsword ZRAK. The famous Swiss company Oerlikon did not stand aside, producing a rapid-firing 35-mm artillery mount “Millennium” with uranium destructive elements (Venezuela received one of the first “Millenniums”). In Holland, the standard close-combat artillery system “Goalkeeper” has been developed, combining the power of the Soviet AK-630M and the accuracy of the American Phalanx. When creating the new generation ESSM anti-missile missiles, the emphasis was on increasing the maneuverability of missile defense systems (flight speed up to 4..5 speeds of sound, while the effective interception range is 50 km). It is possible to place 4 ESSMs in any of the 90 launch cells of the Arleigh Burke destroyer.
The navies of all countries have moved from thick armor to active defenses. Obviously, the Russian Navy should develop in the same direction. It seems to me that the ideal version of the main warship of the Navy, with a total displacement of 6000...8000 tons, with an emphasis on firepower. To provide acceptable protection against simple weapons, an all-steel body, proper layout of the interior and selective armoring of important components using composites are sufficient. Regarding severe damage, it is much more effective to shoot down anti-ship missiles on approach than to put out fires in a torn hull.
USS BB-63 Missouri, September 1945, Tokyo Bay
Although the previous part on battleships was final, there is one more topic that I would like to discuss separately. Reservation. In this article we will try to determine the optimal reservation system for battleships of the Second World War and conditionally “create” an ideal reservation system for battleships of the WWII period.
The task, I must say, is completely non-trivial. It is almost impossible to select armor “for all occasions”; the fact is that the battleship, as the ultimate artillery system of war at sea, solved many problems and, accordingly, was exposed to the entire range of weapons of those times. The designers were faced with a completely thankless task - to ensure the combat stability of the battleships, despite numerous hits from bombs, torpedoes and heavy enemy shells.
To do this, the designers carried out numerous calculations and full-scale experiments in search of the optimal combination of types, thicknesses and locations of armor. And, of course, it immediately became clear that there simply were no solutions “for all occasions” - any solution that gave an advantage in one combat situation turned out to be a disadvantage in other circumstances. Below are the main challenges faced by the designers.
Armored belt - external or internal?
The advantages of placing an armored belt inside the body seem to be obvious. Firstly, this increases the level of vertical protection in general - the projectile, before hitting the armor, has to penetrate a certain number of steel hull structures. Which can knock down the “Makarov tip”, which will lead to a significant drop in the armor penetration of the projectile (up to a third). Secondly, if the upper edge of the armored belt is located inside the hull, even if not by much, the area of the armored deck is reduced - and this is a very, very significant weight saving. And thirdly, there is a well-known simplification of the manufacture of armor plates (there is no need to strictly repeat the contours of the hull, as should be done when installing an external armor belt). From the point of view of an artillery duel, the LK with its own kind seems to be the optimal solution.
Reservation schemes for North Carolina and South Dakota types of armored vehicles, with external and internal armor belts, respectively
But exactly what “seems to be”. Let's start from the beginning - increased armor resistance. This myth has its origins in the work of Nathan Okun, an American who works as a control systems programmer for the US Navy. But before we move on to the analysis of his works, a small educational program.
What is a “Makarov” tip (more precisely, a “Makarov” cap)? It was invented by Admiral S.O. Makarov at the end of the 19th century. It is a tip made of soft, unalloyed steel that flattens on impact, causing the hard top layer of armor to crack at the same time. Following this, the hard main part of the armor-piercing projectile easily pierced the lower layers of armor - much less hard (why armor has non-uniform hardness - see below). Without this tip, the projectile may simply break apart in the process of “overcoming” the armor and will not penetrate the armor at all, or will penetrate the armor only in the form of fragments. But it is obvious that if the projectile encounters spaced armor, the tip will “waste itself” on the first obstacle and will reach the second with significantly reduced armor penetration. That’s why shipbuilders (and not only them) have a natural desire to destroy the armor. But it makes sense to do this only if the first layer of armor has a thickness that is guaranteed to remove the tip.
So, Okun, referring to post-war tests of English, French and American shells, claims that to remove the tip, an armor thickness equal to 0.08 (8%) of the caliber of an armor-piercing projectile is sufficient. That is, for example, in order to decapitate a 460 mm Japanese APC, only 36.8 mm of armor steel is enough - which is more than normal for hull structures (this figure for the Iowa LC reached 38 mm). Accordingly, according to Okun, placing the armor belt inside gave it resistance no less than 30% greater than that of the external armor belt. This myth has been widely circulated in the press and is repeated in the works of famous researchers.
And yet, this is just a myth. Yes, Okun’s calculations are indeed based on actual shell test data. But for tank shells! For them, 8% of caliber is really correct. But for large-caliber ARSs this figure is significantly higher. Tests of the 380 mm Bismarck projectile showed that destruction of the “Makarov” cap is possible, but not guaranteed, starting with an obstacle thickness of 12% of the caliber of the projectile. And this is already 45.6 mm. Those. the defense of the same “Iowa” had absolutely no chance of removing the tip of not only the Yamato shells, but even the Bismarck shells. Therefore, in his later works, Okun consistently increased this figure, first to 12%, then to 14-17% and, finally, to 25% - the thickness of armor steel (homogeneous armor) at which the “Makarov” cap is guaranteed to be removed.
In other words, to guarantee the removal of the tips of 356-460 mm WWII battleship shells, 89-115 mm of armor steel (homogeneous armor) is required, although some chance of removing this very tip arises already at thicknesses from 50 to 64.5 mm. The only WWII battleship that had truly spaced armor was the Italian Littorio, which had a first armor belt 70 mm thick, and even lined with 10 mm of especially strong steel. We will return to the effectiveness of such protection a little later. Accordingly, all other WWII battleships that had an internal armor belt did not have any significant advantages in protection relative to a ship with an external armor belt of the same thickness.
As for the simplification of the production of armor plates, it was not so significant, and it was more than compensated by the technical complexity of installing an armor belt inside the ship.
In addition, from the point of view of combat stability in general, the internal armored belt is completely unprofitable. Even minor damage (small-caliber shells, an aerial bomb exploding near the side) inevitably leads to damage to the hull, and, albeit minor, flooding of the PTZ - and therefore to inevitable repairs at the dock upon return to base. LKs with an external armored belt are spared from this. During WWII, there were cases when a torpedo fired along the LC, for some reason, fell right under the waterline. In this case, extensive PTZ damage to a battleship with an internal armored belt is guaranteed, while battleships with an external armored belt usually got off with a “mild fright.”
So it would not be a mistake to state that the internal armored belt has one and only advantage - if its upper edge does not “go out”, but is located inside the hull, then it allows you to reduce the area of the main armored deck (which, as a rule, rested on its upper edge) . But such a solution reduces the width of the citadel - with obvious negative consequences for stability.
To summarize, we make a choice - on our “ideal” battleship, the armor belt should be external.
In the end, it was not for nothing that the American designers of those times, who in no case could be suspected of either sudden “softening of the brain” or other similar diseases, immediately after the lifting of restrictions on displacement when designing the Montana battleships, abandoned the internal armored belt in benefit of the external.
USS BB-56 Washington, 1945, the “step” of the outer armor belt is clearly visible
Armored belt - monolithic or spaced?
According to research from the 1930s, monolithic armor generally resists physical impact better than spaced armor of equal thickness. But the impact of the projectile on the layers of spaced protection is uneven - if the first layer of armor is removed by the “Makarov cap”. According to numerous sources, the armor penetration of an ARS with a knocked-down tip is reduced by a third; for further calculations we will take a reduction in armor penetration of 30%. Let's try to estimate the effectiveness of monolithic and spaced armor against the impact of a 406 mm projectile.
During WWII, it was widely believed that at normal combat distances, for high-quality protection from enemy shells, an armored belt was required, the thickness of which was equal to the caliber of the shell. In other words, a 406 mm armor belt was required against a 406 mm projectile. Monolithic, of course. What if you take spaced armor?
As already written above, to guarantee the removal of the “Makarov” cap, armor with a thickness of 0.25 caliber of the projectile was required. Those. The first layer of armor, which is guaranteed to remove the Makarov cap of a 406 mm projectile, must have a thickness of 101.5 mm. This will be enough even if the projectile hits normal - and any deviation from the normal will only increase the effective protection of the first layer of armor. Of course, the indicated 101.5 mm projectile will not stop, but will reduce its armor penetration by 30%. Obviously, now the thickness of the second layer of armor can be calculated using the formula: (406 mm - 101.5 mm) * 0.7 = 213.2 mm, where 0.7 is the coefficient of reduction in the armor penetration of the projectile. In total, two sheets with a total thickness of 314.7 mm are equivalent to 406 mm of monolithic armor.
This calculation is not entirely accurate - since researchers have established that monolithic armor withstands physical impact better than spaced armor of the same thickness, then, apparently, 314.7 mm will still not be equivalent to 406 mm monolith. But nowhere is it said how much spaced armor is inferior to a monolith - and we have a considerable margin of strength (still 314.7 mm is 1.29 times less than 406 mm) which is obviously higher than the notorious decrease in the durability of spaced armor.
In addition, there are other factors in favor of spaced armor. The Italians, when designing armor protection for their Littorio, carried out practical tests and found that when the projectile deviates from the normal, i.e. when hitting armor at an angle other than 90°, the projectile for some reason tends to turn perpendicular to the armor. Thus, to a certain extent, the effect of increasing armor protection due to a projectile hitting at an angle other than 90° is lost. So, if you spread the armor just a little, say, 25-30 centimeters, then the first sheet of armor blocks the rear part of the projectile and prevents it from turning around - i.e. the projectile can no longer turn 90° to the main armor plate. Which, naturally, again increases the armor resistance of the protection.
True, spaced armor has one drawback. If a torpedo hits the armored belt, it is quite possible that it will break through the first sheet of armor, while hitting the monolithic armor will only leave a couple of scratches. But, on the other hand, it may not break through, and on the other hand, there won’t be any serious flooding even in the PTZ.
The technical complexity of creating a spaced armor installation on a ship raises questions. It's probably more complicated than a monolith. But, on the other hand, it is much easier for metallurgists to roll out two sheets of much smaller thickness (even in total) than one monolithic one, and Italy is by no means the leader in world technical progress, but it has installed such protection on its Littorio.
So for our “ideal” battleship, the choice is obvious - spaced armor.
Armored belt – vertical or inclined?
It seems that the advantages of an inclined armored belt are obvious. The sharper the angle at which a heavy projectile hits the armor, the more armor the projectile will have to penetrate, meaning the greater the chance that the armor will survive. And the inclination of the armored belt obviously increases the sharpness of the angle of impact of projectiles. However, the greater the inclination of the armored belt - the greater the height of its plates - the greater the mass of the armored belt as a whole. Let's try to count.
The basics of geometry tell us that an inclined armored belt will always be longer than a vertical armored belt covering the same side height. After all, a vertical side with an inclined armored belt forms a right triangle, where the vertical side is the leg of a right triangle, and the inclined armored belt is the hypotenuse. The angle between them is equal to the angle of inclination of the armored belt.
Let's try to calculate the armor protection characteristics of two hypothetical battleships (LK No. 1 and LK No. 2). LK No. 1 has a vertical armor belt, LK No. 2 – inclined, at an angle of 19°. Both armored belts cover the side at a height of 7 meters. Both are 300mm thick.
Obviously, the height of the vertical armor belt of LK No. 1 will be exactly 7 meters. The height of the armored belt LK No. 2 will be 7 meters / cos angle 19°, i.e. 7 meters / 0.945519 = approximately 7.4 meters. Accordingly, the inclined armored belt will be higher than the vertical one by 7.4m / 7m = 1.0576 times or approximately 5.76%.
It follows that the inclined armored belt will be 5.76% heavier than the vertical one. This means that by allocating an equal mass of armor for armor belts LK No. 1 and LK No. 2, we can increase the thickness of the armor of the vertical armor belt by the indicated 5.76%.
In other words, by spending the same mass of armor, we can either install an inclined armor belt at an angle of 19° with a thickness of 300 mm, or install a vertical armor belt with a thickness of 317.3 mm.
If an enemy shell flies parallel to the water, i.e. at an angle of 90° to the side and vertical armor belt, then it will be met by either 317.3 mm of vertical armor belt, or... exactly the same 317.3 mm of inclined armor belt. Because in the triangle formed by the line of flight of the projectile (hypotenuse) with the thickness of the armor of the inclined belt (adjacent leg), the angle between the hypotenuse and the leg will be exactly 19° of the inclination of the armor plates. Those. we don't win anything.
It’s a completely different matter when a projectile hits the side not at 90°, but, say, at 60° (deviation from the normal – 30°). Now, using the same formula, we get the result that when hitting vertical armor with a thickness of 317.3 mm, the projectile will have to penetrate 366.4 mm of armor, while when hitting a 300 mm inclined armor belt, the projectile will have to penetrate 457.3 mm of armor. Those. when a projectile falls at an angle of 30° to the sea surface, the effective thickness of the inclined belt will exceed the protection of the vertical armor belt by as much as 24.8%!
So the effectiveness of the inclined armored belt is obvious. An inclined armored belt of the same mass as a vertical one, although it will have a slightly smaller thickness, its durability is equal to the durability of a vertical armored belt when projectiles hit perpendicular to the side (flat shooting), and when this angle is reduced when firing from long distances, as happens in real life naval combat, the durability of the inclined armor belt increases. So, is the choice obvious?
Not really. Free cheese only comes in a mousetrap.
Let's take the idea of an inclined armored belt to the point of absurdity. Here we have an armor plate 7 meters high and 300 mm thick. A projectile flies at it at an angle of 90°. He will be met with only 300 mm of armor - but these 300 mm will cover the side of 7 m in height. What if we tilt the slab? Then the projectile will have to overcome more than 300 mm of armor (depending on the angle of inclination of the plate - but the height of the protected side will also decrease, and the more we tilt the plate, the thicker our armor, but the less side it covers. Apotheosis - when we rotate the plate 90°, we get as much as seven meters thick armor - but these 7 meters of thickness will cover a narrow strip of 300 mm of the side.
In our example, an inclined armored belt, when a projectile fell at an angle of 30° to the water surface, turned out to be 24.8% more effective than a vertical armored belt. But, again remembering the basics of geometry, we will find that from such a projectile an inclined armored belt covers exactly 24.8% less area than a vertical one.
So, alas, the miracle did not happen. An inclined armor belt increases armor resistance in proportion to the reduction in protection area. The greater the deviation of the projectile trajectory from the normal, the more protection the inclined armor belt provides - but the smaller the area this armor belt covers.
But this is not the only drawback of the inclined armor belt. The fact is that already at a distance of 100 cables the deviation of the projectile from the normal, i.e. the angle of the projectile relative to the surface of the water, the main battery guns of WWII battleships ranges from 12 to 17.8° (V. Kofman, “Japanese battleships of World War II Yamato and Musashi,” p. 124). At a distance of 150 kbt these angles increase to 23.5-34.9°. Add to this another 19° inclination of the armor belt, for example, as on the South Dakota type LK, and we get 31-36.8° at 100 kbt and 42.5-53.9° at 150 cable.
It should be borne in mind that European shells ricocheted or split up already at 30-35° deviation from the normal, Japanese - at 20-25°, and only American ones could withstand a deviation of 35-45°. (V.N. Chausov, American battleships of the South Dakota type).
It turns out that the inclined armored belt, located at an angle of 19°, practically guaranteed that the European projectile would split or ricochet already at a distance of 100 kbt (18.5 km). If it breaks, great, but if it ricochets? The fuse may well be cocked by a strong glancing blow. Then the projectile will “slide” along the armored belt and go straight down through the PTZ, where it will fully explode almost under the bottom of the ship... No, we don’t need such “protection”.
So what should we choose for our “ideal” battleship?
Our promising battleship must have vertically spaced armor. Spreading the armor will significantly increase protection with the same mass of armor, and its vertical position will provide maximum protection area during long-range combat.
HMS King George V, external armor belt also clearly visible
Casemate and armored ends – is it necessary or not?
As you know, there were 2 LC reservation systems. “All or nothing”, when the citadel was exclusively armored, but with the most powerful armor, or when the ends of the LK were also armored, and on top of the main armored belt there was also a second, though of lesser thickness. The Germans called this second belt a casemate, although, of course, the second armored belt was not a casemate in the original sense of the word.
The easiest way to decide on a casemate is because this thing on the LK is almost completely useless. The thickness of the casemate took a lot of weight away, but did not provide any protection from heavy enemy shells. It is worth considering only the very narrow range of trajectories in which the projectile first penetrated the casemate and then hit the armored deck. But this did not provide a significant increase in protection, and the casemate did not protect against bombs in any way. Of course, the casemate provided additional cover for the barbettes of the gun turrets. But it would be much easier to book the barbettes more thoroughly, which would also provide significant savings in weight. In addition, the barbette is usually round, which means there is a very high probability of a ricochet. So the LK casemate is completely unnecessary. Perhaps in the form of anti-fragmentation armor, but a slight thickening of the hull steel could probably cope with this.
Booking the ends is a completely different matter. If it is easy to say a decisive “no” to a casemate, then it is also easy to say a decisive “yes” to armoring the ends. Suffice it to remember what happened to the unarmored ends of even battleships as resistant to damage as the Yamato and Musashi were. Even relatively weak blows to them led to extensive flooding, which, although in no way threatened the existence of the ship, required lengthy repairs.
So we armor the ends of our “ideal” battleship, and let our enemies build a casemate for themselves.
Well, it seems that everything is with the armored belt. Let's move on to the deck.
Armored deck - one or many?
History has never given a definitive answer to this question. On the one hand, as already written above, it was believed that one monolithic deck would withstand a blow better than several decks of the same total thickness. On the other hand, let’s remember the idea of spaced armor, because heavy aerial bombs could also be equipped with a “Makarov” cap.
In general, it turns out that from the point of view of bomb resistance, the American deck armor system looks preferable. The upper deck is for “cocking the fuse”, the second deck, which is also the main one, in order to withstand a bomb explosion, and the third, anti-fragmentation deck – in order to “intercept” the fragments if the main armored deck still fails.
But from the point of view of resistance to large-caliber projectiles, such a scheme is ineffective.
History knows such a case - the shelling of the unfinished Jean Bart by the Massachusetts. Modern researchers almost sing hosannas to the French battleships - the majority of voices believe that the Richelieu reservation system was the best in the world.
What happened in practice? This is how S. Suliga describes it in his book “French LC Richelieu and Jean Bart”.
"Massachusetts" opened fire on the battleship at 08 m (07.04) on the starboard side from a distance of 22,000 m, at 08.40 she began to turn 16 points towards the coast, temporarily stopping fire, at 08.47 she resumed firing on the port side and finished it at 09.33. During this time, he fired 9 full salvoes (9 shells each) and 38 salvoes of 3 or 6 shells at the Jean Bar and the El-Hank battery. The French battleship suffered five direct hits (according to French data - seven).
One shell from a salvo that fell at 08.25 hit the aft part on the starboard side above the admiral's salon, pierced the spardeck deck, the upper deck, the main armored deck (150 mm), the lower armored deck (40 mm) and the 7 mm deck of the first platform, exploding in The cellar of the side 152-mm turrets closest to the stern is fortunately empty.”
What do we see? The Frenchman's excellent defense (190 mm of armor and two more decks - no joke!) was easily broken through by an American shell.
By the way, it would be appropriate to say a few words here about the calculations of free maneuvering zones (FMZ, in English literature - immune zone). The meaning of this indicator is that the greater the distance to the ship, the greater the angle of impact of the projectiles. And the larger this angle, the less chance of breaking through the armored belt, but the greater the chance of breaking through the armored deck. Accordingly, the beginning of the free maneuvering zone is the distance from which the armored belt is no longer penetrated by a projectile and the armored deck is not yet penetrated. And the end of the free maneuvering zone is the distance from which the projectile begins to penetrate the armored deck. Obviously, the ship’s maneuvering zone is different for each specific projectile, since armor penetration directly depends on the speed and mass of the projectile.
The free maneuvering zone is one of the most favorite indicators of both ship designers and researchers of the history of shipbuilding. But a number of authors have no confidence in this indicator. The same S. Suliga writes: “The 170-mm armored deck above the Richelieu cellars is the next thickest after the only armored deck of the Japanese Yamato.” If we also take into account the lower deck and express the horizontal protection of these ships in the equivalent thickness of American “class B” deck armor, we get 193 mm versus 180 mm in favor of the French battleship. Thus, the Richelieu had the best deck armor of any ship in the world.
Amazing! Obviously, the Richelieu was better armored than the same South Dakota, which had armored decks with a total thickness of 179-195 mm, of which homogeneous “Class B” armor was 127-140 mm, and the rest was structural steel that was inferior in strength. However, the calculated indicator of the South Dakota’s free maneuvering zone under fire from the same 1220 kg of 406 mm shells ranged from 18.7 to 24.1 km. And the “Massachusetts” penetrated a better deck than the “South Dakota” from about 22 km!
Another example. After the war, the Americans shot off the front plates of the turrets planned for the Yamato class LK. They got one such slab, it was taken to the training ground and fired at with heavy American 1220 kg shells of the latest modification. Mark 8 mod. 6. They shot so that the projectile hit the slab at an angle of 90 degrees. We fired 2 shots, the first shell did not penetrate the slab. For the second shot, an enhanced charge was used, i.e. provided increased projectile speed. The armor shattered. The Japanese modestly commented on these tests - they reminded the Americans that the slab they tested was rejected by acceptance. But even the rejected slab split only after the second hit, and by an artificially accelerated projectile.
The paradox of the situation is this. The thickness of the Japanese armor tested was 650 mm. Moreover, absolutely all sources claim that the quality of Japanese armor was worse than average world standards. The author, unfortunately, does not know the firing parameters (initial projectile speed, distance, etc.) But V. Kofman, in his book “Japanese Yamato and Musashi gunships,” claims that in those testing conditions, the American 406 mm gun in theory should have penetrate 664 mm of world average armor! But in reality they were unable to overcome 650 mm of armor of obviously poorer quality. So then believe in the exact sciences!
But let's return to our sheep, i.e. to horizontal reservation. Taking into account all of the above, we can conclude that the spaced horizontal armor did not withstand artillery strikes well. On the other hand, the only, but thick, armored deck of the Yamato did not perform so badly against American bombs.
Therefore, it seems to us, the optimal horizontal armor looks like this - a thick armored deck, and below that - a thin anti-fragmentation one.
Armored deck - with or without bevels?
Bevels are one of the most controversial issues in horizontal armoring. Their merits are great. Let's look at the case when the main, thickest armored deck has bevels.
They participate in both the horizontal and vertical defense of the citadel. At the same time, the bevels greatly save the overall weight of the armor - this is, in fact, the same inclined armor belt, only in the horizontal plane. The thickness of the bevels may be less than that of deck armor - but due to the slope, they will provide the same horizontal protection as horizontal armor of the same weight. And with the same thickness of the bevels, the horizontal protection will increase significantly - albeit along with the mass. But horizontal armor protects exclusively the horizontal plane - and the bevels also participate in vertical protection, allowing the armor belt to be weakened. In addition, the bevels, unlike horizontal armor of the same weight, are located lower - which reduces the upper weight and has a positive effect on the stability of the ship.
The disadvantages of bevels are a continuation of their advantages. The fact is that there are two approaches to vertical protection - the first approach is to prevent the penetration of enemy shells at all. Those. The side armor should be the heaviest - this is how the Yamato's vertical protection was implemented. But with this approach, duplicating the armor belt with bevels is simply not necessary. There is another approach, its example is “Bismarck”. The Bismarck designers did not strive to make an impenetrable armored belt. They settled on a thickness that would prevent the projectile from penetrating the armored belt as a whole at reasonable combat distances. And in this case, large fragments of the projectile and the explosion of the half-scattered explosive were reliably blocked by the bevels.
Obviously, the first approach of “impenetrable” defense is relevant for “ultimate” battleships, which are created as super-fortresses without any artificial restrictions. Such battleships simply do not need bevels - why? Their armored belt is already strong enough. But for battleships whose displacement is limited for some reason, bevels become very relevant, because make it possible to achieve approximately the same armor resistance at much lower armor costs.
But still, the “bevels + relatively thin armored belt” scheme is flawed. The fact is that this scheme a priori assumes that the shells will explode inside the citadel - between the armored belt and the bevels. As a result, a battleship armored according to this scheme in conditions of intense battle would share the fate of the Bismarck - the battleship very quickly lost its combat effectiveness. Yes, the slopes perfectly protected the ship from flooding and the engine rooms from penetration of shells. But what good is this when the rest of the ship has long been a blazing wreck?
Comparison of armor schemes, armored and unprotected volumes of aircraft of the Bismarck/Tirpitz and King George V types
Another minus. The bevels also significantly reduce the reserved volume of the citadel. Notice where the Tirpitz's armored deck is compared to the King George V's. Due to the weakened armor belt, all rooms above the armored deck are essentially given over to be torn to pieces by enemy APCs.
Summarizing the above, the optimal reservation system for our “ideal” World War II battleship would be the following. Vertical armor belt - with spaced armor, the first sheet - at least 100 mm, the second - 300 mm, spaced no more than 250-300 mm from each other. Horizontal armor - upper deck - 200 mm, without bevels, rests on the upper edges of the armor belt. The lower deck is 20-30 mm with bevels to the lower edge of the armor belt. The extremities are lightly armored. The second armored belt (casemate) is missing.
Battleship Richelieu, post-war photo
P.P.S. The article was posted deliberately, given its great potential for “discussion”. ;-)
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