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PostPosted: Tue Apr 19, 2016 12:21 pm 
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Exactly - that article was very interesting!

I can phrase my question differently. Instead of asking if armour was useless, I will ask which cruiser's armour proved its value and saved the ship? E.g. USS San Francisco at Guadalcanal - did her armour really defeat 5", 5.5" and 6" shells? Or was she hit mainly at the not armoured parts?

According to the damage report:
http://www.researcheratlarge.com/Ships/CA38/GuadalcanalDamageRpt.html

Most damage was caused by 6" guns! She was hit by 2 14", 10 8", 15 6", 5 5.5" and 13 5". Many large caliber hits were by bombardment ammunition - not AP or HE. She was hit only 2 (!!) times on the belt: one 6" was defeated, one 8" not. Still several compartments were flooded because of other hits. The only evidence for useful armour was the conning tower, which survived an 8" hit (not clear what kind of ammunition) - but remember that most of the leading personal was killed on the not armoured parts of the bridge. And the mentioned 8" hit on the conning tower strongly contributed to the damage on the bridge. And, very interesting, that the barbette armour defeated the 14" shells (because they were not AP)!

There were some long range gun battles in the European theatre and early in the war - e.g. Exeter's engines were destroyed by 8" fire and part of Admiral Hipper's boilers by 6" fire.

Splitter armour and subdivision for sure proved its worth. But I guess that the Atlanta class was not badly designed in that aspects.

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PostPosted: Tue Apr 19, 2016 12:52 pm 
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I know it's not your intention, but I feel a bit like this is turning into a case of manipulating the qualifications and circumstances to fit an outcome, rather than allowing the conclusion to come from the facts.

I also feel it's a bit ...dishonest to automatically disqualify hits from HE against armored portions simply because they weren't confronted with AP shells. Yes the barbette armor resisted and rejected a 14" HE shell, but we can only speculate what would have happened had it encountered a non-armored barbette made out of only STS.


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PostPosted: Tue Apr 19, 2016 11:51 pm 
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I counted the 8" hit as successful, because it loosened the armour plate and damaged areas behind. True, it can be also counted as defeated, because it does not went through the armour plate. But that was not my point. My point was that most hits were in non-armoured parts. And these hits massively reduced the fighting abilities and killing most of the bridge and 5" gun crews. The armour was hardly tested - two hits on the belt, one on the conning tower (which fragments destroyed the pilot house) and two on the barbettes (with special land bombardment ammunition). Unfortunately it is not described what type of 8" ammunition hit the ship, because the report states specifically that 6" hits caused most of the damage. This indicates that also most of the 8" hits were neither AP or HE.

RaceFuel wrote:
I also feel it's a bit ...dishonest to automatically disqualify hits from HE against armored portions simply because they weren't confronted with AP shells.

These were not HE (high explosive) shells, but special ammunition to bombard land targets. I had written that it was not AP or HE! Please read either my complete text or the linked report. The statement in the report is: "No A.P. or H.E. major caliber hits were received so far as can be determined."

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