The Ship Model Forum

Missiles have been equipped with shaped charge, also known as hollow charge, since WW II. Examples of unguided missiles with shaped charge include the Bazooka, the RPG, the LAW and some 2.75 rocket. As for guided missiles, the Dragon, the Hellfire, the Maverick and just about any anti-tank missile has them.

To say that, presumably, anti-ship missiles will never have them in the future because there was no need to have them in the past is naive. An axiom of war is that for every move, there will be a counter move.

The old Exocet had a 165 kg payload. It could quite easily carry a shaped charge that would penetrate any thickness of armour on a BB and be launched from well beyond 60 nm.

The latest Russian SS-N-27A, a Mach 2.9 sea skimmer with a 200 kg payload and a range of 440 km, could penetrate any defense the battle group can put up if launched in salvos. Again, it has the capacity to carry a shaped charge that would penetrate any thickness of armour carried by a BB.

The point being, in modern warfare, a BB can be just as vulnerable as any unarmoured ship.

The armour of WW II was designed to withstand impact; that is, to prevent an AP round from physically smashing through by brute force. For which, it was adequate.

A shaped charge, however, penetrates armour not by brute force but by concentrating the explosive force to create a hypersonic jet to punch through the armour. At the area of contact with the armour, the pressure can be as high as 10 million BARs. No armour can withstand that.

It is misleading to judge by weight alone. A shaped charge a tenth the weight of an AP shell is many times more destructive than the AP shell.

Of course, a counter move could be to add reactive armour to the exterior of the ship. But reactive armour is very high maintenance in a salt water environment and none has been design for 100 kg shaped charge. Plus the added weight would degrade the performance of the ship. A counter counter move would have tandem charges on the missile.

Or replace the existing armour with Chobham armour, an expensive proposition for a ship the size of a BB. And economically impossible if the armour is integrated into the hull. It would be cheaper to build a new ship.

Exocet has no chance at all of penetrating the armor of an Iowa class BB. Not even close. Even a perry class FFG survived an excocet strike. The British ships that were lost during the Falklands were only lost due to unspent missile fuel starting fires combined with aluminum superstructures. You used a very poor example by picking the exocet. We all understand how shaped charges work, especially those of us who have served in the military(I was prior service Army before joining the Coast Guard). As Navydavesof pointed out, who is an active duty Navy Seal BTW, I am am not aware of any current anti-ship missile capable of defeating the armor of an Iowa class BB, including the ones you mentioned, especially not the exocet. As was pointed out before, arguing against a BB in all these scenarios is actually an argument against any surface ship, any of which are less survivable than an Iowa. We will just have to agree to disagree.

All the arguments sounds similar to those made after Mitchell's demonstration (that's all it was, just a demonstration). The armour was not pierced; the ship would have been maneuvering; there would have been damage control; AAA would be blazing and there would be escorts.

Then WW II came along.

One other consideration is the weight of the armor. A hull with a given set of dimensions (length, breadth, depth) will float only so much weight (equal to the weight of the water displaced by the hull). Everything added to the ship increases weight and eventually you come to a tradeoff between one heavy feature and another. This is an insurmountable law of ship design, and no amount of nostalgia or wishful thinking can avoid it.

The battle cruisers of WWI are an excellent example. They had heavy engineering plants (for speed), heavy armor (for protection) and heavy guns (so they weren't just passenger liners). The large engineering plant was necessary to get the high speeds, so a trade-off was made between the size of the guns and the thickness of the armor.

The Brits chose to mount big guns on their battle cruisers - giving greater range and hitting power - and used relatively light armor. The Germans used thinker armor and lighter guns. At Jutland the lightly armored British ships blew up like firecrackers while the German ships were almost undamaged. In WWII the battlecruiser Hood also blew up, even though the armor had been partly beefed up after the disaster at Jutland.

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Fast forward to modern times. A heavily armored ship cannot carry as many weapons as a lightly armored ship. And today weapons are far more effective than during WWII. No amount of armor can make a ship unsinkable - that argument was put to rest in WWII.

Consequently, the entire game is preventing enemy weapons from hitting the ship. The added weight of armor reduces the defensive weapons suite. It also increases the mass of the ship and that reduces the effectiveness of the engineering plant (slower acceleration and greater turn radius).

As I said, there are very good reasons no modern navy is building heavily armored ships.

Phil

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A collision at sea will ruin your entire day. Aristotle

Just a little history question. I'm only asking here because doing an online search (over google, navsource, history.navy.mil) hasn't helped.

Did either USS Alaska or Guam actually get to see any action during the July 1945 anti-shipping sweep with Task Force 95 of the East China Sea/Yellow Sea?

And if they did so, did they happen to fire their guns at Japanese vessels? Even merchantmen that survived the US sub campaign?

Just curious. Thanks in advance for any info.

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"Haijun" means "navy" in Mandarin Chinese.

"You have enemies? Good. It means you stood up for something in your life."- Winston Churchill

tko24, thank you for the complement, but I am not a SEAL. I work in the SOF community, hence the screen name and have done a lot of that kind of stuff, but I didn't go through BUD/s. They are some pretty fun guys. Hanging with them is a wild ride

"One, two, three, four I declare a van war!"

In the '80s, NAVSEA did weapons equivalencies on WWII weapons vs modern day ASCMs and bombs that would be used against battleships. Even the largest missiles, the SS-N-12 and 19s, only matched the penetration power of a 14" AP round.

To add to this, it is important to add that the composition, density, and treatment of the armor makes it act much thicker than cast armor of the same dimensions. While shaped charges melt their way through thin, homogeneous armor found on tanks, battleship armor presents a far different challenge. Keep in mind that the battleship's armor arrangement, especially the Iowa-class is either very, very thick, or it's a layered arrangement of thinner pieces ranging between 1.5", 7", or 12". For instance, the freeboard of the hull is various thicknesses of STS armor that will undoubtedly trigger an anti-ship warhead before it reaches the main armor belt, increasing the effectiveness of the main belt. The same is for deck impacts.

The type, make up, thickness, and arrangement of Iowa-class battleship armor is something modern weapons were not designed to confront or to overcome and would at the very least greatly reduce the damage the ship sustains

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Proper Preparation Prevents Poor Performance

The problem with these arguments is that they assume battleships will be attacked by something like the smooth bore cannons of the 17th century that bounce balls of the sides of the ships.

Modern weapons don't work that way. Torpedoes explode under the hull where there is no armor and break the back of a ship. Missiles can attack from above and only have to penetrate the relatively thin deck armor.

The primitive unguided iron bombs of WWII proved superior to even the greatest battleships. The Musashi and Yamato were proof of that. If all that side armor had provided significant protection both ships would still be afloat. It didn't and they aren't.

Even the prinitive Talos, the first guided missile to be developed (but not deployed) by the US Navy, attacked it's targets from above.

It is interesting to compare the Talos round to a projectile from a battleship. The missile normally carried the Mk 46 continuous rod warhead. In this configuration the missile weighed about 3300 pounds, and the warhead carried 225 pounds of TNT/RDX explosives. For comparison, a Mk 13 16" HC projectile (fired from the Iowa class battleships) weighed 1900 pounds and carried 154 pounds of Explosive D (ammonium picrate). The Talos round was half again as massive as the battleship projectile, carried half again as much explosive, traveled at more than twice the impact velocity, had a greater range, and didn't miss. Clearly, the Talos round would cause far greater damage. In surface firing tests the missle blew the target ships (DDs and DEs) in half.

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The other problem with the arguments is that they assume all that armor provides enough protection. It doesn't, it only protects the engineering plant and magazines. It takes a lot more than that to make an effective warship.

In one of our encounters in the Persian Gulf two US Navy ships carrying Standard missiles exchanged fire with two Iranian destroyer type warships. One was sunk outright but the other survived, with almost the entire superstructure blown away. The Iranians had to tow it back to port.

Without radars guns and missiles are useless, and antiradiation missiles make short work of radars. Without a bridge and other topside control spaces the armored citadel is useless. If the topsides are a mass of flames and shattered metal the ship won't be doing much fighting.

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Finally, no one has developed a missile that can penetrate several feet of shipboard armor, because there is no existing target for such a missile. However. warheads have been developed that will penetrate that kind of armor. Before you could finish building your perfect battleship every navy in the world would have missiles that could destroy it.

And that doesn't include nukes. That old Talos missile also carried a small nuclear warhead, and one shot would vaporize any amount of armor you could put afloat.

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Again, there are very good reasons why no modern navy builds armored ships.

Phil

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A collision at sea will ruin your entire day. Aristotle

Yamato and Musashi's main deck armor was never penetrated by any bomb.

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Building 1/200 Nichi.'45
viewtopic.php?f=59&t=152105

Would someone PLEASE answer my question a couple of posts above?

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"Haijun" means "navy" in Mandarin Chinese.

"You have enemies? Good. It means you stood up for something in your life."- Winston Churchill

According to Alaska's DANFS entry, TF95 encountered absolutely nothing afloat asides from Chinese fishing junks, crediting it to the effectiveness of the blockade. Guam's DANFS entry is a little less absolute, but does not indicate any encounters either.

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De quoi s'agit-il?

Is there any word on a 1/350 Alaska or Guam coming out since the YMW was discontinued? I see Blue Ridge has it listed, but is it up and running yet?

Thanks!

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Proper Preparation Prevents Poor Performance

Senkan,

I suppose all the bombs causes a lot of topside damage and fires, but what did sink the ships? The pitiful little torpedoes the American planes carried wouldn't have penetrated the armored citadel.

Phil

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A collision at sea will ruin your entire day. Aristotle

Here are a few notes about ordnance and munitions that most people don't realize or may have forgotten. This is especially true, because the understanding of medium, large, and major calibr gunnery has atrophied so much in and out of the US Navy.

It is important to note that armoring a warship is not to proof it against other weapons but to increase its survivability against damage and to protect the ship's crew and the ship's weapons systems. This is so it can stay in the fight longer and so it can return home to be repaired and used again instead of being sunk and gone.

Modern ships have nearly no survivability measures built into them so they are literally "one hit ships". Armored ships like heavy cruisers or battleships can sustain multiple hits and only sustain degradation in their combat capability. I can attest to this myself. I would rather be shot wearing my Level 5 vest instead of being shot without it. Depending on where I was shot, I would likely survive without armor, but I would not be able to continue to fight. Again, depending on where I had been shot, if I had armor on I would not only survive the shot, but I would be able to continue fight.

There are pros and cons to the two platforms you referred to, the 16" HC round and the Talos anti-air missile. I will refer to the 16" AP round as well in the area of penetration.

There is a very large difference between "bulk explosive load" such as in the Talos warhead and "pressure contained explosive load" as in projectiles. You may find it interesting that this principle makes the 147lb Comp D charge that the 16" HC round have the same yield as a 500-750lb areal bomb impacting at near Mack velocity. Mainly, it is because the charge is contained in a very, very strong pressure chamber (the walls of the projectile). For reference, that is about 2 1/2" of STS (HY110). Containing the explosive reaction for as long as it does, the yield of the explosive is much more complete and boosted from a high explosive reaction to a hyper explosive reaction. It's similar to the difference in expansion rates between TNT and C4. It's also loosely the same principal as a fire cracker detonating with an open palm vs a closed one. As a result, the 147lb HE load of the HC projectile carries far more destructive power than the Talos's 225lb warhead.

Incidentally, this is also why an 8" HE round delivers nearly the same destructive impact as a Harpoon. The Paveway 8" SAL round fired from the Mk71 against the USS Burns was more powerful than a Harpoon.

Your point about the Talos's kinetic energy and damage inflicted on the DE has been considered, but you must keep in mind that the kinetic energy transfer from an air-to-air missile without heavy penetration design does not compare to that of a hardened projectile against heavy cruiser or battleship type armor (face hardened, Class A and B, or layered STS/HY-110). It is the weapon's composition that matters. Because the Talos was designed to simply arrive at a location very quickly in order to delivery an explosive charge to break up another missile, it has no penetration capability designed into it. It simply flies really fast and detonates at a particular time to break up another missile. The Talos, and most AAW missiles, will break apart like a frangible bullet when it impacts any target. The affect that shattering has is what damages an unprotected ship.

The variables here are firing against an unprotected (soft) areas or protected areas (hard). Like stated above, the AP projectile would punch right through the DE carrying most of its kinetic energy with it through the hull and into the water while the Talos broke up inside of the ship and was able to delivery its energy into the soft, yielding body of the hull. The AP round, with its 2700lbs of mass concentrated in a plug 16" x 40" shape retains its mass long enough to fully impart its kinetic energy onto a very hard, dense area. This only works against better armor but not soft, unprotected ships. With the Talos, its mass is spread out along a comparatively light and fragile frame that is spread over its entire length of 30 or so feet. So, when it impacts the hard area, it will fragment against the hard face of the armor and lose its mass. This is especially true if it impacts layered armor where it would likely penetrate the 2 1/2" shell plating or main deck on a battleship but break apart. Then, the missile would no longer be carrying its mass and would instead pepper the armor behind it (12" side or 7" 2nd deck) with far smaller and less energetic fragments.

Concerning Talos, similar to the SS-N-12 Sandbox or the SS-N-19 Shipwreck that I referred to earlier, if it impacts a normally built ship, such as the DE you're referring to, it has maximum impact and kinetic energy transfer because it breaks apart inside of the soft structure of the DE. If a major caliber AP round impacts the same DE, experience has shown that it would simply just punch a hole through the ship, because the projectile would remain intact. It's the 2,200lb anti-ship warhead that would break the unprotected ship in half.

As a result, a Talos is a great weapon against unarmored ships. It would not be so effective against armored ships.

Like I said, weapons equivalency studies performed in the mid 1980s put the SS-N-12 and 19 in the same penetration category as 14" AP rounds. Their 2,200lb warheads offered far more ovrepressure destructive power that would affect softer parts of a battleship, such as near-by sensors or unhardened electronics or the upper super structure. That would damage the ship for sure! But it would only reduce its effectiveness, not put it out of the fight.

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Proper Preparation Prevents Poor Performance

I am familiar with the mechanics of penetration of armor piercing projectiles, and I agree with what you said. However, a lot of battleships were sunk by the relatively primitive weapons of WWII.

As I said, if there was a need to produce an armor piercing anti ship missile, there would be one. And a modern weapon would be far more accurate and effective than a bullet or iron bomb. There are "bunker buster" bombs that were designed to penetrate yards of concrete and armor plating. I don't know what the effective penetrating capability of the most effective of these is, but you can be certain it is far superior to anything any battleship ever came up against.

And, as I said, all the extra weight of the armor reduces the offensive and defensive capability of a ship. It just makes it a bigger target.

Funny thing about this argument is that it is exactly the same as the battleship vs aircraft carrier arguments preceding WWII. There were people then who insisted that battleships were necessary to win a naval war. In fact, they were irrelevant to the outcome of WWII. They have been obsolete since the first carrier appeared.

Phil

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A collision at sea will ruin your entire day. Aristotle

You're not kidding! Volume of fire and super dense penetrators such as the Fritz X did a lot to send down some very, very tough ships. Like I said, armored ships are not invulnerable, they just have a far better chance of surviving and continuing the fight than unarmored ships. In the day of ESSM, RAM, CIWS being coordinated and controlled by weapon direction systems (WDS), it makes the chance of surviving an anti-ship encounter far greater That counts a lot.

Indeed, but that would be a huge, huge technical undertaking. Take for historical reference, the Soviets/Russians knew the Iowas were expected to be around for 25 years, and they did not embark on any great armor piercing weapons. Again, like I said, the armor is to enhance the survivability of the warship, not make it immune. Even a 1 1/2" main and second deck would add great strength to the ship's hull and survivability to the interior of the ship, allowing it to suvive the battle and to return home to be repaired and returned to sevice.

The Fritz X certainly proved that! The big, bad Roma suffered greatly from that super penetrating, heavy warhead weapon.

I think you would be pretty surprised at how less powerful bunker busters are than you think. In fact, only one has enough peneration power to break through BB armor. The typical only penetrates between 6 to 11 feet of re-enforced concrete. The more powerful of them, "Super Penetrators" such as the 5,000lb GBU-28, only penetrates 20' of concrete. The Iowa-class's armor was proofed against 16" AP rounds capable of penetrating 32' of reinforced concrete. The greatest, the GBU-57 has to exceed 30,000lbs in order to penetrate more (60' of concrete)...but then again...that's a 30,000lb bomb!

Here is a decent listing, about half way down the page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bunker_buster

Penetration of reinforced concrete: 1.8 m (6 ft) BLU-109 Penetrator GBU-10, GBU-15, GBU-24, GBU-27, AGM-130
Penetration of reinforced concrete: 3.4 m (11 ft) BLU-116 Advanced Unitary Penetrator (AUP) GBU-15, GBU-24, GBU-27, AGM-130
BLU-118/B Thermobaric Warhead GBU-15, GBU-24, AGM-130
Penetration of reinforced concrete: more than 6 m (20 ft) BLU-113 Super Penetrator GBU-28, GBU-37

I don't see how it reduces the offensive or defensive capability of a ship. Compare comparable displacements. You have the South Dakota-class and the Kirov-class, both around 30,000 tons, and the South Dakota way out guns the Kirov. If modernized to the same time frame as the Kirov, the South Dakota could retain her 16" guns and mount 96 Mk41 VLS tubes and have 4 5"/62 caliber guns. The South Dakota would retain all of her battleship armor, and Kirov would still have none.

Even though the retakings of the Pacific island chain would not have been possible without the gunnery of the battleships and heavy cruisers, I think you have missed the entire argument of the favorability of the battleship, especially in today's Navy. The battleship is not to replace aircraft carriers; it's to supplement them, especially in a very tight naval budget. The yearly maintenance (O&M) costs and manning of one Nimitz-class CVN ($427 million) can pay for the O&M and manning of all 4 Iowa-class battleships ($83 million per ship) with a lot of change left.

So, for the cost of one CVN (a single capital ship) you can have 4 battleships (providing 4 more capital ships), reducing deployment frequency and reducing overall maintenance costs on every capital ship. Something we have been seeing is that since CVNs have been to sea more often because of fewer numbers (10 ships operating at a 15 ship frequency) go longer without required maintenace, which results in disproportionately larger repair periods. Four more capital ships would greatly take the deployment stress of the CVN fleet, and that is something we really need to do. Supplementing the 10 CVN force with 4 BBs is like adding 4 CVNs without the cost. That would allow the CVNs to go where that kind of power is actually needed, instead of sending them where presence and power projection beyond a CG is needed but does NOT need the huge commitment of a carrier. Unfortunately, neither LHDs nor LHAs can perform to the level of a battleship in this capacity, even with F-35s. In our current situation, the 4 more capital ships would allow us to close the gaps in presence and ordnance delivery capability.

...and believe me, we have huge, huge, huge gaps.

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Proper Preparation Prevents Poor Performance

I apologize for hijacking the thread for a little bit. If we would like to continue this discussion, we could elsewhere

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Proper Preparation Prevents Poor Performance

My understanding is that the main batteries on CB-1 and -2 were only fired against shore targets - from all the literature I've read about these ships over the years (it has been a lot of both...), I've never seen any mention of them shooting it out with anything afloat.

Interesting posts in this thread despite the typical "battleships vs. missiles" argument! From a purely personal perspective, I think it would be great to see the Iowas sailing again, though I think we all know that won't happen...

I'm also interested in a 1/350 Alaska...

Pacific Front has just posted 1/350 Alaska and Guam from Blue Ridge Models for pre-order!

A Chinese Kilo class attack sub could work itself into position inside the modern Missouri battlegroup steaming off Taiwan and a spread of 4 torpedoes later, the Missouri is resting on the bottom of the seafloor with a broken keel.

End of story.

Can we use this thread to discuss the Alaskas themselves? The "modernized battleship" argument has been done to death on literally every naval-oriented forum ever... it's no longer interesting.

Anyway, I have an actual question for you guys regarding CB-1:

This photo shows CB-1 "deactivating" (I assume after the war...) Easily visible on yards extending from the foremast are DBM radar direction finders in their small radomes. If you look just below the DBM yard, I can see what I would imagine to be one of the TDY antennae in its own radome on a small platform extending aft of the mainmast - is that what I'm seeing? I imagine the Alaskas received an updated ECM fit before heading to the Pacific, but as always I can't be sure.

This fantastic head-on view of Alaska shows a TDY-1 jammer antenna just ahead of the air defense level. The "TFW" drawings from Floating Drydock confirm this. This is clearly a photo taken in the Pacific - note the obvious Measure 22 camouflage (with Deck Blue 20-B on all horizontal surfaces in the foreground and Haze Grey 5-H on all vertical surfaces visible). What I find most interesting about this photo is the yardarm equipment arrangement - I can clearly identify the usual set of anemometers, along with TBS antennae and what I believe are the AS-57 antennae associated with the SPR-1 ECM suite (the large, fat dipoles angled inboard). I assume that, at this point, Alaska had not received the "Derby" and "Sword" antennae usually associated with late-war ECM fits?

Another interesting thing to note about the second photo are the light arrangements abeam the air defense level. I assume from basically just my own amateur photographic research that the larger beacons with lights on three sides are the "Nancy" beacons, with the three-light red, green, and white fighting lights above those - is this correct?