Scharnhorst Found!
Discussion
Max_Torque said:
Stupid question, but does any practicalble armour exist (using early 1900's tech) that could actually stop a 15 or 16 inch caliber shell from penetrating below the upper deck line? IE had the raw fire power of the big guns simply overwhelmed the armour of the time? ie the only way to avoid being sunk/blown up was to avoid actually being hit??
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RoverP6B said:
There's a reason why the Iowas are so naffing quick for such big, heavily-armed beasts... they're distinctly lacking in armour. Vanguard was altogether more heavily armoured, and those who sailed on both her and an Iowa said that the British ship was by far the nicer sea-boat.
If you compare armour between the Vanguard and the Iowas there is very little in it, the Vanguard had a bit more on her belt and bulkhead but the Iowa's had an extra inch on their barbettes and an extra four inches on their turrets.The real reason the Iowas were 10% faster is their extra 70ft of hull length being pushed along by 212,000shp vs the Vanguards 130,000shp.
Tango13 said:
RoverP6B said:
There's a reason why the Iowas are so naffing quick for such big, heavily-armed beasts... they're distinctly lacking in armour. Vanguard was altogether more heavily armoured, and those who sailed on both her and an Iowa said that the British ship was by far the nicer sea-boat.
If you compare armour between the Vanguard and the Iowas there is very little in it, the Vanguard had a bit more on her belt and bulkhead but the Iowa's had an extra inch on their barbettes and an extra four inches on their turrets.The real reason the Iowas were 10% faster is their extra 70ft of hull length being pushed along by 212,000shp vs the Vanguards 130,000shp.
The Iowas also had the (typical) heavily armoured conning towers, which the British no longer considered worth the extra weight as they were unlikely to be hit. Therefore Vanguard's tower only had around 3 inches of armour, compared with over 17 inches on the Iowa!
Very little in it overall in terms of weight of armour as a percentage of total displacement between the two ships.
As Tango13 says, the principal reason for the extra 3 knts in speed was the better length-to-beam ratio of Iowa, and the small matter of an extra 82,000shp- which is a huge amount extra considering the Iowas only displaced around 4,000 tons more than Vanguard (which herself actually achieved over 31 knts on trials).
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