Timeline for Why did navies abandon armour?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
15 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jun 15, 2019 at 9:38 | comment | added | totalMongot | You also need to consider that one little ship like a modern destroyer can load up to fifty missiles like the Harpoon, so you have a total capacity of fire superior to the shells fired at one time by a battleship, and even superior to all the shells onboard a battleship | |
| Mar 16, 2018 at 1:42 | comment | added | Mark | @T.E.D., 500 Gs of shock is approximately equivalent to falling off a table onto a concrete floor. | |
| Mar 18, 2016 at 17:24 | comment | added | Stuart Allan | @JonCuster You actually make a good argument for additional armour. Current ships are not very survivable even with near-hit missile strikes. Additional armor, DC, and compartmentalization would make more resilient to near missile hits. | |
| Mar 17, 2016 at 21:26 | comment | added | Jon Custer | @StuartAllan - Russia and maybe China, yes, but you won't have torpedo planes coming in low and slow. That just means the airplanes will launch missiles beyond SM missile range. Aegis is much more capable than anything in WWII... | |
| Mar 17, 2016 at 21:19 | comment | added | Stuart Allan | @JonCuster, mass air strikes are still very likely. Weapons (missiles) would simply be released at a greater distance. Goal would be to overwhelm anti-missile defenses. | |
| Mar 9, 2016 at 14:08 | history | edited | user4139 | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
Expanded on the difficulty of all-over armor
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| Mar 8, 2016 at 18:59 | comment | added | Jon Custer | @BobJarvis - and a Russian P-800 is 3000kg at launch with a 250kg warhead and is going Mach 2.5 when it hits. Total energy delivered exceeds that of the 16" shells, so no armor was going to stand up to it. Yes, there were other factors, but if one could armor ships against cruise missiles in a reasonable fashion they would. The main other threat would be submarine torpedoes. Massed air strikes like WWII are pretty much ruled out by Aegis these days. Subs and sea-skimming missiles are the big threats. | |
| Mar 8, 2016 at 18:50 | comment | added | Stuart Allan | This shows a huge lack of knowledge about this and is a bad answer. For example "Note that cruise missiles can come in low or use top attack, so you'd need armor all over, not just at the waterline." is stupid. Shells were not like cannons fired in a straight line, 1880s-1950s ships were armored all over for bombs, torpedoes, and plunging shells. | |
| Mar 8, 2016 at 18:02 | comment | added | Schwern | While the shell itself weighed a ton, the "bursting charge" of the 16" HC ("high capacity") shell was "only" about 150 lbs of HE. | |
| Mar 8, 2016 at 15:59 | comment | added | Bob Jarvis - Слава Україні | @JonCuster - muzzle velocity of a mark 7 16"/50 caliber gun when firing the mark 8 APC (Armor Piercing - Capped) shell was 2,500 ft/sec, which is over twice the speed of sound (1,126 ft/sec). Shipboard armor was dispensed with because it was A) ineffective against repeated strikes from torpedoes and bombs, B) heavy, and C) expensive. Battleships became obsolete because aircraft launched from carriers had greater range than did the battleship's large guns. | |
| Mar 8, 2016 at 15:18 | comment | added | T.E.D.♦ | @ceejayoz - Always suspected that, but never figured out where to look it up. Thank you! Not real sure how long the mil specs called for the G's to be sustained (and its vibration, not sustained linear G's like you'd get in an aircraft), but these days that's probably online somewhere too... | |
| Mar 8, 2016 at 14:58 | comment | added | ceejayoz | @T.E.D. Shock/vibration Gs and sustained Gs are different, though. Wikipedia notes "A hard slap on the face may briefly impose hundreds of g locally but not produce any real damage; a constant 16 g for a minute, however, may be deadly." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G-force#Human_tolerance_of_g-force | |
| Mar 8, 2016 at 14:17 | comment | added | T.E.D.♦ | I have a little bit of experience designing USN shipboard systems to mil specs. They have to be capable of surviving something ungodly like 100G's of shock and vibration. I'm not sure the human body can survive that. I always pictured a perfectly functioning ship steaming in a big circle in the ocean because all the crew died. | |
| Mar 8, 2016 at 13:41 | comment | added | Jon Custer | A supersonic anti-ship missile has more kinetic energy than the 16 inch shells plus HE. The ship structure holding the thick armor plates would just give way upon impact. Armor is useless against missiles. | |
| Mar 8, 2016 at 2:49 | history | answered | user4139 | CC BY-SA 3.0 |