It's time once again for our regular Open Thread. Talk about whatever you want, so long as it isn't Culture War.
The DSL meetup in Tucson was great (look for reviews of Pima and the Titan silo soon) and has me thinking about the meetup I'm trying to put together for the Iowa, probably in June. Before I start seriously trying to book things, I'd like to gauge interest. The basic schedule would run Friday night through Sunday noon-ish, with the main event being most of the day on the battleship. I'm not sure how much of the ship we'll be able to see, but I'm working on that.
Overhauls are Military Procurement - Pricing, Survivability - Fire and for 2022, Letters of Marque Today and Early Lessons from the War in Ukraine.
Comments
Two armour questions ...
1) For battleship era ships ... is it true that armor penetrated by a shell does very little to reduce the damage from that shell.
2) Given modern metalurgy, how much better could we make armor today? I'm aware of the 'chobham' composite armor. Could one buy a battleship of that for under a billion $$$$? Would that technique be effective is scaled up to battleship thickness? And if that's not the right technical path, could modern metalurgy produce significantly better armor than the 1940s?
We are no longer needed or have value! Here is ChatGPT's answer to the question. Can anyone think of anything to add?
It is true that armor penetrated by a shell may not necessarily reduce the damage from that shell in battleship era ships. When a shell strikes an armor plate, it creates a hole that can allow fragments and other debris to enter the ship. This debris can cause additional damage to the ship's structure and crew. Additionally, the impact of the shell can create shock waves that can damage the ship's machinery, electronics, and other systems. However, the armor plate can still absorb some of the energy of the shell, reducing the amount of damage caused by the impact.
Modern metallurgy has advanced significantly since the battleship era, and it is possible to produce significantly better armor today. Chobham composite armor is just one example of advanced armor technology. Other materials, such as ceramics and advanced alloys, have also been developed that offer improved protection against modern threats. However, it is difficult to say exactly how much better armor could be made, as this would depend on the specific requirements and constraints of the application.
As for the cost of producing a battleship with modern armor technology, it is difficult to estimate without more information. The cost would depend on a variety of factors, including the size and complexity of the ship, the specific armor technology used, and the production process. However, it is likely that such a ship would cost significantly more than $1 billion. Additionally, battleships are no longer considered a practical or effective military asset, so there is little demand for them in modern naval warfare.
We are no longer needed or have value! Here is ChatGPT's answer to the question. Can anyone think of anything to add?
It is true that armor penetrated by a shell may not necessarily reduce the damage from that shell in battleship era ships. When a shell strikes an armor plate, it creates a hole that can allow fragments and other debris to enter the ship. This debris can cause additional damage to the ship's structure and crew. Additionally, the impact of the shell can create shock waves that can damage the ship's machinery, electronics, and other systems. However, the armor plate can still absorb some of the energy of the shell, reducing the amount of damage caused by the impact.
Modern metallurgy has advanced significantly since the battleship era, and it is possible to produce significantly better armor today. Chobham composite armor is just one example of advanced armor technology. Other materials, such as ceramics and advanced alloys, have also been developed that offer improved protection against modern threats. However, it is difficult to say exactly how much better armor could be made, as this would depend on the specific requirements and constraints of the application.
As for the cost of producing a battleship with modern armor technology, it is difficult to estimate without more information. The cost would depend on a variety of factors, including the size and complexity of the ship, the specific armor technology used, and the production process. However, it is likely that such a ship would cost significantly more than $1 billion. Additionally, battleships are no longer considered a practical or effective military asset, so there is little demand for them in modern naval warfare.
It depends. If there's more armor behind, then usually yes. If the shell breaks up while penetrating, then definitely yes. If neither of those is the case, then no, because most of the damage comes from the explosive charge, which isn't affected unless, as mentioned, the shell breaks up.
It's not quite clear. Tank armor faces a rather different set of threats than battleship armor, and I'm not sure that we'd gain a lot from those techniques. We would undoubtedly be able to do significantly better in general, thanks to improvements in metallurgy (at a guess, 25-50%), but I'm not sure we'd see the sort of composite stuff we see on tanks, just because keeping out heavy shells isn't a particularly complicated job. But I'm also not an expert in metallurgy, so I don't know for sure.
At some limit, wouldn't any armor that forced them to fire AP shells reduce damage just by going from a 150+lb bursting charge to a 30-40lb one? (Did anyone use HE on destroyers, or was AP strictly better after all?)
AP shells occasionally got fired at destroyers, e.g., at Samar. The problem is that there’s nothing in a destroyer except maybe the turbine reduction gears that’s strong enough to set off the AP fuse, so you’re really relying just on punching an 18-inch-wide hole through the ship. Which might not be enough.
I think the original design goal of chobham armor was to counter high explosive anti-tank (HEAT) ordinance, especially the warheads of anti-tank missiles. HEAT uses a shaped charge to create a focused jet of fast-moving molten copper which is fantastic at penetrating rolled steel armor. But it's much less effective against ceramic composites because ceramic is more heat resistant and because it shatters.irregularly in a way that unfocuses the copper jet. Later iterations of composite armor also added features to counter high-density high-hardness kinetic projectiles (tungsten or depleted uranium APDS rounds and similar) through a combination of very-high hardness ceramics that shatter the penetrator and high-density metal rods that dissipate the kinetic energy further.
I don't know enough about modern anti-ship ordinance to say with confidence, but from what I do know I'd guess chobham-style armor to have some benefit but much less so than on a land vehicle. Anti-ship weapons do have modes that are conceptually similar to what chobham is designed against, but they're much less extreme than the anti-tank weapons: AP shells and "penetration blast" warheads do use hardened cases to kinetically penetrate armor before going boom, but that's different from the dart-like kinetic penetrators used against tanks. And there are shaped-charge anti-ship warheads, which like HEAT uses molten copper to burn through the armor, but naval HEDP (high-explosive dual purpose) shaped charge weapons rely lot less purely on a tightly focused copper jet than HEAT and use the blast of the shaped charge directly to do some of the damage.
Also, a big, dumb explosive shell seems like it'd be great against ceramic armor that's designed to defeat shaped charges by shattering strategically. Even on tanks, one of the big disadvantages of composite armor is that it gets a lot weaker when hit repeatedly in the same area because the ceramics break. Put chombham or similar on a battleship, and I'd worry about it getting pounded into sand by repeated hits from big, dumb high explosive shells.
After Crossroads, uparmouring a capital ship has been the difference between getting 500% overkilled and 200% overkilled, perhaps.
If we stick to conventional warheads, I imagine that a thin layer of ultra-hard ceramics, some compartmentalised storage space and then an inner layer of tough armour would work quite well.
Lets give you two choices: You can have a quad turret of British 14" guns, or a triple turret of American 16" guns.
1) Both range beyond 30,000 yards (I don't think you can successfully target anything beyond that)
2) Throw weight 4,800lbs vs 5,400 lbs.
3) The guns in total weigh 240T in either case. I think turret weight would be similar, 1,500T vs 1,700T.
Assuming the both turrets and guns are reliable (designed without wartime pressure, with good engineering, etc) which would you pick?
Cobham-style tank armor seems to offer little advantage over good steel when it comes to keeping out big SAP rounds, i.e. most modern antiship missile warheads and bombs. Also little advantage against fragmentation either internal or external. And while it might help against HEAT, the antiship missiles with HEAT warheads tend to have really big ones that will outmatch any practical armor (but be less likely to penetrate deep into the interior than SAP).
Kevlar and the like might be advantageous in this capacity, but is going to be pricey in warship-armoring quantities.
And, definitely interested in a June meetup.
Assuming that PD is the real defense vs modern weapons, and armor exists mainly to defeat the high-velocity fragments that result from interceptions at close range:
What would the best armoring type / scheme be?
Also, how would that change if the purpose is to survive nearby airbursts? Something like <100 kilotons, maybe 5-10 km out.
@Kitplane
I'd go with the 16". The British 14" quad had issues, and pretty much every navy seems to have preferred 16" to 14".
@AlexT
Splinter armor, 1-2" of special steel. Or maybe kevlar these days. As for airbursts, that sort of range is where you're looking at antenna damage at most.
@Kitplane: that's a sort-of-contradictory question, given that your assumptions aren't true of the particular weapons you specify. (The British 14" was a 14" because they were in a hurry: it was designed when the treaty limit was 14", and when that was changed, they didn't want to spend the time to change the design, while the US did change to 9x16".)
France, Germany and Italy chose 15", but still only 8-9 guns, and spent the weight saved elsewhere (possibly on more speed). That, and the British ship being built as 10 (not 12) 14" and more armor, suggests that more main guns weren't considered a good use of weight. I don't know why.
Tom Shugart, a defense analyst, has a thread, on Twitter looking at China's ongoing naval expansion and how it compares to the US and its allies. China has outbuilt the US and its allies combined in terms of both number of ships and tonnage. Of note are the 12 Type 052D DDGs and the Type 055 CGs of which China has procured 12 and 7 respective over the past 5 years.
However, I will note that virtually all of the ships that China has produced are large surface combatants. There are a couple of Type 039 diesel-electric submarines and a couple of Type 094 SSBNs, and of course, the Fujian. Whereas, if you look at the US's construction, we have 5 Virginia-class SSNs, and the Gerald R. Ford. For that reason, I disagree with the conclusion of that thread, which is that China has significantly reduced the gap in naval capability with the United States. Yes, in peacetime, China has a lot more impressive-looking surface combatants that it can sail around to show the flag. But in a shooting war? I don't think an additional 22 large surface combatants will be decisive.
@muddywaters
I don't think it's a contradictory question. I understand the British had problems with their 14" gun and turret.. but a good 14" was clearly possible.
Assuming one used a good 14" gun+turret, how would you answer the question?
That the professionals of the time all chose bigger is telling, but not definitive. We know more because we can look at history. How many times did a 16" shell penetrate armor so heavy a 14" shell would have been kept out? And how many times did a large shell do most of it's damage by hitting a less protected area, or with pure shock? (That's not rhetorical .. I actually don't know.)
@quanticle
Sound like a technology bet. If you believe that A-A missiles are effective, the surface ships are a better buy than aircraft carriers. And if you believe that ASW is more effective than submarines, surface ships are a better bet.
What should happen is the smaller, poorer navy makes the risky technology bet, and the richer larger mavy plays it safe. And safe probably means not do-the-old-stuff, but do-what-the-enemy-does-only-with-a-larger-budget.
@Kitplane: I'd probably have asked that as 14" vs 16" without naming any particular ones.
Obvious-to-us things they might not have known at the time are radar, and that they were mostly going to be doing shore bombardment rather than ship-to-ship combat. (Though the latter was uncertain enough that it might have been unwise to design for it.)
I’m interested in a meetup, but would likely only be able to make the last weekend in June or first in July.
Apropos of nothing, I was told by someone I have no reason to doubt that the one piece of technology we've lost the ability to produce is heavy-armor plate. Don't remember the specifics, but short answer is the processes to make it are gone and could no longer be reconstituted even if we wanted to do so.
That's pretty much true. Metallurgy tends to be very process-sensitive, and a lot of that process knowledge is bound up in the heads of the people doing it. If we for some reason needed heavy armor plate again, we wouldn't just be able to look up the recipe we used last time. I'm sure that recruiting Nathan Okun would help a lot, as would general advances in science, but we'd need to be ready for lots of experiments.
Sometimes, the secret sauce to a particular metalurgical product might not even be in anyone's head.
Sometimes it was an accident that depended on that one production facility, or mine, or whatever having a 3 parts per million "contaminant" that was making all the difference. Or the equipment isn't doing exactly what you think it is eg. a furnace that's doing a slower temperature rise than indicated. Replicate this exactly, as far as you know, with even higher grade starting materials and equipment and it suddenly stops working.
eg. The semi-mythical "wootz steel" AKA damascus steel, worked because of a tiny fraction of some alloying elements in that particular mine. The people who made it had elaborate recipes to make the steel... but when they eventually had to source the iron ore somewhere else it all failed.
Another, even more mythical and less widely documented example, apparently the foam used in US hydrogen bombs was made on one particular production line. They closed it down, set up and new one and... oops... doesn't work any more. It took a while (and probably a lot of money) to track down the "contaminants" that made it work.