We had a taco trucks on our main highways with "Dump Trump" stickers and "taco bowls" waving Mexican flags bought and paid for by the DNC and the Hillary campaign. As the DNC hacked e-mails released by Wikileaks exposed, Democrats call Mexicans taco bowls. The armor plating on the Iowa's is nothing like the armor used on any other battleship, it has a high nickel contents. But it's the Iowa's 16"/50 guns that our enemies feared. By the time the Iowas were decommissioned all kinds of new projectiles for the 16" guns have been developed. 100 nautical miles range GPS guided sabot rounds. The HE-ER Mark 148 was in the pipeline, a 1.300 lb, supersonic 3,600 fps sub munitions payload of 300 M48 grenades. But even with the old Mk.8 2.700 lb. AP rounds and the Mk.14 1,900 lb. HC rounds, 1/2 of California's population would be in range of the Iowa's 16" guns. Over the summer we were going to the store to get some beer, the guy next to me was a Marine V-22 Osprey pilot. He loves the Osprey. I mentioned how loud they are and you feel the V-22 on the ground before you even hear it. If you're inside a house the house starts shaking like if there was an earthquake before you hear the V-22. Then I said "I wonder how the V-22 Osprey would have worked out during the Vietnam War" ? He looked at me and said "What do you mean" ? I replyed with "GThe V-22 Osprey is the replacement for the Marine Corps primary assault helicopter, the CH-46 Seaknight. The V-22 Osptrey requies twice the sizeof a LZ than the CH-46. Should have seen the reaction on his face while his brain housing group kicked in. Did the Royal Navy actually sank the Bismark or was she scuttled ???
Surviving crew state that scuttling charges were sunk. Would she have sunk anyway? Probably. Even if the ship had survived she would likely have been a structural loss, much like the USS Franklin. In looking at the loss of the Hood, there are so many variables from the surviving gun plots to photos to eyewitness accounts. Unfortunately, on the Allied side, the PoW would not survive much longer, sunk by the Japanese with a large loss of her crew who could have provided more detailed accounts. Even the ranges at which the Hood was fatally hit vary. Best estimates seem to 16,200 to 16,800 yards. What is clear is that the Bismarck's armor was only pierced a few times despite being hit by heavy shells at very close ranges.
At what angle of degrees do you consider a plunging round ? At 16,400 yards the Bismark's 15" guns projectile angle of fall is 10.4 degrees. Which would mean it could hit the Hoods deck but penetrating the Hood's 3" to 1.5" armor deck, I doubt it could penetrate the deck where the armor plating was 3" thick but where the deck plating was 1.5" think, maybe a possibility ? I don't know. At 19,685 yards the Bismark guns could penetrate 2.9" of armor decking. At 24,000 yards the Bismark could penetrate 4.15" of deck armor. At 16,22 to 16,800 yards I don't have the stats for how many inches of penetration of the armor decking but the angle of fall would be in the 10 degree neighborhood.
Plunging fire can mean a lot of things. Here's what I can tell you. 5 inches of deck armor will defeat any battleship ship shell with plunging fire up to about 30,000 yards (maybe a bit less) and no ship was ever hit at this distance. For the Hood, there would have been a zone of vulnerability that seems to have passed because of the order for the last turn to port. Did the armor fail or did the German shell over perform? Were the distances longer or shorter than states and what was the true bearing of the Hood in relationship to the Bismarck?
I thought that their armor-piercing qualities, as show by the relatively rather high velocity and small size, never made any doubts. They were (pretty much all WWII German 15 and 11" shells) quite prone to duds, however, affecting about a third of the rounds fired. You have one of these duds hitting PoW's conning tower, but failing to explode, and many more on Exeter by Graf Spee. British shells, to the contrary, were easy to start off. Isn't why the Hood exploded, its charges being set off by a nearby fire? In any case, shells were still coming with a good angle when it did.
The Iowas had excellent armor, the best of WW, but only on these areas where they actually had armor, meaning the vital parts of the ship. The rationale behind it was that a typical enemy AP shell would then pass right throught the soft parts without exploding in. Works really well against other BBs and large-bore cruisers' AP shells, but it makes the ship vulnerable to small-caliber and HE damage, where those hits can seriously affect a ship's chances of survival in battle, whereas they wouldn't affect a ship that's got end and upper belt armor. The same gamble has been taken with the Iowas' secondaries, which were more efficient vs aerial targets than surface ones (were they were inferior to most breech guns) - so the design was consistent; the Iowas were not made to tangle out with small surface forces. They were build to fight a Pacific-style of WWII warfare.
German shells/fuses had a reputation for reliability. Their AP performances were were not as good. On the other hand US shells definitely had the edge for armor penetration but fusing/reliability was not quite as reliable. The Brits were probably in-between. On the hand Japanese shells were horrible. Duds happen especially when you're hitting armor. It's why using explosives in anti-tank AP shells was abandoned. The main battery shells aren't the problem in the magazine. By design, they are very resistant to sympathetic detonation. It's the powder bags that are the problem. A fire didn't destroy the Hood. There was no way into the after magazines from both deck fires that were observed. In fact the order was given to let the fires burn themselves out.
Not a fire, but rather a conflagration, set off by secondary powder charges, that somehow got to the main mags. A la Jutland. German artillery shells had typically small payloads, high velocities, precision at short-to-medium ranges and safe, defective fuses. Germany WWII surface combat is full of dud hits. As much as seven 11" shells hit Exeter at River Plate - much less than what it took to sink her later at Java Sea - and it survived.
The superiority of the Iowa's armor is a big maybe. The US used very high quality rolled homogenous plate called Class B. This was typically armor used for deck protection. Every other navy used KC Class A or Krupp cemented armor for vertical protection. Interestingly the US used KC armor for their cruisers. This was never really put to the test. If there is enough buoyancy in the citadel of an all or nothing ship she will float. You also have the example of the Hiei. She was shot to pieces by destroyers using 5" inch guns and a single 8" cruiser, but her armored spaces were almost entirely intact. She would have probably have been saved if air attack would not have saved her and this ship was older and smaller than the Hood.
All AP shells had small payloads, the Germans about 2.5 % of weight. US shells even less. German shells worked just fine at Jutland. But this is a different battle, with different ships and shorter ranges.
Maybe I used the wrong term; by "payload" I was describing the shell's weight: German shells were relatively light for their size whereas English, Russian, Italian and US shells in particular were quite heavier than the norm. Vertical penetration's pretty much a question of velocity. And velocity is a trade-off. With less velocity, you get more precision at long range, where the much-sought horizontal hits happen. And yes, German shells worked better at Jutland. Looks like the German took different lessons at Jutland.
Penetration is dependent upon a lot including sectional density which is really a function of weight and length as well as spin of the shell. Then you have the shell performance itself which will include both the ballistic cap and the AP cap. Finally you have fuse performance. Velocity can also be your enemy. Think of it like a guy diving off a 10meter board. When he hits the water in good position he will slice through the water. At 100 meters the results are a bit different.
Yep - apparently inconsequential hits that created tiny cracks in the ship's bulkheads, that would have led to the fatal conflagration. That's quite possible, IMO. It has been awhile since the Hood had been left un-touched. By the start of WWII (or more precisely, since the 1922 Washington Treaty), those battlecruisers that didn't became carriers, including the Hood, got armor percentage around 30%, which technicall made them "fast" battleships. Smaller, modern battleships like the Dunkerques and the Scharnhorsts were closer to "second class battleships" than true, anglo-style battlecruisers, and subsequently had a balanced, if inferior, armor/gunnery ratio.
Maybe it was a hit by Prinz Eugen then; at that range, eight-inchers can still plunge on the thin deck to noticeable damage.
The PE's 8 inters would not have penetrated even if using AP's. Besides the PE's guns were loaded with HE and the ready shells in the turret were also HE. Remember that they knew they were being tracked by British cruisers and destroyers. No easy way to move them except to fire them. The Hood was never hit an AP shell from the PE.
Wasn't it that the depth charges were set off while the Bismark was already headed towards the bottom ? I know that all U.S. Navy submarines during WW ll had a scuttling charge sitting near the keel of the sub. It was SOP that all German warships had a scuttling charge deep sown in the bowels of their ships.
Won't happen. There's simply no way into the magazines. You would have had to penetrate the 3 inch deck armor and then at least one if not two 4 to 5 inch armored bulkheads.
The British were notorious for lying about the quality of their ship's hulls, ala Titanic. That the British claimed certain things about the thickness and quality of armor on the HMS Hood doesn't necessary make it accurate.
They were actually pretty good. British KC Class A armor was considered the best in the world. There's nothing to suggest otherwise. The Japanese even used it till they produced their own. There's really no comparison of the Hood to the Titanic. British naval ship quality was very good and there's nothing to suggest they ever lied about it and that extends back to the age of sail.
I suppose we can't really know and this goes off topic, but how things including ships were built often was of substantially lower quality than called for in the contract - likely due to corruption by contractors. But like I said, we will never know. We do know the HMS Hood suffered a massive explosive of one of its main magazines after being hit by a shell from the Bismark. Arguing that was impossible seems foolish. Whether it was in instantaneous explosion from the magazine penetrated - or caused enough damage to allow ANY of the explosive or fire force to reach the magazine thus setting it of does seem to make much difference. As a comment, if interior plating was riveted anywhere, this usually is the weak point and to allow enough explosive force to a magazine full of powder bags would only take 1 tiny gap. The armor then would work against the ship - holding the powder going off like inside an iron bomb. It would only take a match worth of fire to set it off. Knocking a ship out of functionality is different from sinking a ship. Potentially, those could be exact opposites in design. Do you want to MOST protect functionality or MOST prevent the ship from sinking? If not contained, powder only flashes. So an irony is that the extensive interior armor may have been a factor in the massive nature of the explosion, while a much lesser hulled ship would not suffer as much explosive force as once the armor gave way the expanding force would do no further damage. Candidly, it would seem a superior design would allow armor to be easily blown off OUTWARD to release the force of the explosion. Windows being open saved Hitler's life in the bunker, for example. Had the armor shutters been closed the contained explosive force would have been great enough to kill him. Our big carriers could take massive damage but remain afloat. But their design would allow most explosive force to not be fully realized as the hull did not contain the force well - plus of course superior fire/damage control in design and training. I seem to recall reading that on rare occasion a big naval gun shell would fully penetrate a small, unarmored ship, without going off, but am not sure of that.
I don't think there's anybody credible that believes a 8" shell bursted through Hood's barbettes. Many, however, believe that a 8" hit could have started a chain of reaction that would have led, via fissures or plain mishandling, to the explosion of a magazine. In this instance, I admit that the angle on the shot was irrelevant, since it would not have to penetrate armor in itself.
There were, well, if not lies, exaggerations. A few exemples: The thoughness of the county-class CAs, the pom-poms' efficiency, the quality of their engines (that were holding together more due to impeccable maintenance than good engineering), the obesity of their electrical systems... the invincibility of the Hood...
The fire theory has been pretty much discredited. There were two fires from two HE hits by the PE on the Hood and neither threatened the ship to any degree.
