rtrapasso -> RE: Chobham armor on ships? (1/8/2009 12:09:46 PM)
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ORIGINAL: String You can fit as much armour as you like, when someone nukes you it won't make a single bit of difference. Several heavy ships like the Prinz Eugen or the Nagato were only slightly damaged in US nuclear weapons tests shortly after the war. They withstood aerial bursts close by ~1000-2000m wihtout problems and sufferd minor underwater damage from nearby underwater blasts. The fact that they sunk later was probably due to the fact that they had no crew onboard for damage conrol. I imagine that much of crew would have survived inside the ship (dont want to think of the guyes at the AAA mounts). The armor would have proteted them from blast, heat and much of the harder radiation. Im not talking about those guyes getting many children in the years to come but the ability to keep the ship afloat. The warheads used were probably weak but you would expect a nuclear cruise missile or torpedo to be armed with a tactical warhead not a hydrogen bomb. Those were bombs dropped almost a mile away. A nuclear torpedo doesn't explode a mile away. Neither does a Shipwreck missile. No use in slapping on 300mm belt armor when a single enemy missile or torpedo will turn your ship into tiny molten particles in a millisecond. Again - it depends if it hits or not... if countermeasures and/or antimissile defenses hit a missile and cause it to explode 3000 meters away, or if it hits a different target a few thousand meters away, then armor could make a big difference. As to a previous post - what to protect underdeck - well, MOST of modern warships have all their vital systems (and a good deal of the crew) underdeck, as least in the USN and most Western navies... This sort of reminds me of what happened when they put unarmored vehicles into combat in places like Iraq and Afghanistan... once the shortfalls of the "smart" decision of not having armor became apparent (it costs money, it's heavy, etc.), they couldn't make armor to retrofit onto vehicles fast enough.
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