Why no HEAT or SABOT rounds for Battleships or Navy?

[FromMyColdDeadHand]

Was the tech just to late for the work to be done on battle ships? The defensive armour systems on modern Battleships to thick to make it worth it? It seems that they would have been interesting to address the 'zone of invulnerability' issues, and for easier targeting with faster traveling rounds. Is because of the need for smooth bore guns?

Though these must have been a pretty good FU inside of 10,000 yards.



https://youtu.be/5gGrkZ00Iwc

[mack7.62]

Not needed because a 2,700 lb projo penetrates pretty good.

The Mark 7 gun was originally intended to fire the relatively light 2,240-pound (1,020 kg) Mark 5 armor-piercing shell. However, the shell-handling system for these guns was redesigned to use the "super-heavy" 2,700-pound (1,200 kg) APCBC (Armor Piercing, Capped, Ballistic Capped) Mark 8 shell before any of the Iowa-class battleship's keels were laid down.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/16-inch/50-caliber_Mark_7_gun#Mark_8_%22Super-heavy%22_shell

[utahjeepr]

Battleships ran out of relevance. After (during?) WW2 they were really only useful as fire support. The development of guided and cruise missiles was the last nail in the coffin. As a jarhead the idea of those 16 inchers sounds awesome for fire support, but keeping a fleet of BBs around as comfort blankets for grunts ain't exactly cost effective.

[FromMyColdDeadHand]

Not needed because a 2,700 lb projo penetrates pretty good.

The Mark 7 gun was originally intended to fire the relatively light 2,240-pound (1,020 kg) Mark 5 armor-piercing shell. However, the shell-handling system for these guns was redesigned to use the "super-heavy" 2,700-pound (1,200 kg) APCBC (Armor Piercing, Capped, Ballistic Capped) Mark 8 shell before any of the Iowa-class battleship's keels were laid down.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/16-inch/50-caliber_Mark_7_gun#Mark_8_%22Super-heavy%22_shell

I read somewhere that they Montana's with 12 of the guns shooting the heavies would have outweighed the broadside from a Yamato... Some of the late heavy cruisers had auto loading 8inch guns that would have put out 2/3 the weight of fire over time as a Iowa. Not as penetrating, but hard to fight if your topsides and rangefinders are gone...

I never realized how close the South Dakota and North Carolina classes were to the Iowas- or more that they Iowas were pretty awesome, but not by the margin I had assumed. Fast, pretty good protection and well armed- but incremental improvements over the previous classes, albeit in all three areas at once. Some of those early surface actions around Guadalcanal were straight up elimination fights at knife range. A couple of 16 inch broadsides at under 10,000 yrds- no thank you.

[chuckman]

Was the tech just to late for the work to be done on battle ships? The defensive armour systems on modern Battleships to thick to make it worth it? It seems that they would have been interesting to address the 'zone of invulnerability' issues, and for easier targeting with faster traveling rounds. Is because of the need for smooth bore guns?

Though these must have been a pretty good FU inside of 10,000 yards.



https://youtu.be/5gGrkZ00Iwc

I LOVE battleships. I've been on most that are now museums. Battleships had one purpose, that was to beat the shit out of other battleships. Fire support was an add-on. Given UAVs, Tomahawks, precision-guided munitions, etc., there's no need for them.

[vicious_cb]

I dont think people understand how SC/HEAT works. HEAT on contact with armor is going to make a pencil thin sized hole and spray whatever is behind it with spall and overpressure. Lets say you penetrate the belt armor with a HEAT charge, you're pretty much just damaging whatever is inside the compartment just behind it much less making deep into the superstructure or the citadel of the ship. Same thing with a APDS or APFSDS, even if you make it through the belt, the compartments behind are just going act like spaced armor limiting the penetration into the ship. In contrast to a SAP shell which is meant to plunge through the top deck and go down through multiple decks before exploding deep within a ship. Ships are simply too large to apply tank shell after armor effects to them and are naturally resistant by having multiple compartments acting like spaced armor.

[eightmillimeter]

Not needed because a 2,700 lb projo penetrates pretty good.

The Mark 7 gun was originally intended to fire the relatively light 2,240-pound (1,020 kg) Mark 5 armor-piercing shell. However, the shell-handling system for these guns was redesigned to use the "super-heavy" 2,700-pound (1,200 kg) APCBC (Armor Piercing, Capped, Ballistic Capped) Mark 8 shell before any of the Iowa-class battleship's keels were laid down.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/16-inch/50-caliber_Mark_7_gun#Mark_8_%22Super-heavy%22_shell

This wiki is complete BS. The Mk7 and the turret that housed them were not designed until well after the Iowa’s were in construction. A complete mistake led to the Mk7 lightweight gun needing to be designed.

[flenna]

I remember discussing the USS Stark attack in NROTC with our instructor, an active duty naval officer who was once assigned to the USS Missouri. He said that if those missiles had hit the battleship they would have just swept off the deck and continued mission. The armored belt is that thick.

[Business_Casual]

I dont think people understand how SC/HEAT works. HEAT on contact with armor is going to make a pencil thin sized hole and spray whatever is behind it with spall and overpressure. Lets say you penetrate the belt armor with a HEAT charge, you're pretty much just damaging whatever is inside the compartment just behind it much less making deep into the superstructure or the citadel of the ship. Same thing with a APDS or APFSDS, even if you make it through the belt, the compartments behind are just going act like spaced armor limiting the penetration into the ship. In contrast to a SAP shell which is meant to plunge through the top deck and go down through multiple decks before exploding deep within a ship. Ships are simply too large to apply tank shell after armor effects to them and are naturally resistant by having multiple compartments acting like spaced armor.

There are great videos on YouTube that track the development of Naval steel for armoring ships and all the ways the shell versus the plate development cycles interacted. Elasticity, face-hardening, shell design, all of it is fascinating. Plus you miss a lot, so the cheapest shell that will do the job has merit.

[VIP3R 237]

The first photo in this speaks for itself.

https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2016/10/25/potd-big-guns-make-big-holes/

[FromMyColdDeadHand]

I remember discussing the USS Stark attack in NROTC with our instructor, an active duty naval officer who was once assigned to the USS Missouri. He said that if those missiles had hit the battleship they would have just swept off the deck and continued mission. The armored belt is that thick.


The guy Who runs the battleship New Jersey museum did a comparison of an Iowa versus a Kirov class. Definitely the carafe has the advantage in longer range and heavier missiles, even contemplating the tomahawks the Iowa carried in the 80s, but once you get within 20 miles it’s over. If.

Metallurgy is fascinating. Some thing that I knew nothing about as a kid or even into college as a potential career. I would’ve thought they had everything figured out by now, and then the production and quality is always a issue. It would’ve been an interesting career.

[chuckman]

I remember discussing the USS Stark attack in NROTC with our instructor, an active duty naval officer who was once assigned to the USS Missouri. He said that if those missiles had hit the battleship they would have just swept off the deck and continued mission. The armored belt is that thick.

One of my RDCs in boot was a sailor on the Stark. He was generally an a-hole, but when we did damage control, he was Mr. Professional and really did a good job. After boot camp graduation, before the busses came to take us to O'Hare, he told us about the incident and how it all went down.

[TehLlama]

Was the tech just to late for the work to be done on battle ships? The defensive armour systems on modern Battleships to thick to make it worth it? It seems that they would have been interesting to address the 'zone of invulnerability' issues, and for easier targeting with faster traveling rounds. Is because of the need for smooth bore guns?


When you're going up against bulk steel, the answer is just raw momentum and correctly timing fusing, and even the 14" guns dating back to the Colorado/New Mexico BB's had enough to make the holes needed. Saboting rounds, unless it's some peculiar phenolic that would have made barrel life improve, would only have had value in making projectiles higher velocity to flatten trajectory, and realistically for the design effort, improving fire control radar (similarly spin that towards better air search and coordinated AA central fire control) does more for you.
Given the magazine size of these, and how they actually wound up spending 99% of their time, whatever enables close in shore bombardment is the ideal answer, and neither of those really do great there.

As far as HEAT, you can just run standard contact-fuzed HE, and in that size range, you get all of those same effects you'd want out of that - remember, the scale of these things, a 16" shell (even the low mass higher velocity ones) are showing up with enough explosive energy that they still had overpenetration issues in shore bombardment, or when hitting enemy destroyers.

As far as why BB's died off - they operate within a 30 mile threat radius (unless supplemented with guided missiles), and are hydrodynamically compromised in order to be able to withstand the punishment of other large caliber shells and stay mission operational. The best of that was how South Dakota shrugged off a bomb hit during the Battle of the Philippine Sea (more or less), and went right back to AA duties. The worst was seeing just how little Yamato could do to change its fate during Ten-Go, and that unsupported battleships basically had no business in the battlespace anymore (even the battle off Samar showed that a bunch of second-line beater CVE's could still actually put up a meaningful fight against the Yamato, Nagato, and two Kongos)