Just how big were the Iowa class battleships?

[Coal Dragger]

An armor piercing bomb would have even less explosive weight relative to total weight just like an AP naval shell.

Torpedoes were proven time and time again to be more effective medicine for heavily armored capital ships than areal bombs. At least outside of the Fritz X. That was a nasty bastard.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_X

3460lbs, 710lb warhead, guided, armor piercing.

[StainlessSteelRat]

Yeah, torpedoes are pretty effective. The Japanese Long Lance had 40k yard range at 50mph, and over 1000 lb of explosive. They did some real damage in the night battles at Guadalcanal. They say the best way to sink a ship is to let water in the bottom, not air in the top. An AP shell to a magazine would beat that though.

[SeriousStudent]

Can you imagine that biotch with a nuclear reactor as a power source? Put the hammer down and it'll run "hot" indefinitely.

That would have been an incredible machine.

[Diamondback]

Maybe that's why the Musashi absorbed 17 bombs and 19 torpedoes before it sunk. Strangely the Yamato took almost half as much before it sunk. Torpedoes seem to have been the Achille's Heel of both.

The percentage of weight that was explosives in a 500lb bomb was like 38% (i.e. ~ 192lbs). Much higher than the ratio in a naval gun shell. Probably didn't penetrate as well as the sea-borne artillery did though.

Once the Torpedo Lab pukes pried their heads out of their bums and fixed their defective product, at the cost of many submarines and crews lost to make them see there was a problem... no crap, Lockwood ordered two subs out to empty their torpedo rooms into a cliff o the west side of Kauai and with all those launches maybe TWO went off properly. You had exploder failures, gyro failures that triggered "Return To Sender"... we had a lot of subs sunk by their own torpedoes right up to the end of the war, including O'Kane's Tang.

[ABNAK]

An armor piercing bomb would have even less explosive weight relative to total weight just like an AP naval shell.

Torpedoes were proven time and time again to be more effective medicine for heavily armored capital ships than areal bombs. At least outside of the Fritz X. That was a nasty bastard.

Well except Midway. Not one U.S. torpedo struck a Japanese vessel and they lost four carriers. Maybe it was a fluke, but it was a big damn fluke!

[ABNAK]

Yeah, torpedoes are pretty effective. The Japanese Long Lance had 40k yard range at 50mph, and over 1000 lb of explosive. They did some real damage in the night battles at Guadalcanal. They say the best way to sink a ship is to let water in the bottom, not air in the top. An AP shell to a magazine would beat that though.

Like the Arizona. Total destruction.

[Coal Dragger]

Well except Midway. Not one U.S. torpedo struck a Japanese vessel and they lost four carriers. Maybe it was a fluke, but it was a big damn fluke!

Japanese carriers didn’t have armored flight decks. Pretty thin skinned targets vulnerable to dive bombing.

[ABNAK]

Japanese carriers didn’t have armored flight decks. Pretty thin skinned targets vulnerable to dive bombing.

I'm not sure ours did have armored flights decks either in the early days? Maybe the later Essex class did, again not sure. The Japanese also got caught with their pants down attempting a swap-out of ordnance after changing their minds about the next target a couple of times.....there were bombs and torpedoes rolled to the side instead of being taken back to the magazines in their haste. That and fuel lines laid out gassing up planes for the next mission. It was a convergence of factors that ended up being extraordinarily good luck for us, horrible luck for them.

[Pacific5th]

I'm not sure ours did have armored flights decks either in the early days? Maybe the later Essex class did, again not sure. The Japanese also got caught with their pants down attempting a swap-out of ordnance after changing their minds about the next target a couple of times.....there were bombs and torpedoes rolled to the side instead of being taken back to the magazines in their haste. That and fuel lines laid out gassing up planes for the next mission. It was a convergence of factors that ended up being extraordinarily good luck for us, horrible luck for them.

The Midway class was the first ones I think with armored decks. None of the Essex class had them.

[Diamondback]

The Midway class was the first ones I think with armored decks. None of the Essex class had them.

Ours had the armor deck as the hangar deck, British practice was to armor the flight deck. Theirs were harder to damage, ours easier to patch up and resume flight ops when damaged.

Re Midway, pick up Tully & Parshall's book Shattered Sword. Blow by blow postmortem.