No an anti-ship missile modern day can beat Iowa Battleship-class ?

Status
Not open for further replies.
At least OP hasn't said something like "Most people live inside the range of a 16 inch cannon therefore their range isn't a problem".

I have unfortunately seen something like this.
 
At least OP hasn't said something like "Most people live inside the range of a 16 inch cannon therefore their range isn't a problem".

I have unfortunately seen something like this.
As long as you mount that 16" gun on a hovercraft, there might be some truth to that statement.

Recoil might be a problem, but on the plus side, once you get it on land, it can't be sunk by an anti-ship missile!

I think we may have just solved the OP's problem.
 
Last edited:

hipper

Banned
Much will depend on what materials are near the impactsite! Older ships mostly used steel, which does not burn itself, when in a more or less solid form. Aluminium on more modern ships is a firehazzard, waiting to happen, as the sinking of HMS Sheffield at the Falklands in 1982 would demonstrate.

No aluminium used in the Construction of HMS Sheffield
 
Sorry battleship fans, there are SSN missiles that can completely destroy any battleship. The casualties and destruction would be mind-boggling. Even a hit on the thickest armor will destroy the ship. I prefer to do the math; see below. I will use the P-700 Granit, a common missile used by surface ships and submarines. The P-700 is a nightmare for any ship. On kinetic energy alone, the P-700 easily penetrates the thickest battleship armor. On top of that, the P-700 contains twice the explosive power of a 2,000 lb bomb. NATO didn’t designate the P-700 as Shipwreck for nothin’. Calculations assuming non-nuclear warhead:

Battleship Armor

The thickest armor on the IJN Yamato was 26″ The thickest armor on the USS Iowa is 19.5″ High strength steel armor has the following resistance to kinetic rounds:

It takes kinetic energy of 2 kilojoules over one square cm to penetrate one cm thick armor.

P-700 Granit

main-qimg-35bb3a605d8f7006ae06277da88e517e

The kinetic energy alone of a P-700 missile penetrates 62″ of armor. A P-700 Granit missile (SS-N-19 Shipwreck) weighs 7,000 kg (15,500 lbs) and is traveling at low altitude at Mach 1.6. The radius of the missile is 45.25 cm. Here are the calculations:

  1. KE_missile = 7000 kg * (510 m/s)^2 = 1,820,000 kilojoules
  2. KE_16inchAP = 1200 kg * (820 m/s)^2 = 860,000 kilojoules
  3. Penetration_Area = pi * (45.25 cm)^2 = 5700 cm2
  4. KE_joules_per_cm2 = 1,820,000 kilojoule / 5700 cm2 = 316 kilojoules/cm2
  5. Penetration_cm = (316 kilojoule/cm2) / (2 kilojoule/cm) = 158 cm
  6. Penetration_inches = (158 cm) / (2.54 cm/inch) = 62 inches
So just the missile is going to penetrate the thickest armor on any battleship. Remember the Yamato has 26″ of armor at the thickest. Then we have the little matter of 750 kg (1653 lbs) of RDX. This is twice as much explosive as a BLU-117 2,000 lb bomb. Even a near miss is going to sink most ships. A near miss would do severe damage to the citadel of a battleship. A direct hit to the citadel of a battleship could blow the ship in half. A hit below any of the barbettes would sink the ship within minutes. A hit to the superstructure of the ship will do catastrophic damage to the ship rendering it dead in the water.

P-700’s are fired in volleys of 16.

main-qimg-6b7dd56220b0c270c3c73254324a84df.webp


Technology changes over time

The Shipwreck is unlike any WWII naval weapon - easily 10-20 times more powerful than an 16-18" shell, at this range it would be similar to the 22,000# grand slam bomb of WWII. With unspent fuel and impact energy @ Mach 1.6 considered. (Mach 2.5+ is when the missile is at high altitude and is scanning for the swarm of 4-24 missiles). Some accounts mention a terminal impact speed of Mach 5 - this is classified and we can't document the actual figure here.

The explosive in these missiles is not comparable to the WWII shell fillers - it is far more powerful and its casing weighs much less than a big gun projectile (a much larger % of the warhead is explosive - ~ 50%, while WWII HE shells were < 5%), for comparison a Japanese 1360 kg 18.1" HE shell carried 62 kg of the much less powerful WWI explosive (less than half as powerful as the RDX or HMX in these missiles).

The penetration of these missiles does not rely on velocity alone - it is chemical, and these modern explosives vaporize metal, they don't just smash their way through. They are designed to cope with many layers of compartments - with multi stage designs.

A battleship actually isn't armored enough to withstand modern hypervelocity cannon shells. The previous generation shells for the Abrams are known to be rated for a penetration of 765 mm of rolled homogenous armor steel at a range of 2000 meters. For comparison, the main armor belt of an Iowa class battleship is only 310mm of Class A armor, which is an older and significantly less durable armor steel than RHA.

3M22 Zircon

This is the replacement of the P-700 Granit. The difference is that the US fleet does have defenses against the Granit. However, there is no known defense against the 3M22. It is currently deployed. This missile travels at Mach 6 although in tests it has reached Mach 8. It will demolish any target. Its kinetic energy is many times that of a 16″ shell.

The 16"/50 caliber Mark 7 gun has a speed of 762 m/s designed to pierce a battleship., which is lower than the P-700, P-270 or Kh-31 (Mach 2.5+ speed, > 850 m/s). For Ashm slower like Exocet or Harpoon, they very hard to piercing Battleship, need large amounts of attack to damage the outer armor

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-700_Granit
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-270_Moskit
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/16"/50_caliber_Mark_7_gun

Also fusing and explosives have improved. The U.S. now has a very powerful stable explosive called octanitrocubane which is twice as much explosive power as TNT and a ridiculously fast detonation but is just as safe to handle as TNT. This allows the U.S. to make a 250 lb bomb that is 2.5 times more destructive than a 500 lb bomb.
 
Last edited:
Top
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top