Reactive battleship armor?

This has been bugging me for awhile, so I thought I'd ask.

Given no nukes develop, would fitting BBs with reactive armor make sense? Is it practical?
 
This has been bugging me for awhile, so I thought I'd ask.

Given no nukes develop, would fitting BBs with reactive armor make sense? Is it practical?
Not an expert, but I would have thought "not really" and "yes, but there's no point" were the answers respectively.

Reactive armour, AFAIK, is effective because it disrupts the formation of the armour-penetrating jet from shaped charge warheads. But most anti-shipping missiles don't mount shaped-charge warheads. Why? Because there are no targets with enough armour to make it worthwhile. Why? Because armour doesn't stop ships from being sunk or rendered incapable of taking part in combat. Why? Torpedoes can sink any practical warship (no Habbakuk doesn't count!) and other weapons can mission-kill it by starting fires, blowing off sensor masts, damaging weapon mounts, etc. Long story short, reactive armour might save a battleship from one type of threat, but there are plenty of others it wouldn't do any good against. Plenty of battleships were still sunk by non-nuclear weapons, after all. In order to make battleship armour worth keeping around you'd have to somehow stop torpedoes being able to sink battleships AND stop aircraft being able to carry a useful weapon load. I can't see that happening in anything resembling OTL.
 
Not an expert, but I would have thought "not really" and "yes, but there's no point" were the answers respectively.

Reactive armour, AFAIK, is effective because it disrupts the formation of the armour-penetrating jet from shaped charge warheads. But most anti-shipping missiles don't mount shaped-charge warheads. Why? Because there are no targets with enough armour to make it worthwhile. Why? Because armour doesn't stop ships from being sunk or rendered incapable of taking part in combat. Why? Torpedoes can sink any practical warship (no Habbakuk doesn't count!) and other weapons can mission-kill it by starting fires, blowing off sensor masts, damaging weapon mounts, etc. Long story short, reactive armour might save a battleship from one type of threat, but there are plenty of others it wouldn't do any good against. Plenty of battleships were still sunk by non-nuclear weapons, after all. In order to make battleship armour worth keeping around you'd have to somehow stop torpedoes being able to sink battleships AND stop aircraft being able to carry a useful weapon load. I can't see that happening in anything resembling OTL.
All true. However, by the time reactive armor is developed, there aren't many a/c dropping torpedoes any more...

Yes, I know, submarines are more lethal than ever, now... For this subject, I don't care.;) I'm not expecting invulnerability, just wondering about practicality & usefulness.

The protection of radars & such in armored towers might be worth a thread of its own...
 
The protection of radars & such in armored towers might be worth a thread of its own...
You would then be entering the field of composite materials technology, where Destroyers would no longer be called tin cans, but rather, plastic tubs.
 

Redbeard

Banned
All true. However, by the time reactive armor is developed, there aren't many a/c dropping torpedoes any more...

Yes, I know, submarines are more lethal than ever, now... For this subject, I don't care.;) I'm not expecting invulnerability, just wondering about practicality & usefulness.

The protection of radars & such in armored towers might be worth a thread of its own...

But reactive armour will still not provide protection against anything but shaped charges, which are close to useless on a ship like target.

I guess Kevlar and similar structures could be quite handy in providing increased resilience against any explosions and projectiles - I suppose it already is in place - but my knowledge about and interest in warship design really doesn't go beyond the early 1940s. Data from then aren't that classified any longer :)
 
Ablative armor might be a possibility. It would offer protection from one hit and the choices of two hits on the exact same area are slim. But it would have to be lighter and cheaper than standard armor to be practical.
 
But reactive armour will still not provide protection against anything but shaped charges, which are close to useless on a ship like target.
Well, the idea of a 16"-diameter shell producing a shaped charge jet several inches diameter & ten feet or so long...

However, if that's true, I may be thinking of the wrong "species" of armor. I've seen defense against kinetic penetrators, & that's what I'm imagining for turret "add-on". (Fitting this to the entire hull would have hydrodynamic disadvantages,:openedeyewink: even if it worked underwater, which is by no means clear.)
 
Well, the idea of a 16"-diameter shell producing a shaped charge jet several inches diameter & ten feet or so long...

However, if that's true, I may be thinking of the wrong "species" of armor. I've seen defense against kinetic penetrators, & that's what I'm imagining for turret "add-on". (Fitting this to the entire hull would have hydrodynamic disadvantages,:openedeyewink: even if it worked underwater, which is by no means clear.)

Ah, I see what you mean. Long-rod kinetic penetrators can also be disrupted by reactive armour, that's true (not sure how effectively, but it is possible). However, no-one ever used long-rod penetrators against battleships, and there's no reason they ever would. Conventional armour piercing or semi-armour piercing shells were full-calibre munitions which relied on a hard cap to basically smash through armour plate (and anything else) before exploding, hopefully deep inside the bowels of the target ship. A reactive armour panel might change the impact point or angle of the shell slightly, but I doubt it would make much difference to the result.

Using it as an anti-torpedo defence is an interesting notion. If it prevents a contact-fused torpedo from detonating it might be worthwhile, but it wouldn't help against magnetic exploders. They're set to detonate below the keel anyway, IIRC, creating a large bubble below the ship and breaking its back.
 
Ah, I see what you mean. Long-rod kinetic penetrators can also be disrupted by reactive armour, that's true (not sure how effectively, but it is possible). However, no-one ever used long-rod penetrators against battleships, and there's no reason they ever would.
Let me be very clear (when I wasn't before, & should've been from the start...:oops:). What I recall is more/less conventional kinetic rounds (maybe they're specially-designed tungsten cored, IDK), which hit a kind of ceramic "shell", which "explodes" & thereby dissipates the impact/penetrating energy (a bit like how an F1 car does it). I'm seeing that still being useful against up to 16" AP (or bombs, maybe less so; there would have to be a limit how much KE this system would/could "shed").
Using it as an anti-torpedo defence is an interesting notion. If it prevents a contact-fused torpedo from detonating it might be worthwhile, but it wouldn't help against magnetic exploders. They're set to detonate below the keel anyway, IIRC, creating a large bubble below the ship and breaking its back.
No, I had no hope of defending against a magnetic exploder (or magnetic mine, for that); I'd expect hull construction &/or degaussing would handle that. (Absent innovations in GRPs, like the so-called "superdrawn" plastics I recall hearing about, I'd doubt a 'glass-hulled BB would ever obtain--tho it has a certain cool about it.:p)

Beyond that, the "tesselation" I saw would tend to make this impractical for udw defense, unless something like Prairie Masker could "slick up" the entire wetted surface at the boundary layer...which is another thread, too.;)
 
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