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From: whh@PacBell.COM (Wilson Heydt)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Battleship Armor
Message-ID: <1990Jun6.142603.5837@cbnews.att.com>
Date: 6 Jun 90 14:26:03 GMT
References: <16041@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Sender: military@cbnews.att.com (William B. Thacker)
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Organization: Pacific * Bell, San Ramon, CA
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From: whh@PacBell.COM (Wilson Heydt)

In article <16041@cbnews.ATT.COM> ames!ames!claris!portal!cup.portal.com!mmm@uunet.UU.NET writes:
>                                                    " . . .   I have many
>times found it a source of wonderment, sometimes even of outspoken disbelief,
>that the thickness of the under-water skin of a modern battleship should be
>no more than five-eighths of an inch."
>
>[mod.note:  Without taking the time to look up exact thicknesses, I can
>say this is essentially correct.  
>
>	The ideal underwater attack would be to explode a mine or torpedo
>directly below a ship's keel, so that the flat bottom would leave the
>explosion force nowhere to go but up into the hull; as of WWII, however,
>fusing technology was not reliable enough to do this (witness the failure
>of the magnetic pistols used on early American torpedoes, for example).
>I wonder how much that has changed today.  - Bill ]

I have had accounts from a well connected friend that the torpedos that
sank the General Belgrano (the Argentine cruiser that was sunk during
the war between Briatain and Argentina over the Falklands), dropped
one of the barbettes through the keel.  Perhaps someone has written
references to either confirm or deny this claim?

(Another friend knows someone who claims to have been standing on
the hanger deck of a British carrier watching the Atlantic Conveyor
get hit by an Exocet.  The official British line is that the carriers
were nowhere near that action . . .     Hmmm . . .)

      --Hal

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