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From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Torpedoing Battleships
Message-ID: <1991May29.010941.6420@amd.com>
Date: 24 May 91 17:12:24 GMT
References: <1991May23.054849.13718@amd.com> <1991May24.030512.9324@amd.com>
Sender: military@amd.com
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
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From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)


>From: phil@brahms.AMD.COM (Phil Ngai)
>Actually, battleships don't have armored bottoms for a couple of reasons:
>1) their designers realize that water carries the force too well...
>2) probably battleships stopped being useful around the time
>that torpedoes became reasonable effective.

No, battleships were around and effective for quite a while after torpedoes
became workable.  Destroyers were invented mostly to keep torpedo boats at
a properly respectful distance from the battle fleet; battleships didn't
really lose out until submarines and aircraft started delivering torpedoes
by routes that were difficult to block completely.

As I understand it, the major reason for not armoring the bottom is simply
that it adds too much weight.  Even a battleship can't be armored everywhere.
A waterline belt made sense because that was the most vulnerable area against
gunfire and shallow-running torpedoes.  Internal armored decks protected the
engines from gunfire.  And of course the command centers and main turrets
were very heavily armored.  These ate up the weight budget available for armor
pretty much completely.  One reason why HMS Dreadnought started a revolution
in battleship design by deleting all secondary armament in favor of heavier
primary armament was that deleting the weight of the secondary guns made it
possible to protect the primary ones better.
-- 
And the bean-counter replied,           | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
"beans are more important".             |  henry@zoo.toronto.edu  utzoo!henry