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Bismarck's Armor

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  • Bismarck's Armor

    I have heard from varrious sources that the Armor on the Bismark was superior then what was used on US and British ships.

    Is this correct or just the stuff that legends are made of.

  • #2
    Originally posted by shadow01 View Post
    I have heard from varrious sources that the Armor on the Bismark was superior then what was used on US and British ships.

    Is this correct or just the stuff that legends are made of.
    That has been argued for years and it comes down to a flip of a coin and personal preference as to which side you want to believe. America's class A armor is believed by metallurgists to be the best as its strength is based upon its heat treatment and threat side hardness rather than on overall thickness.

    The Bismarck class of Line of Battle Ships was the most recent design and construction of that side of the Atlantic ocean and it would be logical to assume its armor to be better than any older ships of countries in that part of the planet. However, no definitive answer can be given as there were no one-on-one battles between the Bismarck, Yamato, North Carolina, South Dakota, or Iowa class battleships.
    Able to leap tall tales in a single groan.

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    • #3
      More information than you could possibly want about Bismarck's thick Krupp armor can be found at these links:

      Bismarck Armour Protection - KBismarck.com
      ARMOR PROTECTION OF KM BISMARCK by Nathan Okun 9/6/91
      “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

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      • #4
        I've never heard that Bismarck's armor was better than British armor. I don't believe that's true for the main homogenous or face-hardened armor. For splinter protection, the British were using D steel, which may not have been as good as what the Germans were using, but I'm not sure.
        US homogenous armor was as good or better than German homogenous armor. German face-hardened armor had generally better characteristics than US face-hardened armor against large shells--which is what a battleship would be most concerned about--but when you get down to cruiser-caliber shells, the US armor would start to show superiority.

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        • #5
          Nathun Oakun from Port Hueneme has done a very extensive study on Naval armor worldwide. When we started reactivating the New Jersey in 1981, Nate sent us a copy of his study (about 1 1/2" thick) when I asked for some help on what it is that we would be working on or around. His graph of the strength and hardness of primary armor shows the U.S. face hardened class A armor to exceed all others.

          Even the General Specifications for designing U.S. warships goes into detail with great caution if you have to weld something on to the face hardened side. If the area of welding is not annealed first, the welder must stand behind a steel plate of 5/8-inch thick steel and use a periscope (if available) to protecting himself against chunks of the armor spalling of. One study with testing face hardened steel by welding on it claimed that pieces the size of a .45 caliber ACP bullet could break off with a high enough velocity to cause serious or fatal injury to the welder.
          Able to leap tall tales in a single groan.

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          • #6
            Important bit of information

            Rusty, on what parts or areas on a "modern BB" would a welder wish to practice this welding technique? I.e., how would a welder know if the steel was face hardened?
            " Lite all burners, make all steam! "

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            • #7
              Originally posted by connaye View Post
              Rusty, on what parts or areas on a "modern BB" would a welder wish to practice this welding technique? I.e., how would a welder know if the steel was face hardened?
              Hooo Boy! You want me to resurrect some nightmares, don't you?

              When LBNSY reactivated the New Jersey, I sent out a memo to all shops with diagrams copied from Garzkey's book showing where all the class A armor was and which side NOT to weld on. By the way, it was Bill Garztky I called on about class A armor specifications and he led me to Nathun Oakun.

              So for NJ, we were okay. But when Missouri came in, they forgot all about that memo. I was called out by the ship's prospective engineering officer wondering about all the cracks around the periphery of some of the class A armor plates. We climbed down into the void space between torpedo bulkheads 2 and 3 where the laminar separation (I describe that in Chapter 28 of my book). I was able to satisfy the officer that the heat treating method used by Midvale Steel was different on Missouri than on the other 3 sisters whose armor was made by Bethlehem Steel and Carnegie-Illinois Steel and was still perfectly sufficient to perform its protective capability.

              The fuel tanks below us were to be opened up, steamed out of the old Number 2 bunker, seams recaulked and sealed with poly sulfide, and the steam heating piping for the thick oil was to be cut out. So a lot of staging was to be installed. To support the staging, the shop 64 stagers had padeyes welded to the outside (face hardened) side of the armored torpedo bulkhead 3.

              How and why there was no spalling of the steel that could (or actually would have) caused injuries to the workers is still a mystery to me. Perhaps Midvale's method reduced that possibility. I don't know and the only metallurgist I know that could read the heat treating history and give me the correct answers now works out at China Lake Naval Test Station in the Mojave Desert. He was our metallurgist at LBNSY at the time but was too busy certifying HY-80 armor being brought in since some of the !/4-inch clad armor we put on New Jersey was deliberately miss-identified by the supplier (he went to jail). That's in Chapter 30 of my book. Since there was no incidents of .45 caliber spalls and no injuries, it wasn't necessary to do an analysis of the welding.

              If it was NEEDED to weld to the face hardened side, we would have to make up some test plates that were face hardened and set up a test center to practice spot annealing and welding. Fortunately we didn't have to do that as I made sure no structural modifications would require being welded to Class A armor (which gave us a hell of a time designing the CHT tanks outboard of the steering gear room and forward of bulkhead 50).

              But the padeyes were not part of any production drawing we put out and the shop 64 people are mostly wood workers and insulators and all the welder needs to know is what type of rod to use (when in doubt - use 25-20). A welder is a highly practiced artist in fusing metal together with an electric arc. But he is not a metallurgist and only needs to know if he should use medium steel rods or stainless steel rods (25-20).

              It just didn't dawn on anybody in the shops to call the welding engineers or my desk to see if it was okay to weld on the threat side of an armored bulkhead. Class B armor you can, but class A is a no-no except under controlled conditions where it is absolutely necessary to do so.

              Though no harm was done and nobody got injured, the picture in my mind of me looking down on those newly welded padeyes still gives me the shivers.

              Now, I just GOTTA have another Vodka, thanks to you. Don't feel bad, I was going to have another one anyway.
              Able to leap tall tales in a single groan.

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              • #8
                Grey Goose perhaps?
                Fortitude.....The strength to persist...The courage to endure.

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