Small correction, the Iowa does have armor above the deck, the conning tower has the thickest armor of the whole ship. You can see how crazy the armor is on the USS New Jersey (also iowa class) , they have a channel on youtube that shows off the citadels armor.
Big correction for future videos. I've heard you mention multiple times that you think the Iowa would be more accurate at lower speeds, but the Iowa class has an advanced gunnery computer with a stable element. Irrelevant of speed, course and angle, the ship compensates, and the guns keep the same level of accuracy. It's part of what makes them the most advanced battleships of all time. So no, please don't slow her down. She was designed to fight at full speed.
Don't forget it's analog computing systems was so good that even during both refitting of the ship the Navy cared not to replace those computers with digital or modern ones at both times.
@@megainuyasha2005 That was one of the most impressive things about the Iowa Class in the modern Navy. Using a targeting computer that was built in the 1930s, we (I was stationed aboard the Missouri from 90-92), could hit a target up to 23 miles away and get within 50 feet of our target. Of course, the blast radius on a 16 inch HE round was MUCH greater than the 50 foot variance.
If I'm not mistaken (and I may be lol) but US tanks probably wouldn't have the accuracy they now do if they didn't take in account the kind of ballistic calculations from vessels like this. But think about this, you may have a .45 1911 but this boat has 9 16in 1911s! Merica 😂
Every main battery shot & accuracy from each Iowa has been recorded over it's entire life. Dr. Paul Stillwell examined this data from the New Jersey and found that on average, the accuracy was less than 2 meters / 6.5 ft in its service life. This is with an analog fire control system that is calculated by rangefinder and a complex system of gears.
Each turret had independent fire control (the wings on the side of the turrets). Within 10 miles, the enemy would be toast with local control. Also, the "decks" were a wood covering over the metal deck as a "no slip" covering.
Iowa Class can still fight even if the superstructure is gone. The turrets are able to fight individually using their own range finders. As for damaging the Iowa class, only if you are trying over the shoulder they tend not to damage and they definitely did not get rid of the wood decks every time they go into combat.
Yeah pretty much everything he talked about as far as the damage to the ship and the wooden decks and all that stuff at the first part of this video applies to the dreadnoughts of that era. Starting with the modern battleships that the US was building in the 1930s, all that went out the window., that wasn't a problem I mean even firing a 16-inch guns didn't do damage to the ship. And considering how often and how rapid fire the 5-inch guns were on the Iowa yeah they didn't cause damage to the ship in any stretch of the imagination. Danielle I mean yes they shook rattled and all that stuff but they were pretty well insulated and the systems were isolated enough that they didn't suffer shock damage
All battleships had local range finders on each turret, in case the main one was damaged or destroyed. This allowed each one to keep firing, although less accurately when compared with the main range finder
Hi, US naval historian here. This was fun, thank you, and Merry Christmas! It was funny watching the Iowa kill that barge at first with her guns, haha. The Iowas were decently accurate, and they could use their AA radars to track theirbown shells mid-flight and could even start forming solutions before their shells impacted. They'd also likely use exclusively High Capacity shells against sthese smaller ships. Also, Iowa accuracy has always been a bit of a debate, so just a warning that there may be a lot of angry nerds coming after you for that statement. I could explain how it works, but honestly this is just a fun game to watch. The explanation is unimportant.
I wonder why the Iowa stopped moving for the Galleon Test. I also wonder how those 6" guns managed to sink a Iowa, when they'd be incapable of penetrating her citadel. Her citadel should be buoyant enough to float the entire ship all by itself.
The iowa were designed to survive equivalent guns, so a 16" armour piercing shell. And each gun has its own range finder. Durring ww2 they also had AA guns manned on the deck while the main battery was firing, out in the open.
The Iowas were designed to be armored against the type 6 16" shell. That weighed 2,200 lbs. The type 7 "superheavy" 16" shell she actually carried would have defeated her own protection pretty comfortably.
@@Mrdjs1133 That is not entirely true. The Iowa also had an immunity zone vs the 2700lb AP shell, it was just reduced compared to standard US Naval armor scheme practices.
The Iowas were not really designed to withstand 16" shells, in general thats what you would want to do. But with the Iowa specifically that didn't really work because of size and tonnage limits. So the Iowad resistance to 16" shells is more aspirational then actual.
the wooden deck is not removed before battle its there to absorb splinters from incoming fire and before Air conditioning acted as insulation for decks below. I think it was mainly HMS Rodney after the Bismarck battle that had massive blast damage from her on guns due to the huge number of shells fired. (the Nelson class was notorious for blast damage from there own guns)
You need to come over and tour an Iowa class battleship. You might take out some of the superstructure but you've got to see the armored helm area to appreciate what she's got.
@@grimreapers The Closest one to you is the USS New Jersey in Camden NJ (just across the river from Philly). Just be careful. Camden is a 3rd world dystopian hellhole of a city.
CAP: "The Iowa has no top side armor." REALITY: The Iowa superstructure is armored with up to *nineteen inches* of class B armor. You could park all the 8 enemy ships right next to the Iowa at a range of 1 mile, and let them fire every round in their magazines, and they'd only do superficial damage to an Iowa.
This is false. The 18" figure refers to the conning tower, which is basically an armored periscope sticking up from the citadel and only big enough to fit a handful of people inside. The vast majority of the ship's superstructure is 1" special treatment steel, and vulnerable to close range 5" fire. You cannot make a real ship superstructure heavily armored like this, or it will simply roll over.
@@TheFirstIcon "All the systems needed to keep these ship's (Iowa's) combat effective such as magazines, engineering spaces, steering, plotting rooms, command & control, weapons, etc. are protected by heavy armor. The armored box, referred to as the citadel, extends from just forward of Turret 1 to just aft of Turret III. The top, sides and ends of the citadel are heavily armored, however the bottom is not ballistically protected. Critical systems located outside the citadel such as the turrets, conning tower, fire control, directors, etc. are armored extensions of the citadel. Turret armor is constructed from a combination of Class A and Class B armor and STS plate. The faces of the turrets are 17 inches Class B armor over 2.5 inches STS plate. The side plates are 9.5 inches Class A armor on .75 inch STS plate. The back plates are 12 inches Class A armor and the turret roofs are 7.25 inches Class B armor. The conning tower is constructed from segments of Class B armor 17.3 inches thick. BB61 is three levels and BB62 on had 2 levels (the flag level was omitted). Roof plates are 7.25 inches Class B and the floor is 4 inches STS. The conning tower is connected to the citadel by a communications tube with a wall thickness of 16 inches of Class B armor." To summarize: All critical systems, including those in the superstructure, are part of the armored citidel or an extension of it, and no amount of 5" fire on earth, at any range, is going to compromise the ability of the ship to conduct combat operations. Even "lightly armored" parts of the ship are incredibly compartmentalized, and are vastly more capable of withstanding/containing damage when compared to any modern warships.
@SgtTechCom I agree with you that the Iowa is one tough beast. HOWEVER Being saturated with 5" fire can absolutely affect its combat capabilities. The main battery directors are 1.5" STS and the secondary battery have 1" STS. A 5"/38 can pen 1.5" at 10kyd with AA Common and at 13 kyd with Special Common. The main battery director trunk is also 1.5" STS. The backup optical director atop the conn is 1" STS. None of the radars themselves are armored, only the housings themselves. With directors and radars gone, control would fall to the local optical systems in Turret II, which I believe can only see 10 miles or so. Less accurate ranging, no blind fire. Then there's secondary considerations. For the modernized versions, Phalanx is vulnerable to 5" fire, Harpoon canisters would be vulnerable, I suspect the Tomahawk ABLs are less than 1.5" thick, there's even more expensive C3 gear stuffed into the superstructure. For the WW2 Iowas, all of the light AAA was effectively unarmored (15 to 25lb splinter shields), there's a huge tub of avgas at the stern, chewing up the shell plating external to the belt could flood the void sections of the torpedo defense. None of this is to say that light caliber fire has a chance of sinking the Iowa outright, or even compromising the citadel, just that there are core combat functions that can be degraded without penetrating the deck, belt, or conn. Of course, these are all essentially "golden BB" type hits, but 1. Aren't they all? Bismarck, mission ended by non-penetrating hit. South Dakota, radar shot clean off, second shot through the director cable harness, etc. 2. For this scenario, a Sverdlov has 12 6" guns, laying down a total of 90 rounds per minute. Assuming each destroyer has 4 guns at 15 rpm each, that's another 420 rounds per minute. The Iowa is easily eating 1000 rounds before it knocks them all down. Something expensive and unarmored is going to go pop. There's a reason you don't take a battleship unescorted into waters where small ships can ambush you like this. This isn't their turf.
@@TheFirstIcon I just quoted the thicknesses and they differ from what you just stated. (for instance the secondary battery turrets are 2.5" STS, not 1.5") Here is the complete protection scheme: "Protection 17,056 tons or 35% of displacement: 12.2" (310mm) main belt of Class A armor sloped 19 degrees and backed by 0.75" (19mm) STS 12.2" (310mm) lower belt of Class B armor tapering to 1.62" (44mm) below the waterline, sloped 19 degrees and backed by 0.75" (19mm) STS 1.5" (38mm) outer STS decapping shell 1" (25mm) STS splinter bulkhead behind main belt 5" to 4.75" Class B + 1.25" STS (127mm to 121mm + 32mm) armor deck 0.625" STS upper hull sides 1.5" (38mm) STS bomb deck 0.625" (16mm) STS splinter deck over machinery spaces 1" (25mm) STS magazine crown 1.5" STS magazine sides and machinery bulkheads 11.2" (340mm) Class A bulkheads tapering to 1.75" (44mm) 13.5"/11.3"/4.75" (343mm/287mm/121mm) steering side/rear/crown 17" Class B + 2.5" STS/7.25" Class B/9.5" Class A + 0.75" STS/12" Class A (432mm + 64mm/184mm/241mm + 19mm/305mm) turret front/roof/side/rear 17.3"/14..8"/11.6" (439mm/376mm/295mm) barbette beam/front/rear *2.5" (64mm) STS secondary battery* 17.3/7.25" (439mm/184mm) Class B conning tower sides/roof 17'11" (5.5m) 4-bulkhead void-void-liquid-liquid torpedo protection with 0.625", lower armor belt, 0.625", and 0.875" (16mm, lower armor belt, 16mm, and 22mm) bulkheads from inboard to outboard, designed to withstand a 700 lb (318 kg) explosive charge and resist underwater shell hits. Immune zone 17,600 to 31,200 yards (16,100 to 28,500 meters) vs. 16”/45 (406mm) light shell or 23,600 to 27,400 yards (21,600 to 25,000 meters) vs. 16"/50 (406mm) heavy shell. Below 12,200 feet (3700 meters) vs. 1600 lb (730kg) armor-piercing bomb. " Source: Pacific War online museum Also, you have to keep in mind I am specifically talking about a line of sight galleon fight, not a modern "realistic" modern warfare battle. But the galleon battle in *this specific video* Interestingly the WWII Iowa would be FAR more formidable in the Galleon fight because of the mass of 40mm Bofors guns she carried. Those would completely wreck a modern unarmed warship in seconds, and they have far more range than a 20mm Phalanx. You can take out any modern warships electronic systems and most of her weapons and superstructure with Standard missiles using blast frag warheads, the same is true for an 80s refit Iowa.
@SgtTechCom sorry, I was unclear and incorrect - the secondary battery *directors* (mk37) have 1.5" STS, not 1" as I stated I don't think anything on the table but the Sverdlov has a chance against the actual Mk28 5"/38 turrets
First main battery salvo was fired at that trawler. Enemy ships were down a relative bearing of 310 or so and the Iowa turned starboard and fired down about a 90 degree relative bearing.
As others have noted, the conning tower on the Iowa has around 17 inches of armor. So, the effective command of the ship and the location of the primary fire control systems are all extremely well-armored. However, you're absolutely correct when pointing out that a lot of the sensors within the general mast/superstructure area are vulnerable to being destroyed. As sensors are lost, certain aspects of the ship will lose functionality. However, I believe the fire control systems on the Iowa were very advanced and had redundancies built-in, so the ship being able to fire accurately within Sea Power even after taking damage is likely modeled pretty well. I'm not too sure the guns it was facing in this video were powerful enough to cause enough damage to sink the ship directly (as shown in the second of three rounds), and it would likely require a pretty rare/lucky hit to penetrate an area with relatively thin armor to actually ignite a secondary magazine (for a 5" gun) that may result in enough damage to sink her. But then we're getting into really complex territory, beyond Sea Power's damage model. If you want to explore WWI and WWII ship battles with a really high level of fidelity and tactics, there is a game out there for you. It's called "Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts." I've played it quite a bit in the past. It has historical ship designs from all major WWII combatants, a custom ship builder, and campaign mode. The WWII-era tactics are all there to play around with. The amount of customization, upgrades, custom shipbuilder, and overall level of features is pretty insane. You can select different types of shells, powder, fuses, and armor levels for each area of the ship. You can select and customize all types of guns from under 1" to something like 24" and then adjust the caliber as well.
WW2 fire control directors were armoured like a turret, or at least a small turret, so they'd be less vulnerable to blast damage. Additionally, at least the main battery guns I believe have their own rangefinders and maybe rudimentary fire control computers themselves so they can still be used effectively in local control.
@taiko1237 The directors were high up in the ship for visibility reasons. For any item high up in a ship, weight is critical for stability reasons. I believe most directors used in WW2 designs had armor of 1" to 1.5" thickness, which can handle blast and a little bit of splinter damage, but is very susceptible to a direct hit or nearby explosion. The turret directors were better armored, but were of course much lower. They can only see about 12-15,000yd even in clear conditions.
@@TheFirstIcon "A conning tower is a raised platform on a ship or submarine, often armoured, from which an officer in charge can conn (conduct or control) the vessel, controlling movements of the ship by giving orders to those responsible for the ship's engine, rudder, lines, and ground tackle. It is usually located as high on the ship as is practical, to give the conning team good visibility of the entirety of the ship, ocean conditions, and other vessels. On Iowa-class battleships, the conning tower is a 439-millimetre (17.3 in) thick vertical armour-plated cylinder with slit windows located in the middle of the bridge, climbing from the 03 level all the way up to the flying bridge on the 05 level." It is my understanding that the Iowa's various fire control systems, which were large complex machines per their WWII origins (I believe they were complimented by more modern equipment in the 1980's, but not entirely replaced), were well within the interior of the ship and protected by substantial armor. Then, during battles, communication between the fire control systems, captain, gun/turret teams, navigation, and so on, was communicated between the heavily armored conning tower and other heavily armored areas of the ship where those aforementioned systems/personnel were located. In the 1980's, I don't see how they would be able to adequately armor more modern radar capabilities, but I also suspect that's why they didn't gut the WWII era fire control systems, as they could still rely on those to be much more survivable and still result in accurate fire. On modern Burke destroyers, with their powerful radars placed on the front and sides of the ship just below the bridge, I wonder if a single HARM getting through is adequate to cripple that specific destroyer. Luckily, the US is implementing the IBCS relatively soon, which is essentially a universal datalink, described as a network of sensors from virtually all military assets that is agnostic regarding which sensor is used and then selects the best shooter/munition to carry out an attack. Basically, take everything from the radar on a small Coast Guard cutter to dozens of small ISR drones flying in various locations to every sensor on every ship, aircraft, and ground vehicle, all being fed to one network. Then, they can use that network to select which military asset is best suited to attack the detected enemy target.
It'd be interesting to see in the code how the game handles armor. I suspect "for balancing" that armor is not modeled correctly but is rather modeled like hit points. In fact if some shells or missiles are defeated by armor the protected systems and armor should take no damage. EG there is no way even at point blank range that a 5 in shell can damage the main battery on an Iowa because all the critical systems are under armor that would reject the shell without damage. Fire control sure, but the guns them selves or the engines, no.
@@nathand.9969 There is no place on an Iowa's armored citadel that could be defeated by any of the guns on the opposing fleet. Not anywhere. Not even after 1000 hits.
You should check out Ultimate Admiral Dreadnaughts. Its focused on the pre WW1 to shortly post WW2 period. Lots of customization and very good battle controls/simulation.
@@TheCaptainbeefylog You should work on that. Why not join the navy and serve on a real warship? Why not get into engineering and design the next generation of warships? The world is your oyster. You just have to open your mouth.
A bit of trivia…. The USS Iowa (first in her class) had the better battle/campaign record and was slated by the Navy to have the Japanese surrender sign on her aft deck. But, then President Truman was from Missouri and so the surrender was sign on the aft deck of the USS Missouri.
The only thing this showed, is that when it comes to old-fashioned gun battles, and factoring in shell penetration, armor, and size of gun, is that Sea Power is completely unrealistic.
Battleships were built to stand against ships of their own size. Iowas were built to take on Yamato. Their superstructures were splinter protected, except for the armoured conning tower. The Iowas as built was protected against their own gun muzzle blast. Later added systems (radars, tomahawk, CIWS etc) were vulnerable to blast damage. 16 inch shells had a muzzle velocity of 2500 to 2690 feet / second, meaning that at maximum range, shell flight time was about 90 seconds. Finally, thanks for not saying the ship blew itself 9ft sideways every time it fired. It didn't.
Cap, your point about the repairability of the US vs Soviet equipment is spot on. But you should also mention, Soviet doctrine did not allow for enlisted to be trained in the ability to repair and operate systems without direct oversight of of an officer. Most technical work was undertaken by officers only, as it was believed that enlisted knowing how to operate the equipment was far too much of a liability for mutiny. Much the same as Soviet battlefield doctrine did not permit independent flexibility outside of direct officer control.
It would be really cool to possibly see a tactical version of this fight with torpedo armed destroyers (or the most similar thing you can find) using either WW2 or just after WW2 tactics for fighting heavy capital ships, with you in command of the destroyers and doing your best to do the unenviable task of putting a hole in the Iowa’s side with whatever you’ve got available excluding missiles :)
Well everything you talked about when it came to battleships applied to the dreadnoughts of the World War 1 era and have absolutely nothing to do with modern battleships that were built from the 1930s on period which would include the Iowa class the North Carolina class and such
I sure appreciate how creative you are in coming up with these scenarios, Cap. And yes, there's indeed something magical about the Iowa's. They sure capture the imagination!
Nice to see you having a good time Cap. A couple of (possibly) interesting snippets from the freshman physics textbook: (i) You can get the approximate distance to the horizon in km by taking the height above sea level in m, multiplying by 12, and taking the square root. So for a 150 foot mast, that's about 50 m, times 12 is 600, square root of that is about 24. (ii) For any ballistic projectile, someone sitting right on its target will see the angular elevation of the projectile uniformly increase. (Neglecting air resistance.) That's all from me, merry christmas!
Great video as always Cap. It's a shame the HMS Vanguard isn't in the game (at least I don't think it is). Especially since it was in service until 1960. Would've been a nice ship to have against the Iowa! Something you could do with those RN destroyers is show how Sub hunting would happen in WW2 compared to what it's like today. Obviously wait until you're comfortable with ASW (looks like you're getting the hang of it!) and idk if any WW2 era subs are in game, but it would be fun. I like the WW2 destroyer squadron idea. Especially if you look at the 1st & 2nd Battle of Narvik for inspiration!
We’ve had this discussion before and - in the end- it’s academic; but while I can see 6” or 5” shot taking out radars and such, I don’t see anything smaller than 14” shell sinking the Iowa or even penetrating the magazine armor. They were designed to sustain hits from 16” shells in the hull, turret and magazines…and prevent penetration at range
Also, to add to Cap's point for having the engineers to be able to fix your weapon systems. It's also having the parts to fix them too! If every ship in the fleet is using the same things then it's easy to have the parts available. Also, if something is broken in a ship on a battle group you can grab extra parts on another ship to fix yours. You end up being in a better ready state. And if you find something that needs to be upgraded, everyone is the same so the upgrade is equal to everyone. That's how the harpoon has been upgraded so much and is still around while the Russian stuff needs to be re-designed form the ground up. Same with the Aim-120.
I agree, it’s why the Russians have been standardizing their anti-ship weapons for the past 20 years. They learned from their USSR days it seems. That being said, I don’t really buy into the idea that the Soviets didn’t have a team of engineers on board each ship that specialized in the weapons on board, in the event something went wrong, and I obviously don’t buy into the ridiculous idea they would send out their ships from port without checking their weaponry and ensuring it was operational, as no historical evidence points to this being a thing, (which kinda highlights Cap’s gullibility), but I do agree not having a standardized system for each missile-carrying ship can cause issues and it creates a lack of redundancy.
@ yeah, I mean I would prefer to assume that they did have the engineers and parts at least on the ship. At least at the height of the union. Not too sure about near the collapse. Honestly better to assume your rival is at peak performance and that way you don’t get sucker punched. Better have an easy fight that you over prepared.
@@LuisVasquezMusic Precisely, and it applies to current-day Russia. We’ve seen demonstrations of their most newest weapons, especially one of their newest IRBM’s, Oreshink, and, even if those may not work 100% of the time.. I sure as hell would not want to underestimate them and end up being on the receiving end of those things. Russian missile technology in general is quite scary.
You should read the report on the sinking of the moscova. The biggest reason was it didn't have its are search Radars on at the time of the attack by the ukrainians. And the reason it didn't is because their are search radar would interfere with your communications. Which means they were basically defenseless. The other reason being is corruption. They sold spare parts they had a conscript Navy for the most part and yeah. Basically these Russian ships were great the day they set sail but for every year they were in service they became less and less effective😂😂
If you want some fun hunting WW2 subs in a destroyer then take a look at Destroyer: U-Boat Hunter. You have full control over a destroyer and have to plot out how to defend a convoy from subs.
Radar gives you a pretty accurate reading of distance to target, bearing, and speed. Those are critical for the firing computer to get an accurate solution. It is already taking inputs of its own speed, bearing, pitch and roll. Once that analog computer scrunches those inputs the gun can fire. My brother in law was in charge of the Missouri's 16" turrets. He said the only other thing they could add to make more accuracy was a barrel temperature input. That corrected for barrel deformation as it fired. Pretty neat stuff.
The “future” Iowa class mod (Iowa 21) is amazing. VLS launchers, improved CWIS setup, defensive ECM. I put it against 4 Kirovs at 50 miles and it didn’t take a single hit while sinking all the Kirovs. Against 6 Kirovs it sank 4 before slipping beneath the waves.
Battle of Samar. Murican destroyer escorts zig zagged every 30 seconds as they charged the Japanese cruisers and battle wagons to get within torpedo range. Flank speed
Watch the New Jersey channel for more info on the Iowa class and the fire control redundancy. Ryan Z over there has gone over it quite extensively. Going from memory here, so I might be slightly off on the details: 2 main battery directors. 4 secondary directors. 2 main battery (mechanical) plotting computers. Multiple secondary battery (mechanical) plotting computers. Turret 2 with the extra range finder. Each main battery turret with its own plotting computer. All can be interlinked in various combinations - so should SHTF and both main battery directors are knocked out a secondary director can control the main battery if it had to, for example. The cables from the directors down into the citadel are in armored trunks for battle damage resistance. As a last resort each main turret can fire independently under local control. As for the decks - yes, they're wood covered over the weather deck. Ryan says that's basically insulation so the steel is neither roasted under the sun or frozen in ice in the north Atlantic. The weather deck isn't the main armored deck. The armored deck is set lower down to tie in with the top edge of the belt and top edge of the transverse bulkhead armor to form the complete armored citadel. Wouldn't want a shell coming in from the side to sneak in under the armored deck and above the belt, as could be possible if those two weren't tied together. That said, the Iowa class were, as Ryan Z point out, "gold plated" in that most of the hull plating and weather deck was made from STS, basically a homogenous grade (vs the belt face hardened) armor plate. So the deck armor is really multi layer (the weather deck being thick enough to initiate aerial bomb fuses for example), although the main armored deck is quite robust (I forget the exact number, 4 or 5 inches - I was impressed seeing the plug style open hatches through that deck when I toured Missouri in Pearl Harbor a few years back).
9:25 hey cap, if you click on the little circle i in the upper right hand corner of the box that comes up when you hover over a weapon, it will tell you more about it, including minimum and maximum ranges.
In naval battles of old, determining the range to a target was much more difficult than the direction, so when you could precisely determine the range with radar, the enemy are in serious trouble. As I recall you had a DCS video where ships were shooting in a controlled environment and the shells landed in a long line with the target in the middle, but 90% of the shells landed hundreds of yards away, either short or long.
Brutal, yes, but not a violation because it wasn’t targeted intentionally, if you could tell that other ship was doing recovery operations then targeting that ship would have been a violation, but since it wasn’t doing recovery, she was a valid target and the life raft was just unfortunate collateral.
Would love to see ww1 and ww2 packs added to this. I think this is a much better simulation for ships for some of the scenarios you have done in the past.
They're wanting to bring the battleships back. 16inch guns are too limited on range. But I read Iowa class holds about 1200 shells. I'd want to convert it with 1200 missiles. That would be pretty good. Probably need to convert to nuclear power also. Then the new Iowa missle class with an aircraft carrier would be pretty awesome.
Cap, there IS in fact a 1940s Fletcher class DD sim which I believe mainly focuses on anti U-boat tactics in the atlantic. it's available on steam, it's called Destroyer: The U-Boat Hunter.
Imagine being a sailor, you survived a 16 inch shell you your ship, you manage to get aboard a life raft...Only for another ship to come along side you and another shell lands like 6 feet from your lifeboat....
Great Job, Cap! I always enjoy your videos. Maybe one more gun fight to end all straight up gun fights. Sverdlov versus Iowa. Mother of all Cold War ship on ship gun/galleon fights.
14:10 Before battle they would chop up the wooden deck and throw it over the side? I'll have to see the reference for that, as if something like that was said I think you misunderstood it. That was never done. For one thing, it would take days to do and would leave the deck dangerous to walk on. Yes, if the guns were fired with their muzzles directly over the deck it could do some damage. No, they did not remove breakables before battle. If it broke, they fixed it afterwards. They did not preemptively go all hands on deck so that they could damage their ships right before a fight.
As per this book: www.worldofbooks.com/en-gb/products/castles-of-steel-book-robert-k-massie-9780099523789?sku=GOR002169205&gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQiA1Km7BhC9ARIsAFZfEIuGaxBzss01qDv8U72SwzR6eNJhF4A2zbm0KdPz3U0N74FYlD_UiecaAkSaEALw_wcB
@@grimreapersyeah and that was accurate for the dreadnought. Of battleships. But the modern battleships that were built in the 1930s and early forties that does not apply to. They were designed and their systems were much much improved over the early dreadnoughts. Basically everything from the North Carolina class and the Iowa class including the German equivalents and Japanese equivalents were much more modernized and didn't suffer damage from firing their guns
When i was in the navy they told us during training in boot camp how the Japanese battleships were ineffective against the naval fleet in leyte gulf. The Japanese battleships were expecting to fight against battleships but they engaged tin cans aka destroyers and escorts. The issue they had is their round never exploded because the hulls of the ships didn't trigger the explosion. Their rounds went right through the hull. It left a huge hole but didn't sink the ship even after many hits from their guns.
Cool vid. I'm going to have to give that a try. I set up a Galleon battle between two Iowas and 6 Sverdlovs. The first time both Iowas were sunk and so were most Sverdlovs. Somehow I managed to get it to all the Sverdlovs sinking and on fire and One Iowa badly damaged/sinking. This is a fun game.
Cap, if you want a game about captaining a WW2 destroyer and hunting subs, check out Destroyer: The U-Boat Hunter. It's crazy hard. You have to use the old systems to track and target subs based off sonar contacts.
That Russian Cruiser is so cool. Edit: despite the missile variants in ships, during the Soviet Era, maintenance issues were uncommon, as the Soviets spent ALOT of money to make sure they did work. The maintenance issues only became common after the collapse of the USSR.
I am not sure its been mentioned but the range finder at the top is visual and it would add more information as to which targets got hit to fire control. Also the American BB's were the only ones believe that could fire while turning. They were equipped with a mechanical computer that was quite amazing for plotting fire on targets.
My grandfather was a coxswain on the USS Rainier in WW2. She was an ammunition ship. He said the whole ship made it through the war without so much as a scratch, but they were always puckering their booty holes everyone the Japanese attacked because they were riding along in essentially a huge boom boom. He told us about transferring those monster shells across to the big battleships with steel cables and nets.
....and by design, a lot of our parts were off the shelf components from other military equipment. We carried a lot of spare components for my system, and a majority were easily field replaceable cards/ modules. One of my favorite things was the fact that the main CPU was the same one used in an M1(?) tank. All the other boxes in the rack were gray and opened by taking out about 12 screws while the CPU had about 60 screws, was black, and weighed a ton (not literally).
@@scottdelorenzi3513 A better idea would be to cross the T of the Red ships, allowing her to bring her whole broadside to bear but limiting them to what they could fire over their bows.
Modularity was absolutely a thing. I remember swapping for parts with entirely different classes of ships when things went down. They also chopped the Crommelin in half when I was on her and swapped in an entire new aft section when we upgraded to RAST and towed array. Pretty cool..
in the short range fight you let the AI fire the IOWA when you should have manually picked the Sverdlov to target first....IOWA class is def modelled with wrong armour as even the 6"should do little damage, nothing there can damage the turrets or armoured areas
If it came down to local fire control of the turrets, it wouldn't be just "a guy with binoculars". The "ears" on the back of B and C turrets are optical rangefinders with greater separation between their left- and right-side viewers than the optical equipment up on the towers.
Further thoughts on battle commence but before first hits: Moving at a nice 19knots in a straight line the fleet are sitting ducks. If the Iowa doesn't take the Cruiser out first, she will go for it the moment the Cruiser opens fire - so around 15miles. When that's gone, the Brits are next. The fleet would surely be changing speed and direction regularly just to fox the radar/gunners and at least reach the Iowa to open fire.
I have read that the teak decking was hard enough to make AP shells explode prior to penetrating the actual armor deck below. They definitely did not tear up the wooden deck each time they went into battle.
Of all the battles that you have fought so far, this was by far the most unrealistic. The Iowa would *literally* take every single round from the enemy fleet on the chin and suffer no more than superficial topside and sensor damage. The 16" guns fire directors are heavily armored, and even if the fire control turrets got taken out each turret is mainually aimable with it's own range finders (the wings on the turrets). Clearly sea power has not modeled armor *at all*
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Small correction, the Iowa does have armor above the deck, the conning tower has the thickest armor of the whole ship. You can see how crazy the armor is on the USS New Jersey (also iowa class) , they have a channel on youtube that shows off the citadels armor.
Fire control centers also very well armored. He's got Iowas armor scheme mixed up with Bismark, lol.
You beat me to it, 17 inches thick. You have it right
I've toured the USS Iowa at Long Beach. I remember areas of the ship having ridiculously thick armor on areas of the super structure.
As an engineer, I’d love to see a video on how armor plate was welded together?
The steering box is the most protected part of the ship I believe.
Big correction for future videos. I've heard you mention multiple times that you think the Iowa would be more accurate at lower speeds, but the Iowa class has an advanced gunnery computer with a stable element. Irrelevant of speed, course and angle, the ship compensates, and the guns keep the same level of accuracy. It's part of what makes them the most advanced battleships of all time. So no, please don't slow her down. She was designed to fight at full speed.
Don't forget it's analog computing systems was so good that even during both refitting of the ship the Navy cared not to replace those computers with digital or modern ones at both times.
@@megainuyasha2005 That was one of the most impressive things about the Iowa Class in the modern Navy. Using a targeting computer that was built in the 1930s, we (I was stationed aboard the Missouri from 90-92), could hit a target up to 23 miles away and get within 50 feet of our target. Of course, the blast radius on a 16 inch HE round was MUCH greater than the 50 foot variance.
@@megainuyasha2005 analog isn’t hack able either. No electronic warfare weapon can touch it since it is mechanical.
If I'm not mistaken (and I may be lol) but US tanks probably wouldn't have the accuracy they now do if they didn't take in account the kind of ballistic calculations from vessels like this. But think about this, you may have a .45 1911 but this boat has 9 16in 1911s! Merica 😂
Every main battery shot & accuracy from each Iowa has been recorded over it's entire life. Dr. Paul Stillwell examined this data from the New Jersey and found that on average, the accuracy was less than 2 meters / 6.5 ft in its service life. This is with an analog fire control system that is calculated by rangefinder and a complex system of gears.
Each turret had independent fire control (the wings on the side of the turrets). Within 10 miles, the enemy would be toast with local control. Also, the "decks" were a wood covering over the metal deck as a "no slip" covering.
thx
Iowa Class can still fight even if the superstructure is gone. The turrets are able to fight individually using their own range finders. As for damaging the Iowa class, only if you are trying over the shoulder they tend not to damage and they definitely did not get rid of the wood decks every time they go into combat.
He was talking about WW1 battleships
Yeah pretty much everything he talked about as far as the damage to the ship and the wooden decks and all that stuff at the first part of this video applies to the dreadnoughts of that era. Starting with the modern battleships that the US was building in the 1930s, all that went out the window., that wasn't a problem I mean even firing a 16-inch guns didn't do damage to the ship. And considering how often and how rapid fire the 5-inch guns were on the Iowa yeah they didn't cause damage to the ship in any stretch of the imagination. Danielle I mean yes they shook rattled and all that stuff but they were pretty well insulated and the systems were isolated enough that they didn't suffer shock damage
All battleships had local range finders on each turret, in case the main one was damaged or destroyed. This allowed each one to keep firing, although less accurately when compared with the main range finder
Great one as always, Cap! Merry Christmas to you and yours
Wowser much appreciated :)
They had teak decks to prevent spark from dropping metal on a metal deck. The spark could ignite munitions/ powder.
Hi, US naval historian here. This was fun, thank you, and Merry Christmas!
It was funny watching the Iowa kill that barge at first with her guns, haha.
The Iowas were decently accurate, and they could use their AA radars to track theirbown shells mid-flight and could even start forming solutions before their shells impacted. They'd also likely use exclusively High Capacity shells against sthese smaller ships.
Also, Iowa accuracy has always been a bit of a debate, so just a warning that there may be a lot of angry nerds coming after you for that statement. I could explain how it works, but honestly this is just a fun game to watch. The explanation is unimportant.
I wonder why the Iowa stopped moving for the Galleon Test. I also wonder how those 6" guns managed to sink a Iowa, when they'd be incapable of penetrating her citadel. Her citadel should be buoyant enough to float the entire ship all by itself.
@@Mrdjs1133 because the game doesn't model armor
@@Mrdjs1133 6" guns would literally have no effect on the Iowa's armor scheme.
The iowa were designed to survive equivalent guns, so a 16" armour piercing shell. And each gun has its own range finder. Durring ww2 they also had AA guns manned on the deck while the main battery was firing, out in the open.
The Iowas were designed to be armored against the type 6 16" shell. That weighed 2,200 lbs. The type 7 "superheavy" 16" shell she actually carried would have defeated her own protection pretty comfortably.
@@Mrdjs1133 That is not entirely true. The Iowa also had an immunity zone vs the 2700lb AP shell, it was just reduced compared to standard US Naval armor scheme practices.
@@SgtTechComRight, that’s part of what made them fast battleships.
@@philsmith2444 Yep.
The Iowas were not really designed to withstand 16" shells, in general thats what you would want to do. But with the Iowa specifically that didn't really work because of size and tonnage limits. So the Iowad resistance to 16" shells is more aspirational then actual.
the wooden deck is not removed before battle its there to absorb splinters from incoming fire and before Air conditioning acted as insulation for decks below. I think it was mainly HMS Rodney after the Bismarck battle that had massive blast damage from her on guns due to the huge number of shells fired. (the Nelson class was notorious for blast damage from there own guns)
You need to come over and tour an Iowa class battleship. You might take out some of the superstructure but you've got to see the armored helm area to appreciate what she's got.
Would love to.
@@grimreapers The Closest one to you is the USS New Jersey in Camden NJ (just across the river from Philly). Just be careful. Camden is a 3rd world dystopian hellhole of a city.
I enjoyed this very much! Thanks! Merry Christmas, Cap
Merry Christmas to you!
CAP: "The Iowa has no top side armor."
REALITY: The Iowa superstructure is armored with up to *nineteen inches* of class B armor.
You could park all the 8 enemy ships right next to the Iowa at a range of 1 mile, and let them fire every round in their magazines, and they'd only do superficial damage to an Iowa.
This is false. The 18" figure refers to the conning tower, which is basically an armored periscope sticking up from the citadel and only big enough to fit a handful of people inside. The vast majority of the ship's superstructure is 1" special treatment steel, and vulnerable to close range 5" fire.
You cannot make a real ship superstructure heavily armored like this, or it will simply roll over.
@@TheFirstIcon "All the systems needed to keep these ship's (Iowa's) combat effective such as magazines, engineering spaces, steering, plotting rooms, command & control, weapons, etc. are protected by heavy armor. The armored box, referred to as the citadel, extends from just forward of Turret 1 to just aft of Turret III. The top, sides and ends of the citadel are heavily armored, however the bottom is not ballistically protected. Critical systems located outside the citadel such as the turrets, conning tower, fire control, directors, etc. are armored extensions of the citadel.
Turret armor is constructed from a combination of Class A and Class B armor and STS plate. The faces of the turrets are 17 inches Class B armor over 2.5 inches STS plate. The side plates are 9.5 inches Class A armor on .75 inch STS plate. The back plates are 12 inches Class A armor and the turret roofs are 7.25 inches Class B armor.
The conning tower is constructed from segments of Class B armor 17.3 inches thick. BB61 is three levels and BB62 on had 2 levels (the flag level was omitted). Roof plates are 7.25 inches Class B and the floor is 4 inches STS. The conning tower is connected to the citadel by a communications tube with a wall thickness of 16 inches of Class B armor."
To summarize:
All critical systems, including those in the superstructure, are part of the armored citidel or an extension of it, and no amount of 5" fire on earth, at any range, is going to compromise the ability of the ship to conduct combat operations.
Even "lightly armored" parts of the ship are incredibly compartmentalized, and are vastly more capable of withstanding/containing damage when compared to any modern warships.
@SgtTechCom I agree with you that the Iowa is one tough beast.
HOWEVER
Being saturated with 5" fire can absolutely affect its combat capabilities. The main battery directors are 1.5" STS and the secondary battery have 1" STS. A 5"/38 can pen 1.5" at 10kyd with AA Common and at 13 kyd with Special Common. The main battery director trunk is also 1.5" STS. The backup optical director atop the conn is 1" STS. None of the radars themselves are armored, only the housings themselves.
With directors and radars gone, control would fall to the local optical systems in Turret II, which I believe can only see 10 miles or so. Less accurate ranging, no blind fire.
Then there's secondary considerations. For the modernized versions, Phalanx is vulnerable to 5" fire, Harpoon canisters would be vulnerable, I suspect the Tomahawk ABLs are less than 1.5" thick, there's even more expensive C3 gear stuffed into the superstructure. For the WW2 Iowas, all of the light AAA was effectively unarmored (15 to 25lb splinter shields), there's a huge tub of avgas at the stern, chewing up the shell plating external to the belt could flood the void sections of the torpedo defense.
None of this is to say that light caliber fire has a chance of sinking the Iowa outright, or even compromising the citadel, just that there are core combat functions that can be degraded without penetrating the deck, belt, or conn.
Of course, these are all essentially "golden BB" type hits, but
1. Aren't they all? Bismarck, mission ended by non-penetrating hit. South Dakota, radar shot clean off, second shot through the director cable harness, etc.
2. For this scenario, a Sverdlov has 12 6" guns, laying down a total of 90 rounds per minute. Assuming each destroyer has 4 guns at 15 rpm each, that's another 420 rounds per minute. The Iowa is easily eating 1000 rounds before it knocks them all down. Something expensive and unarmored is going to go pop. There's a reason you don't take a battleship unescorted into waters where small ships can ambush you like this. This isn't their turf.
@@TheFirstIcon I just quoted the thicknesses and they differ from what you just stated. (for instance the secondary battery turrets are 2.5" STS, not 1.5")
Here is the complete protection scheme:
"Protection
17,056 tons or 35% of displacement:
12.2" (310mm) main belt of Class A armor sloped 19 degrees and backed by 0.75" (19mm) STS
12.2" (310mm) lower belt of Class B armor tapering to 1.62" (44mm) below the waterline, sloped 19 degrees and backed by 0.75" (19mm) STS
1.5" (38mm) outer STS decapping shell
1" (25mm) STS splinter bulkhead behind main belt
5" to 4.75" Class B + 1.25" STS (127mm to 121mm + 32mm) armor deck
0.625" STS upper hull sides
1.5" (38mm) STS bomb deck
0.625" (16mm) STS splinter deck over machinery spaces
1" (25mm) STS magazine crown
1.5" STS magazine sides and machinery bulkheads
11.2" (340mm) Class A bulkheads tapering to 1.75" (44mm)
13.5"/11.3"/4.75" (343mm/287mm/121mm) steering side/rear/crown
17" Class B + 2.5" STS/7.25" Class B/9.5" Class A + 0.75" STS/12" Class A (432mm + 64mm/184mm/241mm + 19mm/305mm) turret front/roof/side/rear
17.3"/14..8"/11.6" (439mm/376mm/295mm) barbette beam/front/rear
*2.5" (64mm) STS secondary battery*
17.3/7.25" (439mm/184mm) Class B conning tower sides/roof
17'11" (5.5m) 4-bulkhead void-void-liquid-liquid torpedo protection with 0.625", lower armor belt, 0.625", and 0.875" (16mm, lower armor belt, 16mm, and 22mm) bulkheads from inboard to outboard, designed to withstand a 700 lb (318 kg) explosive charge and resist underwater shell hits.
Immune zone
17,600 to 31,200 yards (16,100 to 28,500 meters) vs. 16”/45 (406mm) light shell or 23,600 to 27,400 yards (21,600 to 25,000 meters) vs. 16"/50 (406mm) heavy shell.
Below 12,200 feet (3700 meters) vs. 1600 lb (730kg) armor-piercing bomb. "
Source: Pacific War online museum
Also, you have to keep in mind I am specifically talking about a line of sight galleon fight, not a modern "realistic" modern warfare battle.
But the galleon battle in *this specific video*
Interestingly the WWII Iowa would be FAR more formidable in the Galleon fight because of the mass of 40mm Bofors guns she carried. Those would completely wreck a modern unarmed warship in seconds, and they have far more range than a 20mm Phalanx.
You can take out any modern warships electronic systems and most of her weapons and superstructure with Standard missiles using blast frag warheads, the same is true for an 80s refit Iowa.
@SgtTechCom sorry, I was unclear and incorrect - the secondary battery *directors* (mk37) have 1.5" STS, not 1" as I stated
I don't think anything on the table but the Sverdlov has a chance against the actual Mk28 5"/38 turrets
The voice over was classic! Merry Christmas
thx
First main battery salvo was fired at that trawler. Enemy ships were down a relative bearing of 310 or so and the Iowa turned starboard and fired down about a 90 degree relative bearing.
Merry Christmas Cap, great to see you in a good mood!
As others have noted, the conning tower on the Iowa has around 17 inches of armor. So, the effective command of the ship and the location of the primary fire control systems are all extremely well-armored. However, you're absolutely correct when pointing out that a lot of the sensors within the general mast/superstructure area are vulnerable to being destroyed. As sensors are lost, certain aspects of the ship will lose functionality.
However, I believe the fire control systems on the Iowa were very advanced and had redundancies built-in, so the ship being able to fire accurately within Sea Power even after taking damage is likely modeled pretty well.
I'm not too sure the guns it was facing in this video were powerful enough to cause enough damage to sink the ship directly (as shown in the second of three rounds), and it would likely require a pretty rare/lucky hit to penetrate an area with relatively thin armor to actually ignite a secondary magazine (for a 5" gun) that may result in enough damage to sink her. But then we're getting into really complex territory, beyond Sea Power's damage model.
If you want to explore WWI and WWII ship battles with a really high level of fidelity and tactics, there is a game out there for you. It's called "Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts." I've played it quite a bit in the past. It has historical ship designs from all major WWII combatants, a custom ship builder, and campaign mode. The WWII-era tactics are all there to play around with. The amount of customization, upgrades, custom shipbuilder, and overall level of features is pretty insane. You can select different types of shells, powder, fuses, and armor levels for each area of the ship. You can select and customize all types of guns from under 1" to something like 24" and then adjust the caliber as well.
WW2 fire control directors were armoured like a turret, or at least a small turret, so they'd be less vulnerable to blast damage. Additionally, at least the main battery guns I believe have their own rangefinders and maybe rudimentary fire control computers themselves so they can still be used effectively in local control.
Unless theres some update the largest caliber you can get is 20.9 inch
@@Meloniumkavain2 My bad; haven't played in quite awhile.
@taiko1237 The directors were high up in the ship for visibility reasons. For any item high up in a ship, weight is critical for stability reasons. I believe most directors used in WW2 designs had armor of 1" to 1.5" thickness, which can handle blast and a little bit of splinter damage, but is very susceptible to a direct hit or nearby explosion.
The turret directors were better armored, but were of course much lower. They can only see about 12-15,000yd even in clear conditions.
@@TheFirstIcon "A conning tower is a raised platform on a ship or submarine, often armoured, from which an officer in charge can conn (conduct or control) the vessel, controlling movements of the ship by giving orders to those responsible for the ship's engine, rudder, lines, and ground tackle. It is usually located as high on the ship as is practical, to give the conning team good visibility of the entirety of the ship, ocean conditions, and other vessels.
On Iowa-class battleships, the conning tower is a 439-millimetre (17.3 in) thick vertical armour-plated cylinder with slit windows located in the middle of the bridge, climbing from the 03 level all the way up to the flying bridge on the 05 level."
It is my understanding that the Iowa's various fire control systems, which were large complex machines per their WWII origins (I believe they were complimented by more modern equipment in the 1980's, but not entirely replaced), were well within the interior of the ship and protected by substantial armor.
Then, during battles, communication between the fire control systems, captain, gun/turret teams, navigation, and so on, was communicated between the heavily armored conning tower and other heavily armored areas of the ship where those aforementioned systems/personnel were located.
In the 1980's, I don't see how they would be able to adequately armor more modern radar capabilities, but I also suspect that's why they didn't gut the WWII era fire control systems, as they could still rely on those to be much more survivable and still result in accurate fire.
On modern Burke destroyers, with their powerful radars placed on the front and sides of the ship just below the bridge, I wonder if a single HARM getting through is adequate to cripple that specific destroyer.
Luckily, the US is implementing the IBCS relatively soon, which is essentially a universal datalink, described as a network of sensors from virtually all military assets that is agnostic regarding which sensor is used and then selects the best shooter/munition to carry out an attack. Basically, take everything from the radar on a small Coast Guard cutter to dozens of small ISR drones flying in various locations to every sensor on every ship, aircraft, and ground vehicle, all being fed to one network. Then, they can use that network to select which military asset is best suited to attack the detected enemy target.
Merry Christmas.
Canada 🇨🇦 Army Veteran 🎅
Merry Christmas Everyone!
It'd be interesting to see in the code how the game handles armor. I suspect "for balancing" that armor is not modeled correctly but is rather modeled like hit points. In fact if some shells or missiles are defeated by armor the protected systems and armor should take no damage. EG there is no way even at point blank range that a 5 in shell can damage the main battery on an Iowa because all the critical systems are under armor that would reject the shell without damage. Fire control sure, but the guns them selves or the engines, no.
It doesn't. There is no armor in Sea Power.
@@SgtTechCom That would explain some oddities in how the game behaves. to be sure the real ships have very thick armor in places.
@@nathand.9969 There is no place on an Iowa's armored citadel that could be defeated by any of the guns on the opposing fleet. Not anywhere. Not even after 1000 hits.
You should check out Ultimate Admiral Dreadnaughts. Its focused on the pre WW1 to shortly post WW2 period. Lots of customization and very good battle controls/simulation.
This is tempting.
I've got 2k hours in UAD and can confirm it's a bit of fun.
@@TheCaptainbeefylog Imagine where you'd be in life if you didn't waste your life playing video games. (and not just you, but lots of us)
@@SgtTechCom that'd probably require me having something to live for/want to achieve.
@@TheCaptainbeefylog You should work on that. Why not join the navy and serve on a real warship?
Why not get into engineering and design the next generation of warships?
The world is your oyster. You just have to open your mouth.
Cap there is a WWII destroyer game, it's called Destroyer: The U-Boat Hunter
Thanks
A bit of trivia…. The USS Iowa (first in her class) had the better battle/campaign record and was slated by the Navy to have the Japanese surrender sign on her aft deck. But, then President Truman was from Missouri and so the surrender was sign on the aft deck of the USS Missouri.
"When you've got a longer reach than the other fellow, why get in close?"
The only thing this showed, is that when it comes to old-fashioned gun battles, and factoring in shell penetration, armor, and size of gun, is that Sea Power is completely unrealistic.
This. Warthunder is more realistic than this.
Me when the side I wanted to win loses:
Yeah. IIIRC, every shell in the game has an armor pen value of "Always," meaning that every shell that was hitting the Iowa was penning it.
@@tetraxis3011 Sorry tankie but 5 inch guns are absolutely meaningless to an Iowa.
@@TheNerdForAllSeasonsStop acting childish.
Battleships were built to stand against ships of their own size. Iowas were built to take on Yamato. Their superstructures were splinter protected, except for the armoured conning tower. The Iowas as built was protected against their own gun muzzle blast. Later added systems (radars, tomahawk, CIWS etc) were vulnerable to blast damage.
16 inch shells had a muzzle velocity of 2500 to 2690 feet / second, meaning that at maximum range, shell flight time was about 90 seconds.
Finally, thanks for not saying the ship blew itself 9ft sideways every time it fired. It didn't.
Really enjoyed this one- your early commentary and information, and the multiple runs under changing scenarios. Thanks man.
HE 16" landing near these thin skinned boats would buckle the hull plating.
Merry Christmas to you and your family Cap.
Good fun as always, Sea Power suits the channel well!
Cap, your point about the repairability of the US vs Soviet equipment is spot on. But you should also mention, Soviet doctrine did not allow for enlisted to be trained in the ability to repair and operate systems without direct oversight of of an officer. Most technical work was undertaken by officers only, as it was believed that enlisted knowing how to operate the equipment was far too much of a liability for mutiny. Much the same as Soviet battlefield doctrine did not permit independent flexibility outside of direct officer control.
It would be really cool to possibly see a tactical version of this fight with torpedo armed destroyers (or the most similar thing you can find) using either WW2 or just after WW2 tactics for fighting heavy capital ships, with you in command of the destroyers and doing your best to do the unenviable task of putting a hole in the Iowa’s side with whatever you’ve got available excluding missiles :)
The conning tower will keep the command staff safe and the main battery range finders are armored well enough to defend against 152mm.
Thanks cap I enjoyed watching Iowa smash things
See Cap? Told ya that a big battleship, guns only death match would be a fun video :) Thanks for making it and Merry Christmas!!
Roger got a cool follow up also.
Enjoyed the education at the beginning, fun video.
Well everything you talked about when it came to battleships applied to the dreadnoughts of the World War 1 era and have absolutely nothing to do with modern battleships that were built from the 1930s on period which would include the Iowa class the North Carolina class and such
As much fun as I had watching this, Cap it seems you had much more.
The teak decking was also a critical insulation piece as the sun beating down on a steal deck will cook the levels below.
FYI, a night-time gun battle is immensely satisfying visually. There are also American Gearing class destroyers, but which feature 5-inch guns.
Thanks and thanks.
I sure appreciate how creative you are in coming up with these scenarios, Cap. And yes, there's indeed something magical about the Iowa's. They sure capture the imagination!
Thanks for your entertainment Cap and hope you have a lovely relaxing time with your family!
Nice to see you having a good time Cap. A couple of (possibly) interesting snippets from the freshman physics textbook: (i) You can get the approximate distance to the horizon in km by taking the height above sea level in m, multiplying by 12, and taking the square root. So for a 150 foot mast, that's about 50 m, times 12 is 600, square root of that is about 24. (ii) For any ballistic projectile, someone sitting right on its target will see the angular elevation of the projectile uniformly increase. (Neglecting air resistance.) That's all from me, merry christmas!
AMazing thanks!
Great video as always Cap.
It's a shame the HMS Vanguard isn't in the game (at least I don't think it is). Especially since it was in service until 1960. Would've been a nice ship to have against the Iowa!
Something you could do with those RN destroyers is show how Sub hunting would happen in WW2 compared to what it's like today. Obviously wait until you're comfortable with ASW (looks like you're getting the hang of it!) and idk if any WW2 era subs are in game, but it would be fun. I like the WW2 destroyer squadron idea. Especially if you look at the 1st & 2nd Battle of Narvik for inspiration!
Watching Cap have way too much fun is... Way too much fun.
We’ve had this discussion before and - in the end- it’s academic; but while I can see 6” or 5” shot taking out radars and such, I don’t see anything smaller than 14” shell sinking the Iowa or even penetrating the magazine armor. They were designed to sustain hits from 16” shells in the hull, turret and magazines…and prevent penetration at range
Right the worst they could do would be to set fires maybe, but they are not getting through the citadel armor.
i wish the game had Des Moines class cruisers
Merry Christmas from Australia! Up trying to catch Santa coming down the chimney and this popped up. What a bonus!
@31:34 a 16inch shell evaporates a life boat and all you see is orange shreds and red mist
Based on how much fun you had, I'll guess that your meds are at a good therapeutic level......
Also, to add to Cap's point for having the engineers to be able to fix your weapon systems. It's also having the parts to fix them too! If every ship in the fleet is using the same things then it's easy to have the parts available. Also, if something is broken in a ship on a battle group you can grab extra parts on another ship to fix yours. You end up being in a better ready state. And if you find something that needs to be upgraded, everyone is the same so the upgrade is equal to everyone. That's how the harpoon has been upgraded so much and is still around while the Russian stuff needs to be re-designed form the ground up. Same with the Aim-120.
I agree, it’s why the Russians have been standardizing their anti-ship weapons for the past 20 years. They learned from their USSR days it seems. That being said, I don’t really buy into the idea that the Soviets didn’t have a team of engineers on board each ship that specialized in the weapons on board, in the event something went wrong, and I obviously don’t buy into the ridiculous idea they would send out their ships from port without checking their weaponry and ensuring it was operational, as no historical evidence points to this being a thing, (which kinda highlights Cap’s gullibility), but I do agree not having a standardized system for each missile-carrying ship can cause issues and it creates a lack of redundancy.
@ yeah, I mean I would prefer to assume that they did have the engineers and parts at least on the ship. At least at the height of the union. Not too sure about near the collapse. Honestly better to assume your rival is at peak performance and that way you don’t get sucker punched. Better have an easy fight that you over prepared.
@@LuisVasquezMusic Precisely, and it applies to current-day Russia. We’ve seen demonstrations of their most newest weapons, especially one of their newest IRBM’s, Oreshink, and, even if those may not work 100% of the time.. I sure as hell would not want to underestimate them and end up being on the receiving end of those things. Russian missile technology in general is quite scary.
You should read the report on the sinking of the moscova. The biggest reason was it didn't have its are search Radars on at the time of the attack by the ukrainians. And the reason it didn't is because their are search radar would interfere with your communications. Which means they were basically defenseless. The other reason being is corruption. They sold spare parts they had a conscript Navy for the most part and yeah. Basically these Russian ships were great the day they set sail but for every year they were in service they became less and less effective😂😂
Merry Christmas, Cap!
If you want some fun hunting WW2 subs in a destroyer then take a look at Destroyer: U-Boat Hunter. You have full control over a destroyer and have to plot out how to defend a convoy from subs.
As a kid my favorite game was 1986's Destroyer (on Apple IIGS). Although playing it at a friend's house without the manual was ... challenging.
The Iowa's guns were .65 MOA IIRC. Incredibly accurate
Radar gives you a pretty accurate reading of distance to target, bearing, and speed. Those are critical for the firing computer to get an accurate solution. It is already taking inputs of its own speed, bearing, pitch and roll. Once that analog computer scrunches those inputs the gun can fire. My brother in law was in charge of the Missouri's 16" turrets. He said the only other thing they could add to make more accuracy was a barrel temperature input. That corrected for barrel deformation as it fired. Pretty neat stuff.
Merry Christmas, Cap. I hope you and your family have a nice holiday.
"The most fun you can have with your pants on" ...... marvellous quote!! 😂
The “future” Iowa class mod (Iowa 21) is amazing. VLS launchers, improved CWIS setup, defensive ECM. I put it against 4 Kirovs at 50 miles and it didn’t take a single hit while sinking all the Kirovs. Against 6 Kirovs it sank 4 before slipping beneath the waves.
Battle of Samar. Murican destroyer escorts zig zagged every 30 seconds as they charged the Japanese cruisers and battle wagons to get within torpedo range. Flank speed
Nice video Cap, I tried myself a battle against 10 Sverdlov and won. I survived the hits and they eventually ran out of ammo.
Cool
Watch the New Jersey channel for more info on the Iowa class and the fire control redundancy. Ryan Z over there has gone over it quite extensively. Going from memory here, so I might be slightly off on the details: 2 main battery directors. 4 secondary directors. 2 main battery (mechanical) plotting computers. Multiple secondary battery (mechanical) plotting computers. Turret 2 with the extra range finder. Each main battery turret with its own plotting computer. All can be interlinked in various combinations - so should SHTF and both main battery directors are knocked out a secondary director can control the main battery if it had to, for example. The cables from the directors down into the citadel are in armored trunks for battle damage resistance. As a last resort each main turret can fire independently under local control.
As for the decks - yes, they're wood covered over the weather deck. Ryan says that's basically insulation so the steel is neither roasted under the sun or frozen in ice in the north Atlantic. The weather deck isn't the main armored deck. The armored deck is set lower down to tie in with the top edge of the belt and top edge of the transverse bulkhead armor to form the complete armored citadel. Wouldn't want a shell coming in from the side to sneak in under the armored deck and above the belt, as could be possible if those two weren't tied together. That said, the Iowa class were, as Ryan Z point out, "gold plated" in that most of the hull plating and weather deck was made from STS, basically a homogenous grade (vs the belt face hardened) armor plate. So the deck armor is really multi layer (the weather deck being thick enough to initiate aerial bomb fuses for example), although the main armored deck is quite robust (I forget the exact number, 4 or 5 inches - I was impressed seeing the plug style open hatches through that deck when I toured Missouri in Pearl Harbor a few years back).
Cap hasn't been this excited since riding in that WW2 war bird.
So excited that I was immediately sick...
Merry Christmas cap!!
9:25 hey cap, if you click on the little circle i in the upper right hand corner of the box that comes up when you hover over a weapon, it will tell you more about it, including minimum and maximum ranges.
thx
In naval battles of old, determining the range to a target was much more difficult than the direction, so when you could precisely determine the range with radar, the enemy are in serious trouble. As I recall you had a DCS video where ships were shooting in a controlled environment and the shells landed in a long line with the target in the middle, but 90% of the shells landed hundreds of yards away, either short or long.
I've toured the USS Iowa at Long Beach. I remember areas of the ship having ridiculously thick armor on areas of the super structure.
Thanks yeh, that's my bad.
@grimreapers if you get the opportunity, you should take a tour of an Iowa class battleship. They're interesting.
My god, the amount of fun you had doing this.
31:32 Geneva convention violation
That was brutal!
Brutal, yes, but not a violation because it wasn’t targeted intentionally, if you could tell that other ship was doing recovery operations then targeting that ship would have been a violation, but since it wasn’t doing recovery, she was a valid target and the life raft was just unfortunate collateral.
Great job! But I wish you would show more of the impact sides of the ships so we can see exactly where the shells hitting
OK will try to remember.
This was a lot of fun to watch. Thanks!
You might try playing around with ultimate admiral dreadnoughts if you are interested in making some WW2 style content
Would love to see ww1 and ww2 packs added to this. I think this is a much better simulation for ships for some of the scenarios you have done in the past.
They're wanting to bring the battleships back. 16inch guns are too limited on range. But I read Iowa class holds about 1200 shells. I'd want to convert it with 1200 missiles. That would be pretty good. Probably need to convert to nuclear power also. Then the new Iowa missle class with an aircraft carrier would be pretty awesome.
Toured Missouri and Iowa. Amazing experience.
I'd love to see a collaboration between you and The Mighty Jingles! I think it would be a very fun conversation, the man knows his Naval stuff
Cap, there IS in fact a 1940s Fletcher class DD sim which I believe mainly focuses on anti U-boat tactics in the atlantic. it's available on steam, it's called Destroyer: The U-Boat Hunter.
thx
Imagine being a sailor, you survived a 16 inch shell you your ship, you manage to get aboard a life raft...Only for another ship to come along side you and another shell lands like 6 feet from your lifeboat....
31:35 the explosion heaves a lifeboat into the air and shreds it!
Great Job, Cap! I always enjoy your videos. Maybe one more gun fight to end all straight up gun fights. Sverdlov versus Iowa. Mother of all Cold War ship on ship gun/galleon fights.
14:10 Before battle they would chop up the wooden deck and throw it over the side? I'll have to see the reference for that, as if something like that was said I think you misunderstood it. That was never done. For one thing, it would take days to do and would leave the deck dangerous to walk on. Yes, if the guns were fired with their muzzles directly over the deck it could do some damage. No, they did not remove breakables before battle. If it broke, they fixed it afterwards. They did not preemptively go all hands on deck so that they could damage their ships right before a fight.
As per this book: www.worldofbooks.com/en-gb/products/castles-of-steel-book-robert-k-massie-9780099523789?sku=GOR002169205&gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQiA1Km7BhC9ARIsAFZfEIuGaxBzss01qDv8U72SwzR6eNJhF4A2zbm0KdPz3U0N74FYlD_UiecaAkSaEALw_wcB
@@grimreapers Oops. No superfiring turrets forward on Seydlitz.
@@grimreapersyeah and that was accurate for the dreadnought. Of battleships. But the modern battleships that were built in the 1930s and early forties that does not apply to. They were designed and their systems were much much improved over the early dreadnoughts. Basically everything from the North Carolina class and the Iowa class including the German equivalents and Japanese equivalents were much more modernized and didn't suffer damage from firing their guns
When i was in the navy they told us during training in boot camp how the Japanese battleships were ineffective against the naval fleet in leyte gulf. The Japanese battleships were expecting to fight against battleships but they engaged tin cans aka destroyers and escorts. The issue they had is their round never exploded because the hulls of the ships didn't trigger the explosion. Their rounds went right through the hull. It left a huge hole but didn't sink the ship even after many hits from their guns.
Cool vid. I'm going to have to give that a try.
I set up a Galleon battle between two Iowas and 6 Sverdlovs. The first time both Iowas were sunk and so were most Sverdlovs. Somehow I managed to get it to all the Sverdlovs sinking and on fire and One Iowa badly damaged/sinking.
This is a fun game.
Cap, if you want a game about captaining a WW2 destroyer and hunting subs, check out Destroyer: The U-Boat Hunter. It's crazy hard. You have to use the old systems to track and target subs based off sonar contacts.
Brill thx.
Merry Christmas Cap. Enjoy the wife, baby, new house and mx5 (and the piles of YT money)
I really want to work on the Mx-5, but I had to start storing the YT money in the workshop as my house is now full of it :(
That Russian Cruiser is so cool.
Edit: despite the missile variants in ships, during the Soviet Era, maintenance issues were uncommon, as the Soviets spent ALOT of money to make sure they did work. The maintenance issues only became common after the collapse of the USSR.
You want War On The Sea for WW2 naval battles.
I am not sure its been mentioned but the range finder at the top is visual and it would add more information as to which targets got hit to fire control. Also the American BB's were the only ones believe that could fire while turning. They were equipped with a mechanical computer that was quite amazing for plotting fire on targets.
My grandfather was a coxswain on the USS Rainier in WW2. She was an ammunition ship. He said the whole ship made it through the war without so much as a scratch, but they were always puckering their booty holes everyone the Japanese attacked because they were riding along in essentially a huge boom boom. He told us about transferring those monster shells across to the big battleships with steel cables and nets.
....and by design, a lot of our parts were off the shelf components from other military equipment. We carried a lot of spare components for my system, and a majority were easily field replaceable cards/ modules. One of my favorite things was the fact that the main CPU was the same one used in an M1(?) tank. All the other boxes in the rack were gray and opened by taking out about 12 screws while the CPU had about 60 screws, was black, and weighed a ton (not literally).
Look up iowa class battleship armored citadel, it can still fight. 17 inches of protection
I would think the Iowa would simply maintain distance and sail away at flank speed to use it's aft turret to pick off the strongest one at a time.
Yeh that's what it did in the 30 miles battle.
@@scottdelorenzi3513 A better idea would be to cross the T of the Red ships, allowing her to bring her whole broadside to bear but limiting them to what they could fire over their bows.
Merry Christmas to us!!
Modularity was absolutely a thing. I remember swapping for parts with entirely different classes of ships when things went down.
They also chopped the Crommelin in half when I was on her and swapped in an entire new aft section when we upgraded to RAST and towed array. Pretty cool..
in the short range fight you let the AI fire the IOWA when you should have manually picked the Sverdlov to target first....IOWA class is def modelled with wrong armour as even the 6"should do little damage, nothing there can damage the turrets or armoured areas
If it came down to local fire control of the turrets, it wouldn't be just "a guy with binoculars". The "ears" on the back of B and C turrets are optical rangefinders with greater separation between their left- and right-side viewers than the optical equipment up on the towers.
Further thoughts on battle commence but before first hits: Moving at a nice 19knots in a straight line the fleet are sitting ducks. If the Iowa doesn't take the Cruiser out first, she will go for it the moment the Cruiser opens fire - so around 15miles. When that's gone, the Brits are next. The fleet would surely be changing speed and direction regularly just to fox the radar/gunners and at least reach the Iowa to open fire.
23:54
I would love that too, my grandpa served on a destroyer. USS COWELL. He was a signalman/AA gunner credited with (at least) 2 kills.
The sverdlov in the Game should BE in a 1980s configuration i think
I have read that the teak decking was hard enough to make AP shells explode prior to penetrating the actual armor deck below. They definitely did not tear up the wooden deck each time they went into battle.
As efficient missiles might be, they are just not as fun, or terrorizing as those BIG guns. Enjoyed the heck out of that.
Of all the battles that you have fought so far, this was by far the most unrealistic. The Iowa would *literally* take every single round from the enemy fleet on the chin and suffer no more than superficial topside and sensor damage. The 16" guns fire directors are heavily armored, and even if the fire control turrets got taken out each turret is mainually aimable with it's own range finders (the wings on the turrets).
Clearly sea power has not modeled armor *at all*