Could olden day cannons penetrate a modern USA destroyer or carrier?

Factual Questions
21

As surprising as it may seem, 20th & 21st Century navies have thought of the idea that personnel on deck are at risk from small arms fire. Or the 18th century equivalent, cannon grapeshot.

In combat nowadays, essentially nobody is outside on deck. They’re almost all inside the ship or inside some semi-protected area.

If the OP’s sailing ships truly caught the modern guys unawares, maybe having a barbeque on the back deck with the sailor’s families on board for the afternoon there might be a small opportunity to take a few scalps that way.

But once even a destroyer unlimbers its main gun any comparably sized ship not built in the last 20-30 years is doomed.
I can’t fathom (:)) the thought process that would suspect such a combat going any other way.

22

Well there is one point, the old ships of the line were designed to take a pounding, modern ships are not, they expect to survive by not being hit. HMS Victory broadside was several tonnes so if she does get a single broadside off at an Burke, at point blank rangethat ship is in for a very lousy few months in dry dock being repaired. The Victory will shortly be dead of course, but still

23

Hell no … I deleted the part about how I’d take over the destroyer and open the stop-cocks or whatever those things are called on the bottom of a ship … me and my top-less beauties would be unstoppable until they started stockpiling enough penicillin on board …

… oh … sorry …

24

Modern destroyer type ships are absolutely less well protected than Civil War ironclads, at keeping projectiles out. Their ability to fight flooding, fires, have redundancy in their key systems is far superior. But as far as keeping out round shot from smoothbore cannon, surprising or not, no.

See post above. This quite far fetched, as stated, question can still be related to known weapons tests. Ie, when wrought iron armor was introduced on ships in the 1850’s-60’s navies tested existing heavy guns against it. Some tests found 4" of wrought iron could be damaged or even penetrated by 32pdr solid shot at close range. Ships of the line of the 18th century (not so much the 17th as mentioned) had 32~36 pdr’s for their lower deck batteries. And wrought iron while not equal to modern high strength steel is not far weaker, and the sides of current destroyer type ships are at most around 1" of high strength steel, providing protection only against fragments. So some shots which just dented and cracked the sides of CW ironclads would probably go through the sides of modern destroyers. And there might be machinery, piping, cables etc close enough behind that the shot still had enough energy to wreck them, besides causing flooding in hits near the waterline. Again, if firing at an aircraft carrier the problem would be lots of spaces and bulkheads in between the side of the side and anything vital. In a DDG more vital stuff would be closer to the ship’s side.

But the question isn’t entirely ridiculous if we just shorten the time scope somewhat, over periods where the relevant technologies didn’t change dramatically. Smoothbore guns were still used in coastal defenses in the US until the turn of the 19th/20th centuries. Modern steel rifled mortars and cannon firing HE and AP steel shells from concrete emplacements were funded from the early 1890’s, but didn’t replace all the obsolete (15" Rodman type guns of ACW vintage, a 32 pdr was 6.4" bore, so admittedly much bigger guns) smoothbores until just after the turn of the century. Many smoothbores were still around in say the 1890’s, like in Spanish coast defenses USN ships mainly avoided in the 1898 war. And lightly/unarmored late 19th/early 20th century warships were not totally different as targets than modern ones (they were steam ships and any serious hit to a steam engine room tends to wreak havoc at least to one shaft of the ship’s propulsion, history seems to show; OTOH today’s USN ‘destroyers’ are ~9000 ton ships as big as some pretty well armored cruisers ca. 1900).

So, whether obsolete smoothbore coast defense guns could damage ‘modern’ (ie steel, steam) warships wasn’t a ridiculous question at a certain point in the transition. The main problem was or would have been getting the modern warships to close within the smoothbores’ limited range. And that’s what renders the question trivial in this case, modern warships engaging sailing warships would never come within the lethal range of sailing ships’ guns and sailing ships, being only marginally more mobile than shore batteries as compared to modern warships, couldn’t do anything about that.

25

I confess to being a little dissapointed. This being GQ’s I expected someone to come up with the kinetic energy in a 36lb iron ball. compared to the resistance of the steel on the side of a modern warship.

I was just reading an account of 18th/19th century British naval gunnery, which seems not to have been quite as good as is generally thought, since most gun crews were well practiced at running the guns in and out, but had very little experience of actually firing them.

One point made, was that at close quarters, a ball would do less damage because it went straight through the wooden sides; at greater distances, the timber shattered and splinters were the biggest cause of injury. When Nelson got near Bucentaure, they would have been double or triple shotting the cannon. This had the effect of reducing velocity and causing a great deal more damage to timber and crew.

26

bob++: And then there’s the carronade, with a shorter barrel and less range, but a much heavier round. Hell of a trade-off! The British were sluggers, they were!

(If Napoleon hadn’t been keeping them busy, they would’a annihilated us in the War of 1812!)

27

I guess if that was really necessary. :slight_smile: But it’s not. Look at first link, from the 1880’s quoting previous tests including smoothbores v. armor. A 32 pounder at 100 yds ‘sank deep but not through’ 4" of ‘iron’ (meaning wrought iron, the kind used as armor at the time).

The side shell of a modern destroyer type ship is max 1" (public references used to refer to 1" splinter protection on the sides of CG-47 class ships, technically ‘cruisers’ but it’s a type directly developed from the DD-963 destroyers, there are no real cruisers in the USN anymore). The side shells of DDG-51’s are thinner than that*. And the yield strength of HSLA-80 steel is only around 40% more than wrought iron, not many times as much.

So put those things together, even give or take some for the quality of smoothbore guns and round shot in the 19th century v earlier, and the side shell of a modern destroyer is not going to stop 32 pdr shot with full charge at close range.

Again to try to bring this to some realistic point, the protection of modern warships is based on anti-fragment protection particularly on key spaces and items of equipment, using steel and non-steel armor, plus hull subdivision, system redundancy and damage control capability. It’s simply not based on keeping out large projectiles along long continuous portions of the side/waterline as in late 19th-mid 20th century armored warships. Not even keeping out big smoothbore shot, in the unrealistic case of having to face it.

pg. 206 Papers on Subjects Connected with the Duties of the Corps of Royal Engineers ... - Great Britain. Corps of Royal Engineers - Google Books

*examples in this paper of 3/8" and 7/16" side shell plating in earlier classes
http://www.shipstructure.org/pdf/364.pdf

28

So: USS Arleigh Burke is in a US port with a low threat level and its radar systems are down for an upgrade. There is thick fog and most of the crew are on shore leave anyway, so no one sees a Royal Navy First Rater that has been magically transported from 1811 and is still fighting the war.

When the US crew finally see the three decker ghosting up alongside they are too late to do anything about the broadside that is coming their way; 60 32 lb iron balls fired through 11 foot barrels by 18lbs of fine ground black powder; most hitting just above the waterline. I think that the modern ship would not survive the encounter.

29

The “in port” part throws me, so I don’t know if Burke is tied up, or if it’s underway.

Unless you knock the engineering plant off line, Burke is just going to sail away, and repair any damage. Burke is a somewhat tall ship, so shortly all of it’s small arms will be railing down small arms munitions on the Brits. At some point, Burke is going to get far enough away to train it’s 5" gun on them and then it’s game over.

30

Stipulating a very surprised peacetime (but fully crewed and supplied) destroyer with a triple-decker (say HMS Victory) at point-plank range. It doesn’t seem unreasonable that it would take the destroyer 4-5 minutes to get a response going, and then another 5 minutes to get moving. That’s like 5 to 6 broadsides for a crack crew, or 3 tons of iron (for a triple decker) smashing into and mostly through the destroyers’ hull. I doubt it would immediately render the destroyer inoperative, but it seems there’s a decent chance for enough hull damage to cause uncontrollable flooding and eventual sinking.
If the destroyer can get a couple of even .50 cals on the triple-decker, they’ll return the favor, of course (with both ships gently settling to the bottom).

It’s hard to imagine the *Victory *surviving, unless the destroyer is some strange variant with no small guns at all.
I’m just saying it seems plausible to imagine the destroyer going down (slowly) too.

31

So, 100 cannonballs hitting the DD? It would sink. The balls could easily penetrate. The Brits could get several broadsides off before the DD could respond.

32

One point to consider is that modern ships are just plain bigger. Even if you do manage to make some holes at the waterline, it’s going to take a long time for those holes to fill the ship up with water. And meanwhile, you’ve got damage control details working to patch up those holes, and pumps bailing out the water. I wouldn’t be surprised if, after the sailing ship is reduced to flinders, the destroyer were still able to limp home to port under its own power (and then be out of commission for a while for proper repairs).

33

The modern destroyer could probably ram a wooden boat like that and utterly destroy it with minimal damage to itself.

Hell, just roar past them at 30 knots and watch your wake scramble them.

Blow a hole at the waterline with your 25mm or even a burst of .50 cal. Then ignore them.

Hell, a destroyer could probably smoke cannister the fleet then send out small boats filled with marines to take them one by one.

34

The wood on such a First rater is about 2 feet thick, solid seasoned oak. Nope.

Altho the Arleigh Burke is 4 times as heavy and twice as long, it’s wake couldnt do much. The .50 wouldnt penetrate the wood.

but again, the Op presents the Arleigh Burke being surprised by the HMS Victory (My pick)

35

Sorry, not accurate. A couple of quotes I found on research;

“Nota bene. FMJ 308/30-06 penetrates 20 inches solid white pine at 200 yards.”

.223 went through 8 2x4s. Or about 14" of wood.

And another;

It really depends on the specific ammo you’re using, how far away you shoot it from, and how many times you hit it in a given spot; the “Improvised Munitions Handbook” gives the following figures for a BALL round, fired from 10 feet away:
Mild Steel - 3/4"
Aluminium - 2"
Pine Wood - 32"
Gravel - 11"
Dry Sand - 14"

36

what does that have to do with a destroyer ramming?:confused:

37

Whether the gun fire penetrates the hull or not may not make any difference if the gun fire sets the hull on fire …

Mythbusters {YouTube - 2’59"}

If we can mount an M-134D Gatling Gun on a jeep … we can mount one on a modern destroyer …

38

HMS Victory was about *6000 *tonnes at normal load. A Burke will be badly damaged in such a collision.

[QUOTE=Chimera]
Sorry, not accurate. A couple of quotes I found on research;

“Nota bene. FMJ 308/30-06 penetrates 20 inches solid white pine at 200 yards.”

.223 went through 8 2x4s. Or about 14" of wood.

And another;

It really depends on the specific ammo you’re using, how far away you shoot it from, and how many times you hit it in a given spot; the “Improvised Munitions Handbook” gives the following figures for a BALL round, fired from 10 feet away:
Mild Steel - 3/4"
Aluminium - 2"
Pine Wood - 32"
Gravel - 11"
Dry Sand - 14"

[/QUOTE]

What kind of Ammo does the 5’/62’’ gun of the Burke pack. Machine guns have a good chance of being knocked out, at least on the side which took the broadsides. In real life the exploding shell was the weapon which finally finished the reign of the wooden-hulled ships since it would penetrate the timber and explode, causing wholesale destruction.

While, the rifles and machine guns could probably penetrate Victory’s hull, that matters little, these ships were designed to take (and did take) obscene amounts of pounding and survive, at Trafalgar one of her masts was shot off. You need either a hit in the magazine stores, a fire or something which causes quick and catastrophic hull damage.

39

With a machine gun, you’re pretty much talking about a hit in the everything.

40

Just an observation, SF writers Eric Flint/Dave Weber wrote about a naval battle between ships from the 1600’s and ships built on a Civil-War level of technology (it’s a SF thing, time-travel and all that). It did not end well for the older vessels. (Book is 1634: The Baltic War if anyone is interested).

I would also note that folks are promoting the ships to 18th/19th levels of technology, while the OP is talking about 1625 or so. Ships were much small and much less heavily armed at that time (HMS Victory could have whipped almost any 1620’s Navy all by itself) along with generally smaller guns and longer load times. So even in the best instance (surprise at docks), the 1600’s ship is only going to be firing a broadside of 30 or 35 guns, and half of them will be lighter (12 and 18-pounders) weapons for clearing an enemy’s decks or damaging his sails.

So yeah, they could inflict some damage, but not a lot and they would be dead meat soon enough.

As for HMS Victory, I’ve actually seen her in person (visit Portsmouth Harbor, England if you get a chance) and the one thing you notice is how small she is, compared to even ‘light’ warships today. Per Wikipedia, HMS Victory is 228 feet long, 52 feet abeam, and has a draft of 29 feet. An Arleigh Burke is 505 feet long, 66 feet abeam, and has a draft of 31 feet.

And it has a rated broadside (again per Wikipedia) of 15 32-pounders, 14 24-pounders, 22 12-pounders and a 68-pound carronade. That equals about 1,150 pounds of shot per broadside, and those 12-pound balls are unlikely to get through even the thin armor of a modern-day ship (IMHO…I’m willing to be proved wrong).

So yes, in a absolute surprise at a range of less than 50 yards, the Victory (provided it’s guns were already loaded), could probably inflict some damage and with a battle-tested crew could probably get off a broadside every 90 seconds or so (number came from this site: http://www.hms-victory.com/things-to-see/original-gun), but except for the carronade getting a Golden BB shot, I don’t see how it could do enough damage before the 5" gun was manned and blew a hole in her bottom.

IMHO as always. YMMV.