# Do we still put armor on our warships? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 19, 2004, 4:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-still-put-armor-on-our-warships/245914 "2004-05-19T04:01:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Incubus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c68b51/32.png) [@Incubus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Incubus)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2004, 1:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-still-put-armor-on-our-warships/245914/21 "2004-05-19T13:44:36Z")
But how could a battleship, _bristling_ with antiaircraft guns be so susceptable to enemy aircraft? Why can’t it shoot down the planes that are attacking it? ---
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2004, 2:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-still-put-armor-on-our-warships/245914/22 "2004-05-19T14:14:10Z")
> [@Incubus](#): > > But how could a battleship, _bristling_ with antiaircraft guns be so susceptable to enemy aircraft? Why can’t it shoot down the planes that are attacking it? for starters, at the begining, & well into the middle of the war, they _weren’t_ bristling with AA guns. The Admirals severely underestimated the effectiveness of Air Power vs ships, & depended too much on armor. When the crunch came, & the balloon went up, the Battleships were caught short. Later, they were retrofitted with more AA guns, but by then, the casualties were so great… Also, the style of Naval Warfare had changed. The Battleships were designed for great, decisive engagements, naval battles that could decide the war in one fight. These never materialized. Even if the envisioned great battles at sea _had_ taken place, the surviving fleet could never have approached the enemy homeland, due to defending heavy bombers. The Atomic Bomb sealed the fate of battleships. Big, slow targets, they were expensive enough to justify an a-bomb, but couldn’t launch defending aircraft the way a carrier could. ---
**Author:** ![Gunslinger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/4491bb/32.png) [@Gunslinger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gunslinger)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2004, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-still-put-armor-on-our-warships/245914/23 "2004-05-19T14:26:52Z")
> [@smiling bandit](#): > > That’s unfair. The problem with battlehips was that they could not longer adequately hit thr enemy and are simply not effective on the attack. And they make awfully expensive floating rocks. Well, the “newer and fancier” thing was certainly a factor. After 60 years of advances in aircraft and missile technology, yes, battleships are useless in their designed role, but there’s still [nothing better](http://www.g2mil.com/battleships.htm) for heavy artillery support within 25 miles (advanced projectile types could triple that) of a beach. ---
**Author:** ![sqweels](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f19dbf/32.png) [@sqweels](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sqweels)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2004, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-still-put-armor-on-our-warships/245914/24 "2004-05-19T16:45:49Z")
> [@](#): > > But how could a battleship, bristling with antiaircraft guns be so susceptable to enemy aircraft? Why can’t it shoot down the planes that are attacking it? That’s like asking, “Why can’t the batter hit the ball when the pitcher throws it to him?” Sometimes you hit it, sometimes you miss. The _only_ US battleships sunk during WWII were those at Pearl Harbor. US ships sustained a _relatively_ moderate number of hits from Japanese aircraft while at sea. (I’m not aware any any US cruisers sunk by aircraft, although carriers were highly vulnerable to secondary explosions and fire.) Until, that is, the kamikazes came along who sought to overwhelm our defenses. Still, we shot them down in droves, but it was always the combination of fighter cover and AA that was effective. AA alone could never be relied upon to defend ships from determined air attack. ---
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2004, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-still-put-armor-on-our-warships/245914/25 "2004-05-19T18:17:05Z")
> [@Ficer67](#): > > I am speculating, but instead of armoring ships with thicker hulls, and superstructures capable of withstanding missle strikes, would it not be more feasable to armor the hulls with reactive armor? It would be lighter than steel, but could defend against harpoon missles and still bigger explosives. Explosive reactive armor (ERA) is designed primarily to defeat anti-tank weapons that use High Explosive Anti-Tank or shaped charge warheads. From [here](http://www.defense-update.com/features/du-1-04/reactive-armor.htm): > [@](#): > > The ERA enables a significant increase in the level of protection, primarily against shaped charges, without a proportional increase in the weight of the protected platform. The operating mechanism is based on an initiation of an explosion, that disrupts the plasma jet created from the shaped charge warhead as it penetrates the armor. I doubt it would be of much used against the harpoon and similar anti-ship missiles; they don’t use shaped charges, they simply penetrate the armor (such as it is) through kinetic energy and the warhead then explodes inside the ship. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2004, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-still-put-armor-on-our-warships/245914/26 "2004-05-19T20:02:42Z")
I’m pretty sure that most anti-ship missiles don’t have shaped-charge warheads. For one thing, since the ships aren’t armored, they really don’t nead them. Second, anti-ship missiles are huge. The SS-N-19 Shipwreck missile has a 750kg(1653 lb) warhead, and travels at supersonic speeds. Something tells me that if this hits your ship, anything short of battleship armor isn’t going to help much. Third, the compartmentalization of modern ships would tend to negate shaped charges- imagine it as several layers of widely spaced armor. ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2004, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-still-put-armor-on-our-warships/245914/27 "2004-05-19T20:07:39Z")
> [@](#): > > Well, the “newer and fancier” thing was certainly a factor. After 60 years of advances in aircraft and missile technology, yes, battleships are useless in their designed role, but there’s still nothing better for heavy artillery support within 25 miles (advanced projectile types could triple that) of a beach. Correct, of course. However, we can usually work around beach-front engagements and having those kind of battleships for that sole purpose is a huge wasted expense; its money that would be much more effective sending extra A-10’s in with the force. We’d like to have a lot more things than we do, but no one can ever have all the toys they please. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-still-put-armor-on-our-warships/245914.md?page=1)