Why wouldn’t the crew notice? Surely there would be, like, a big hole at wherever the shell hit, depending on what type of she’ll it was?
I think the abrams would still have a decent chance even if the ship was a WWII Iowa. It might even have a better chance, since the battleship has no way of seeing where the tank is, and will just have to guess. Of course a single shell from the main cannons would badly damage the abrams, but at least the tank will manage to get multiple shells off first, so it might be able to take out the ammunition or the turrets of the Iowa.
Given that BBs like the Iowa were designed to withstand damage from 16 inch naval guns, I doubt that the pea-shooter on an Abrams tank is likely to penetrate anything particularly important, with the possible exception of necessarily exposed bits like the ship’s radar and some of the defensive gun mounts (again, this might depend on whether we’re talking Roosevelt-era USS Iowa or Bush-era USS Iowa, which featured some major differences in loadout). I’d consider it long odds on a 120mm sabot round penetrating the main turrets or the citadel. Then again, I don’t know how much gun and projectile technology advanced between the 1940s and the 1980s, so maybe there’s an exchange rate to consider here.
That said, depending on how close they are and the relative elevation, it might be possible that the Iowa’s crew won’t be able to bring any of their heavier guns to bear, having to resort to peppering the tanks with annoying but otherwise probably harmless 50 calibre, 1.1 inch, and 40mm gunfire.
Also worth considering, a WWII-era Iowa would be able to launch seaplanes (unless the Army guys, being such sour sports as they are known to be, take out the seaplane or catapult first) which they could at least try to use to spot the tanks, but see the previous observations about how Armor guys are taught to excel at Hide-and-Seek.
Hiding wouldn’t matter much against a battleship. The battleship isn’t going to target a tank with its sixteen-inchers; it’s going to target the Zip code the tank is in.
Nor will the range matter to the battleship, because even if it’s too close at the start of the engagement, a gentle pinging sound every couple of seconds isn’t going to be enough to prevent it from opening the range.
On the other hand… ExTank, at what range can a tank’s main gun reliably hit a 16" target?
A 16 inch target?!
Well, speaking strictly for the M1-series of MBT, the center circle of the Main Gunner’s Sight reticle is 1 mil, or 1 meter at 1,000 meters. Our Master Gunners maintained (and my gunnery experience bears this out) that a round fired from the main gun will land somewhere in that 1 mil circle. So you have a 1 meter CEP a 1,000 meters, a 2 meter CEP at 2,000 meters, and so on. In actuality, it was less; call it anywhere from half to three-quarters that, depending upon how OCD the Gunner is. But we’ll stick to the 1 mil circle.
Converting to inches…carry the 1…my math says 395.6 meters; call it 400 for ease of maths and rule-of-thumb calculations.
Target shape/area will factor considerably in this; a 16" long pole or stick will be much more problematic than a 16" circle, or a square 16" on a side, or corner-to-corner.
And overall, I agree with your post. The armor on the WWII-era Iowa-class is still susceptible to M829A2 and A3 rounds, but compartmentalization, coupled with the sheer size of the BB, makes it considerably more resilient to damage than any modern warship.
Add in twenty 5" guns, ten per side in twin-mounts, eighty! 40mm cannons*, call it forty per side, and the fact that the 16" guns could depress -5 degrees…it could be a very bad day for anyone on the receiving end.
*The 40mm Bofors cannons aren’t lethal to an Abrams frontally, but no one wants to get shot at by (up to) forty 40mm rapid fire cannons lobbing explosive shells.
That’s… actually not too bad, then. A tank at a couple of kilometers might still have a 1 in 4 to 1 in 16 chance at that target (depending on the OCD of the tank gunner), with each round: Given the tank’s total ammo load, we’d probably get a few hits.
In case it wasn’t obvious, the target I’m thinking of is the aperture of the battleship’s main guns. Get a shot straight down the barrel, and you might get one of the battleship’s own shells to explode prematurely, which just might be enough to do some significant damage to the ship. If nothing else, I’d expect that that’d take out that turret, or at least that gun. And while the ship’s secondary weapons would still be enough to give an individual tank a very bad day, taking out all three of the turrets would still count as a mission kill, because those turrets are pretty much the reason for the battleship’s existence.
Now, if the battleship crew anticipates that the tank might try this, it’s easy enough to counter: Just swivel the turrets away from the tank until you’ve steamed out past the tank’s range. But it seems an unlikely-enough threat (shooting down the barrel of another gun? Really?) that they might not even consider it until it happens, and even after the first hit, a captain might panic and give the wrong order (a full broadside seems like it ought to be a good panic reaction, after all).
True, but depending on how fast your tank gunner can work, a full broadside probably *is *a pretty good panic reaction. If you do take out one turret this way, you’ve still got to repeat that trick twice before any of the six remaining main guns come to bear. Not to mention the aforementioned battery of five inch guns which fire rather faster than the sixteens do. And this all assumes that the tank is less than two ships’ lengths away from the Iowa, which only makes a lot of sense if the ship is in port (which, to be fair, would be one of the scenarios where a tank and a ship might duel.)
I was actually thinking of the canal scenario, there. Which would also make it a little harder for the ship, in that it wouldn’t be immediately obvious which direction the fire was coming from (and even if you do figure out where the tank is, you wouldn’t know if there was also a tank on the other side).
And yeah, the tank is still probably going to come out of this one worse off than the battleship, but it is interesting that there’s a not-completely-implausible scenario where a lone tank actually can cause a significant amount of damage to a battleship.
Based on links in an earlier thread I saw some great youtubes on those turrets & guns.
Each barrel is independent. To reload they have to depress to a particular elevation angle to align the breech with the loading equipment. Then they retrain the gun on target, fire immediately, then immediately return to the loading position. Lather rinse repeat at IIRC ~30 seconds per round per barrel.
Point being that a barrel will only be closely aligned with the tank’s line of sight for a small fraction of the BB’s firing cycle. The less well-aligned, the smaller an ellipse the tank needs to hit.
Any hit anywhere on the barrel is going to do damage that probably means the next time that barrel fires it’s gonna be extra spectacular.
So for the BB crew to train the guns 90 degrees off the tank’s axis of fire is just to present the tank the largest possible target. Don’t do that.
In my old biz, one of the axioms was that nothing distracts a shooter better than being shot at. The sooner you get ordnance on the way, the sooner the other guy’s concentration & aim goes to Hell. So shoot early and shoot often. What I know of naval gun doctrine, they seem to think the same way.
The tankers here tell us they’re fairly calm under fire because they’re so well-defended. Unlike a DD. I’m going to suggest a BB would bring that same calmness under fire to the battle. Both sides will react mostly to the actual damage they’ve already taken, not the fear of the potential damage they’re about to take.
Dude_robert, and others that have been participating in his latest threads, since you seem to like tanks and there was the thread on where to get information in general, you might want to check out Armor Magazine. It’s the professional journal of the US Armor and Cavalry force. It’s written for that audience, with most of the authors being part of that force. It is not written for a general audience so it can be tough casual reading. The Army writing style means every acronym and abbreviation should be spelled out the first time it is used. By the end of any given article you can be in jargon overload. More difficult is that they tend to casually expect a level of understanding about doctrinal terms and symbols. You can search for and download ADRP (Army Doctrine Reference Publication…see what I did there ) 1-02 to help with that piece. Little words can mean a big difference that isn’t necessarily covered in standard English usage. If someone told me to “take” an objective I’d ask what they specifically meant. Seizing, securing, or clearing an objective are defined and significantly different tasks.
Aside from the issue of hitting the gun, the turret’s on an Iowa class aren’t necessarily proof against main gun fire. Wikipedia shows the gun turret frontal armor being 500mm on the Iowa and 406mm on the lighter armored North Carolina class. I don’t see what the slope is which would increase effective thickness. Comparing to estimates of armor effective thickness on variants of the T-72 it’s not necessarily better than the latest variants fielding third generation reactive armor. The turret fronts are well protected but don’t look to be completely impervious to penetration. Not every hit likely penetrates. Rounds that do will have expended a lot of their energy just getting inside and won’t have much leftover to damage/kill. With enough rounds it certainly seems possible to knock out even the Iowa’s 16" gun turrets… if we’re lucky enough to keep reengaging without taking significant damage or death beforehand. It’s a big if.
**
ExTank** gave a great analysis of accuracy for the “down the barrel” question but I have one quibble. CEP is generally understood as 50% of rounds hitting within that distance from the point of aim. The LFAST (Live Fire Accuracy Screening Test) uses a screening test target 1.167 mil wide target. The standard when conducting screening is firing up to two rounds of each type at that target. If the first hits you have screened and can consider the fire control system to operating within standard for that type of ammunition. Most tanks successfully screen on that first round. You still meet the standard if it takes two (after that you go back to start checking every damn thing AGAIN to make sure it’s all functional within standards.) If the crew knows their business it’s not 50% of rounds striking inside that circle on the reticle. It’s the vast majority. (Cite) CEP will be smaller.
That second link and quote is what prompted my comments about Armor magazine. It’s an article from a qualified Master Gunner (who had also served as a trainer at the schoolhouse training Master Gunners.) It’s focused on a specific issue of violating standards cropping up in the force but he goes into quite a bit of detail about fire control systems and screening standards in making his case. If you are one of the people who really wanted lots of details enjoy… don’t say I didn’t warn you up front though.
) 1-02 to help with that piece. Little words can mean a big difference that isn’t necessarily covered in standard English usage. If someone told me to “take” an objective I’d ask what they specifically meant. Seizing, securing, or clearing an objective are defined and significantly different tasks.
