Angling ships armor

[Swiftbear]

Is that something modeled in the game? if not I'll just broadside everything lol.

[The Inept European]

Horizontal and vertical armour surfaces are modelled differently in the range vs penetration model. You can see this in ship info by looking at the details of the gun and clicking on the shield icon. It will show you the graphs.

[the Baron]

Originally posted by The Ex-ept European:

Horizontal and vertical armour surfaces are modelled differently in the range vs penetration model. You can see this in ship info by looking at the details of the gun and clicking on the shield icon. It will show you the graphs.

That is not what he is asking. He wants to know if angle the armor to the coming shells will increase the armor thickness to improve bouncing.

[1upAviator]

It's a good question, one that I want to know as well.

[The Inept European]

Yes I know what he's asking.

[Tenderkaj]

Yes it is modeled.

Source: page 35 of the game manual
https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/1280780/manuals/WarOnTheSea_Manual.pdf?t=1612337818

[boredom974]

It is hard to tell isn't it? It would be nice if there was some feedback from shell impacts, such as different visual effects and sounds for non penetrations. I'm gonna go suggest that actually.

[Belthorian]

Originally posted by the Baron:

Originally posted by The Ex-ept European:

Horizontal and vertical armour surfaces are modelled differently in the range vs penetration model. You can see this in ship info by looking at the details of the gun and clicking on the shield icon. It will show you the graphs.

That is not what he is asking. He wants to know if angle the armor to the coming shells will increase the armor thickness to improve bouncing.

In real Naval combat this was not a thing because if you were angled you were either opening the range or closing it drastically reducing the accuracy of your main battery. Ships would steam in a straight line at a constant speed to achieve the best accuracy possible with their guns. That is until the introduction of analog ballistic fire control computers in the USN. Using Radar they would obtain a firing solution using the analog computer using data points like your course and speed, the enemies course and speed, wind speed, barometric pressure, temperature of the powder, how many rounds had been fired from each gun since the last barrel relining. Corrections for both the curvature and rotation of the earth. Once a US Ship had a firing solution it was automatically updated in real time. This allowed the US ship to violently change course and speed and still land accurate fire on the enemy. It was light years better than anything the Japanese had.

[boredom974]

Originally posted by Belthorian:

In real Naval combat this was not a thing because if you were angled you were either opening the range or closing it drastically reducing the accuracy of your main battery.

Closing the distance is not as troublesome for gunners with older fire control as you think it is. Analog computers for generating firing solutions existed as far back as WWI and could easily account for a constant change in distance that comes with not being perfectly broadside. Yes ships with older fire control did better to maintain a constant course and speed due to a lack of automation, but that course being something other than a 90 degree angle to the enemy would not impact accuracy.

Are you thinking that angling means the ship is turning into every volley and turning back away to return fire like people do in WoWS, jerking the gunners around? Cause that's not what OP means. This thread is simply asking if the horizontal angle of shell impacts on armor is accounted for.

[Steeltrap]

All this "angling" nonsense is something that comes from WoWS, that gloriously accurate WW2 naval combat simulator.

Did "angling" make a difference? Yes.
Did ships typically consider it in combat? NO.

Why not?

Because warship accuracy back then was MUCH lower than games would have you believe. It was FAR MORE important to be giving yourself the best chance of scoring hits than it was to be worrying about "oh noes, I'm not angled".

It tended to happen when closing or opening the range. It generally was NOT a consideration in and of itself, although there were some instances where advice was given to specific Royal Navy ships such as the Repulse class BCs if facing the Scharnhorst class.

The other reason they didn't take it into account was if the range were short enough that scoring hits was all but certain, chances are those hits would defeat the armour. That's ESPECIALLY true of light ships such as CLs and DDs.

The vertical penetration abilities of later munitions like the USN mark 8 16" shells from 16"/45 or 16"/50 or the 18.1" of the Yamato meant that inside about 20,000 yards, or perhaps even more, anything other than the thickest armour (main gun turret faces or conning tower, basically) wasn't going to make much difference.

The whole "angle or get exterminated", along with the "over-match", are creations of Wargaming. Through no fault of their own, people who've not read much about the REAL history tend to think WoWS is realistic. It isn't, not even close (other than the ship models).

[Simulacra_53]

Why fight the question?

Even if you consider it to be of no historical consequence, the question can be asked and should be answerable with a simple yes or no.

[The Inept European]

Angling of armour is a design stage issue not a combat tactic.

The only way it comes into combat is in preferring a high angle shot to a low angle shot or vice versa.

[Simulacra_53]

OP: Angling ships armor Is that something modeled in the game?

The answer has been given by Tenderkaj, as a yes - based on the manual.
In general the discussion is interesting, albeit mostly opinion.

Manual:

SHELL PENETRATION
Armor is used to protect vital systems from hits.
It is represented as the thickness of armour plating in a specific region of a ship (in inches or millimetres). There are other factors such as the materials used, quality of armor as well as slope. Armor at a sloped angle deflects incoming shells better, making it much more effective without having to actually thicken it.
The hull of a ship has two armor values: belt (vertical) and deck (horizontal) which represent the protection against a hit to the side or a hit from above.
Regions of the superstucture and gun turrets of a ship have a single armor value.
SHELL HITS
The following factors determine whether a shell will penetrate armor:
Calibre - Larger shells can punch through thicker armor.
Muzzle Velocity - Higher velocity shells possess more energy to penetrate armor.
AP Shell - Armor piercing shells have a smaller explosive warhead, but penetrate armor about 5x better than a HE shell of similar calibre. Striking Angle - Shell strikes at shallow angles may simply bounce away (ricochet).
Short Range - shell has higher velocity with shallow trajectory. It can punch through belt armor, but ricochet off of deck armor.
Long Range - shell arcs downward with steep trajectory. It can ricochet off belt armor but penetrate deck armor (called plunging fire).

DAMAGE DEALT BY SHELLS
When an AP shell strikes armor the following may occur:
- Shell calibre is greater than 14x the thickness of armor struck, it automatically penetrates and explodes doing full damage. - Shell strikes, penetrates the armor and explodes doing full damage.
- Shell strikes at a shallow angle and is deflected (ricochet) doing 20% damage.
- Shell fails to penetrate armor and explodes externally, causing only 20% damage.
High explosive (HE) shells do an additional 25% damage.
HE shells can still penetrate armour, but are as only as effective as an AP shell about 1/5th of their calibre.
Any hit to an unarmored part of a ship (or if shell calibre is greater than 14x armor thickness struck), will automatically penetrate and explode doing full damage.

End quote.

So at a poor angle your AP round will have 20% effectiveness.
HE has 25% more damage, but only 20% of the pen value.

Now how this is actually modeled in the game is not answered - what are the parameters of a shallow angle?

[BBsquid]

JHC...its alarming how many people the stoopid fcking Russians have duped into believing this 'angling' ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.
On the other hand, if your core source of knowledge and tactics on early to mid 20th century naval combat comes from a very poor and obvious copy/paste World of Tanks, splash some water on the maps, and turn the little tanks into little boats, cheesy arcade game....you might be pretty fcking ignorant , too.
The only angling of armor done in REAL life, on REAL ships was in turrets and internal inclined belts.
As previously mentioned, naval gunnery is a bit more complicated that depicted in that stupid fcking game. In both World Wars, the average hit rate for naval guns at combat ranges was around 3-4%; Washington v. Kirishima at 2nd Guadalcanal was an outlier in that she hit at about 16%. Bear in mind, though, that she was firing at at well illuminated, distracted target that was between 4 and 8 miles distant...just about point blank range for the 16"/45.

Broadside fire was always the go to; the more guns you had on target, the more shells down range, the greater your likelihood of scoring hits. As your pattern fell around a target in an ellipse along the line of fire, it was easier to hit bow on or stern on targets than broadside. If i cross your 'T'...my target box is literally the length of the target. If you are beam on to me, I literally only have the width of your beam as a target area. As an example: I cross the 'T' of an Iowa. Because of the fall of shot pattern, I have an opportunity to score hits in an area thats 887'x 108'. Conversely, if we are exchanging broadsides, the target area that the Iowa is presenting is 108' wide. This is not covering danger areas and the like but it serves well enough.

This crap about angling and bow tanking needs to be put to bed because you really cant get any dumber if you buy off on it. To invoke Jeff Foxworthy, "if you take advice from Russians about how to fight a war at sea...You might be a dumbass."

[Simulacra_53]

You are basically saying that the information on p.35 is nonsense?

Why do you think this is about another game - Russian or not?
I have never played that game, yet I have come across this subject in a couple of books dealing with the subject of Battleships and naval gunnery.

I am not an expert - but been interested in the general subject for years (well decades now) from WW1 to WW2, German imperial navy, Royal Navy, Japanese Imperial navy and even USN.

So were those authors dumb asses?

Ok, worrying about “angling” in combat is another matter, but still it was a factor they knew about, that they thought about - certainly in design.

It is strange that simply asking the question (confirmed by the manual and part of the game design) can lead to such a negative response - anti-Russian and all.

[Swiftbear]

Yeah, this was supposed to be a yes or no question. But anyways, armor design is a real thing in ground armor or on a naval warship going back to when they paddled them. I mean you can pull up a cornucopia of information on the design of naval armor, construction, materials, heat treating, slope, all of it. So while Wargaming may have gone too "gamey" with bow tanking and such stuff but to throw out armor design for protection or tactics is just crazy talk.