Fat American Shells

[TenguBlade]

Testing out the New York in training room to get back to using her, and this happened.  I was expecting a total miss, honestly, but I'm seeing none of the ship's purportedly terrible accuracy - it seems better than I remember it being, if anything.

 

But that's besides the point.  Never broadside any battleship of any tier.

This is probably the most shocking WoWS moment I've had in a long time...since at least the time I got the Yamato and first saw the effects of lolpenning.

[Aduial]

Wow. I am shocked. I knew that the German BBs could be citadeled from long range, but i wasn't expecting a New York to be able to do that to a FDG. 

[SergeantHop]

I have one almost as good. Citadeled an angled Großer Kurfurst with my Bismarck. RNGsus smiled upon me on that day.

[ValkyrWarframe]

So Made in German^TM doesn't always save German battleships.

 

Well, time to try AP with Moskva.

[DerKrampus]

It's that (relatively) thin deck armor.  German battleships are nearly impossible to citadel at close range, but plunging fire can still do the trick.

[TenguBlade]

It's that (relatively) thin deck armor.  German battleships are nearly impossible to citadel at close range, but plunging fire can still do the trick.

In theory though, other battleships shouldn't be much further behind, and more powerful guns should have an even easier time doing this.  The Iowa has 38mm of exterior deck and 152mm of vertical citadel protection, Friedrich Der Grosse has 50mm and a 100mm turtleback at minimum; the spots I hit him were outside of that weak spot.  The shells landed abreast of the Alpha and Bruno turrets, which have 80mm of exterior and 120mm of turtleback armor - 10mm more net protection than the Iowa.  Granted, I doubt those few millimeters make much of a difference, but I tried the same thing on an accompanying Iowa with the next salvo and got nothing of that sort - the shells just normal-penned.  Another part of why this was so shocking is because I've never had this happen in any other battleship.

 

I guess it comes down to how much energy the shells retain after punching through the first layer of exterior armor, but wouldn't 80mm of armor offer more resistance than 38mm?  Perhaps I should look more into shell ballistics.

[DukeRust]

I have the Missouri and I think it's gun sounds are kind pathetic. It also lobs shells high and in wild patterns. But I like to think of it as throwing cars. The Missouri isn't like a rifle. It's like 9 catapults hurling junky, rusty, American cars. And everyone is lolling at these enormous Fords and General Motors flying through the air. But then one lands on deck and punches through to China.

[Aloeus]

In theory though, other battleships shouldn't be much further behind, and more powerful guns should have an even easier time doing this.  The Iowa has 38mm of exterior deck and 152mm of vertical citadel protection, Friedrich Der Grosse has 50mm and a 100mm turtleback at minimum; the spots I hit him were outside of that weak spot.  The shells landed abreast of the Alpha and Bruno turrets, which have 80mm of exterior and 120mm of turtleback armor - 10mm more net protection than the Iowa.  Granted, I doubt those few millimeters make much of a difference, but I tried the same thing on an accompanying Iowa with the next salvo and got nothing of that sort - the shells just normal-penned.  Another part of why this was so shocking is because I've never had this happen in any other battleship.

 

I guess it comes down to how much energy the shells retain after punching through the first layer of exterior armor, but wouldn't 80mm of armor offer more resistance than 38mm?  Perhaps I should look more into shell ballistics.

 

At only 16.7km you should still be well within the ricochet threshold of those guns. So not only should you have just bounced harmlessly off the top 50mm of deck armor, the 14''/45 gun would barely have enough pen to get through 50mm of steel, and can't go through 100mm until 22km out. At nearly 17km you should have a little more than 356mm of horizontal pen though, so my guess would be the citadel shot went right into the very front of his bow and through to the citadel. I cant remember the Freddies bulkhead armor though. Honestly it almost seems like a bug to me. One random citadel is one thing, but a citadel and 4 penetrations on a BB at that range and that well armored? I've seen less destructive yamato hits on iowas and NCs. 

[TenguBlade]

At only 16.7km you should still be well within the ricochet threshold of those guns. So not only should you have just bounced harmlessly off the top 50mm of deck armor, the 14''/45 gun would barely have enough pen to get through 50mm of steel, and can't go through 100mm until 22km out. At nearly 17km you should have a little more than 356mm of horizontal pen though, so my guess would be the citadel shot went right into the very front of his bow and through to the citadel. I cant remember the Freddies bulkhead armor though. Honestly it almost seems like a bug to me. One random citadel is one thing, but a citadel and 4 penetrations on a BB at that range and that well armored? I've seen less destructive yamato hits on iowas and NCs. 

Those hit just aft of Anton and Bruno turrets.  Friedrich Der Grosse's upper hull has 80mm of horizontal protection at those spots, and regardless of his orientation, the ship has a minimum of 32mm of armor which should be more than enough to deflect 14" shells.  

 

Perhaps the shells hit the base of the superstructure and the normalization from that impact was enough to give them adequate angle to avoid falling victim to autobounce as a result?  I know the deck armor under the superstructure is modeled, and that the 19mm of superstructure armor can be lolpenned by any battleship.  The question is then whether lolpenning invokes normalization at all.

[Aloeus]

Those hit just aft of Anton and Bruno turrets.  Friedrich Der Grosse's upper hull has 80mm of horizontal protection at those spots, and regardless of his orientation, the ship has a minimum of 32mm of armor which should be more than enough to deflect 14" shells.  

 

Perhaps the shells hit the base of the superstructure and the normalization from that impact was enough to give them adequate angle to avoid falling victim to autobounce as a result?  I know the deck armor under the superstructure is modeled, and that the 19mm of superstructure armor can be lolpenned by any battleship.  The question is then whether lolpenning invokes normalization at all.

 

Even if it by some random chance didn't autobounce, those shells would still be far shy of actually penning the deck armor. Fairly certain even with the added normalization(its like what, 6.8 degrees maximum?) those shells come nowhere close to being able to pen 150mm of armor. There is a chance you hit some random angle on one of the turrets or conning tower and managed to ricochet the round straight down into the deck. That would work in theory.