Real Life Armor Penetration: Could Iowa's pen each other from the front?

[saagri]

Ok, so I am curious. In WOWS the autobounce mechanic would prevent this. But if I did my math right, a 30° angle is only a 2 times increase in effective armor. And according to Navyweaps.com the shell would have 241mm of penetration even out to 38.7km. It is only at a mere 7° at that range where the effective armor is greater than the penetration. This of course doesn't account for angle of fall as I am not sure how the geometry would play out with the bow angles and stuff. 

 

My point is, if it weren't for the autobounce mechanic, wouldn't it be extremely easy to penetrate the bows of most ships? 

[BrushWolf]

Historically you didn't want to show your bow or stern to the enemy. It was all about the Immunity Zone, the distance from the enemy where his shells couldn't penetrate but your shells could penetrate.

[StingRayOne]

NO it would not be as simple as you think to do this math in real life;

You need to take the following into account which will be different in all tests.

speed of the target ship,angle of attack, angle of penetration, location of penetration, amount of force (velocity) at arrival point, materials and equipment scattered about the deck, material that the shell is made out of, temperature of the materials involved and the mass of the target ship.

 

simple..not

[Show_Me_Your_Cits]

Most likely the big shells would smash their way through the structures in the forecastle since it's just structural steel and either explode in one of the chambers, explode against the main armor bulkhead, or shatter against the main armor bulkhead and do nothing. I doubt we'd see the autobounce/lolpen dichotomy we have here, but it would most likely pen (distance/angle dependant) and make a mess, but probably no citadel penetration. 

[Phoenix_jz]

It would depend on how thick Iowa's forecastle structure really is... The values for sturcutral parts of the shop such as the bows are usually fudged for balance... One of the reasons the Germans are so durable is because their belts actually extended (albeit at a reduced thickness) into their bows. The armor on most warships didn't go any farther forward than the bulkhead closing the citadel

[MJPIA]

WG fudges bow armor numbers for in game balance and I am pretty sure they are all higher than they would've been in real life.

That is Tosa, a upscaled version of Nagato that served the basis for Amagi which was scrapped and used for testing.

Nevada obviously.

For reference those 2 bombs were 12" 550 pound general purpose bombs.

And USS New Jersey.

 

For the numbers 40#/lbs plate can basically be rounded to 1"/25mm, 20lbs is 1/2"/12.5mm and so on.
 

 

Theres a whole heck of a lot of stuff on the bow of the ship but in real life even if the shell hit anything on top or a reinforced strake I doubt anything on the deck or sides would do anything but fold like a tin can when a 2700 pound shell stops by to say hi.

BB AP hits to any bow on BB may or may not have been able to get through the citadel bulkheads but it would likely tear through a large section of the bow instead of bouncing off.