WesWorld

Deck Armors

The next step beyond the 360mm rebuild issue is deciding different ways of allocating Cleito tonnage in the future. This led to some tight draft ship designs and a desire to have- like other navies- a varied thickness of armor rather than an uniform amount.

Expecting that searches for things like “deck”, “armor”, and “average” would be useless, I started to try to find my own answer. Then I tried a search anyhow and found a rule of thumb on one of the returned pages. However I decided to finish my attempt. The rule of thumb I found was :
“IF I have thickness x I keep in mind that it should be x+40 or 50% over vitals and x-60 to 80% over the rest.”

I took copies of overhead views of Derfflinger, Erzazt Monarch, Valiant (1941) and Giulio Cesare (193 and scanned them, brought them up in the GIS, and drew polygons over the decks. I then chopped the polygons a little beyond the various main barbettes. This allowed me to derive what the relative amount of deck was taken up by A-X, or A-Y, or B-Y (4, 3, or 2 turrets).

For example: from just foreward of “A” to just aft of “X”, is 65% of Valiant’s length and 80% of her deck area. Given the % length, this would also be the amount for an AoN scheme, which I don’t believe any of these were.

The averages of the 4 ships is as follows
AoN : 80% area, 65% length.
4 turrets : 78% area, 61% length
3 turrets : 67% area, 52% length
2 turrets : 58% area, 44% length

So what I propose to do in my draft vessels plans is use the above numbers as guides.

For example, if an Erzatz Ijelsijk requires 1000 tons per 1” of armor, but has 3 turrets, I would apply it as
Citadel : 670 tons / 1 inch + ends : 330 tons/ inch. If I want the ends to resist HE/Light shells/GP bombs, I “spend” 660 tons for 2”, and then can “spend” 2680 tons for 4” citadel armor : 3340 total.

Does this sound like an acceptable methodology for folks? Or is there already an agreed on means of doing this squirreled away that I have missed?

I just sent you a spreadsheet that makes things easier. Basically it roughly equates the hullform to a rectangle with two triangles stuck on the ends. It seems to work reasonably well when I compare it to historical ships.

Quoted

AoN : 80% area, 65% length.
4 turrets : 78% area, 61% length
3 turrets : 67% area, 52% length
2 turrets : 58% area, 44% length

Too much depends on machinery.

Thanks