damage below waterline

[harry]

If a shot hits the water just before reaching the hull, does it continue its path into the hull? How much of its energy is removed? does its course change?

 

I'm used to aiming this way from Silent Hunter... But i'm wondering how it's implemented in this game.

[Harry White]

I do not think it does much damage, best way to score hits under the water line is make the enemy ship turn hard or lean away from you, hit the lowest part of the ship, then spin round, he will do so with loads of holes in his belly.

[akd]

AFAIK, penetrations through water were removed (or never implemented) and shots that hit water stop completely. Obviously this is not entirely realistic, but the issue of ricochet versus penetration through water, and loss of velocity resulting from both is extremely complex. Holes below the waterline in game appear to be the result of heel or temporary exposure from wave action.

[admin]

We believe that Ball cannot penetrate anything under water. +adding 60 80 cm of planking at waterline makes this impossible even theoretically.

[RAMJB]

We believe that Ball cannot penetrate anything under water. +adding 60 80 cm of planking at waterline makes this impossible even theoretically.

 

 

Well one would argue that a 12lbs round shot has slightly more ability to stand hitting vs the water than a 50 cal round, right?. But aye, I don't think any round shot of the era would reach very far after hitting the surface...and even if it hit anything most probably would be stopped by the target's planking.

 

Now, if we were speaking about a 14 inch shell of WW2...

[Henry d'Esterre Darby]

Whether or not it was correct, there were statements in the Aubrey novels all the time about holes being made beneath the waterline.  At a close range, I believe it is fairly possible - you'd have to be close enough that the cannon was actually pointing down at the water at a decent angle though, otherwise the balls were prone to skipping.

[harry]

yeah ive gotten a few below the waterline from heeling. It bothers me a little to think that if my shot is RIGHT on the waterline and happens to touch a wave it might be completely stopped and count for nothing. Surely there ought to be a sweet spot there. Also notice in that video they mentioned the jacket was ripped off. This would create lots of drag and i dont think it's really comparable to a solid shot. In the video they also say that the slower moving projectiles penetrated the water further.

 

The ricochet topic is interesting. What are the odds of us seeing this one implemented?

[Harry White]

There probably will be eventually but this is just teh alpha

[Absolon]

it was not uncommon to fire short, and skip balls to the target..

[Subutai]

Whether or not it was correct, there were statements in the Aubrey novels all the time about holes being made beneath the waterline.  At a close range, I believe it is fairly possible - you'd have to be close enough that the cannon was actually pointing down at the water at a decent angle though, otherwise the balls were prone to skipping.

 

Yes but I am almost certain that holes beneath the waterline are the result of taking shots to an exposed belly while heeling away from the opponent. This is being "holed between wind and water". Even modern supersonic rounds with extremely aerodynamic characteristics cannot defeat more than a couple feet of water. Water is quite dense. It is easy to view it as innocuous because, well, it is just water, but let's not forget that a cubic meter of water weighs one metric tonne. Jumping off a bridge and hitting water and a "mere" 80 miles per hour is enough to cause extremely traumatic injuries:

 

"Medical examiners at the Golden Gate Bridge state that jumpers suffer a gruesome death as their body hits the water at 80 mph, with severe organ damage (multiple ruptured organs) and broken necks, pelvises, etc."

 

So water actually isn't all that bad at stopping things that hit it.

[RAMJB]

 Even modern supersonic rounds with extremely aerodynamic characteristics cannot defeat more than a couple feet of water.

 

Erm. This is just plain wrong. There are a lot of instances of underwater "modern" big shells creating some big havoc after falling short and penetrating the enemy ship's hull underwater.

 

Just in the memorable fight of the Bismarck vs HMS Hood and HMS Prince of Wales there were two such instances. A 14'' PoW shell (and hence my tongue in cheek commentary in my previous post) fell short of Bismarck, and hit the german battleship underwater, penetrating the hull and lodging itself in one of the machinery spaces, and the resulting flooding knocked down 2 boilers, and put a serious straing on bismarck's usable top speed (with two boilers out the top speed of the battleship was reduced to 28 knots, but sailing over 20 knots put too much strain in the bulkheads holding the flood. In fact during the posterior torpedo attacks when bismarck had to go to flank speed subsequent flooding worsened the situation significantly.) that hit was almost as important for the hunt of bismarck as the other impact on the bows of the german ship.

 

the second hit was the other way around. One 15'' shell part of a salvo that fell short travelled a VERY long way underwater to hit Prince of Wales, lodging itself deep in it's hull and creating a pretty significant flooding on itself. This shell impact was kind of tricky, the 15'' shell fuze failed to function properly. Had it done so, the shell would've detonated out of the hull (after being armed by the impact against the water). But as the fuze didn't go off the non-exploding shell moved for several dozen meters underwater, creating the damage mentioned. Malfunctioning fuze or not, is plain to see that underwater hits were able to create some serious problems.

 

 

There are quite a significant number of underwater hits with battleship guns, that's just an instance. In fact the effect was significant enough that the japanese navy adopted a blunt-nosed battleship projectile accepting it's inherently worse armor piecing penetration and ballistics, in exchange for much increased underwater performance (a blunt nose of a supersonic object creating a supercavitating "bubble" that significantly decreased the drag allowing for the shells to travel much further), and using very long delay fuzes (so the arming upon hitting the water would give the shell enough time to travel underwater, hit the enemy ship, and explode there). This idea came up because during the 20s some japanese naval gunnery test on the incomplete hull of the Tosa battleship, used as a target ship, showed very significant underwater damage created by projectiles falling short, travelling underwater and hitting the ship below the armored belt (where it was much easier to penetrate)

 

Of course the idea was flawed because you can't (at least not at long range) -intentionally- aim so your spread falls short enough of the target for those projectiles to work. But it goes to show that such a kind of impact was not plausible, but in fact, even common enough as to see a very important navy emphasizing the ability of it's capital ship shells to have much better performance underwater.

[Henry d'Esterre Darby]

As I recall, large caliber shells, such as you'd find in a battleship, are perfectly capable of hulling a ship below the water. Now, I'll immediately concede that these cannon are far from an 18" gun, but it's still a real world possibility.

Edit - sniped by RAMJB. Well stated Sir!

[Subutai]

Guys. We are talking about solid cast iron cannonballs here. Not modern era rifled guns capable of propelling a 2000lb shell beyond the horizon. We might as well bring up torpedoes and mines too while we're at it

[PrezesOi]

Leaving aside the historical debate (I agree with Subutai, comparing artillery capable of effective fire on the 20km and one that lost its effectiveness after a few hundred yards? really...?)  - in NA, easiest way to get  under the waterline hits,  is such ramming which let us reveal interesting fragments of enemy shell (by raising it). And then it is a good time to double [load] penetration ;-)

[RAMJB]

Guys. We are talking about solid cast iron cannonballs here. Not modern era rifled guns capable of propelling a 2000lb shell beyond the horizon. We might as well bring up torpedoes and mines too while we're at it

 

 

Perhaps you didn't notice, but it was you who brought modern era rifled gun capable of propelling a 2000lb shell beyond the horizon. I specifically stated in a previous post here that I don't think an age of sail cannonball would reach too far after hitting water. But if someone (in this case, you) come here stating...

 

. Even modern supersonic rounds with extremely aerodynamic characteristics cannot defeat more than a couple feet of water.

 

if I correct your statement being wrong is not that I'm somehow trying to make a point about the game. Is that I'm correcting you. Because modern rounds can travel a pretty hefty distance under water.

 

Doesn't mean I'm arguing for cannonballs doing it in Naval action, however.

[RAMJB]

 (I agree with Subutai, comparing artillery capable of effective fire on the 20km and one that lost its effectiveness after a few hundred yards? really...?)  

 

 

 

The one doing that comparison was him (by stating that modern artillery can't do it either). I was just correcting a false statement. Noone else is comparing modern artillery with age of sail cannonballs...

[Subutai]

Perhaps you didn't notice, but it was you who brought modern era rifled gun capable of propelling a 2000lb shell beyond the horizon. I specifically stated in a previous post here that I don't think an age of sail cannonball would reach too far after hitting water. But if someone (in this case, you) come here stating...

 

 

if I correct your statement being wrong is not that I'm somehow trying to make a point about the game. Is that I'm correcting you. Because modern rounds can travel a pretty hefty distance under water.

 

Doesn't mean I'm arguing for cannonballs doing it in Naval action, however.

 

Actually I was referring to the .50 cal youtube video, not 16" guns. I have plenty of faith in a 2000lb shell dropping out of the sky like a meteorite against a couple feet of water. I'm pretty sure you could roll a 16" shell off a pier and hole a ship beneath the waterline. But in any case it proves the point -- in order to be able to damage a ship below the waterline, you need a weapon literally orders of magnitude more powerful and centuries more advanced than anything the Age of Sail can provide. Cannonballs punching through water -- no. Skipping on water? Maybe. 

[akd]

They would be far more likely to skip, but again, that is extraordinarily complex, especially when you add in various sea states. I would not want to see "grazing" fire implemented unless range dispersion was first made more realistic.

[Subutai]

Yeah it would be icing on the cake really. If we could have that, and also cannonballs visibly rebounding off of hulls during non-penetrating hits, I would be SO happy

[Sharpe]

Thanks for this one. At least now I understand what happened..

[RAMJB]

Actually I was referring to the .50 cal youtube video, not 16" guns.

 

Oh allright. Yeah, light projectiles tend to shatter easily on hitting water, and don't have enough weight to push their path underwater for very long if they don't. But we're talking naval gunnery here . That's why I thought you were talking about naval guns.

[Subutai]

Yeah I should have specified. Just to clarify, no I do not think my brother's aquarium can stop a 16" shell lol

[maturin]

You would, however, probably be surprised at what your brother's aquarium could accomplish. It would go a long ways towards stopping a modern 100mm anti-tank shell, for instances.

 

Anyways, when it comes to hits at the waterline, it's the angle of incidence that matters more than anything. That roundshot is probably just going to skip, and if it doesn't, then a round ball will lose velocity much faster than any conical bullet.

[harry]

are any of you guys shooters? copper jacketed projectiles are notorious for splitting apart whenever they hit a dense target.

 

-modern projectiles are pointed. this helps to decrease the amount of surface area presented to the target and increase the likelihood of the projectile shattering. This is an intentionally designed behaviour to transfer as much energy as possible to the target without passing completely through it.

 

-modern projectiles are usually copper jacketed with a core of a soft metal like lead. A solid ball of iron is going to be about twice as strong as lead and less likely to expand or fragment.

 

-a 9lb cannon ball is what, 100x the weight of a 50 calibre projectile.

 

Modern projectiles dont fare well in water largely due to fragmentation.

 

Furthermore, my maths isnt *great* but i can usually figure this stuff out well enough:

 

A 50BMG clocking 3000 fps delivers about 18kJ when it's doing its best.

A 9lb projectile travelling at 1600 fps would deliver about 485kJ on impact.

 

I'm not about to say we can snipe submarines at 20m with 9lb round shot, but it could certainly cut through a metre or so of wave and still strike with a decent amount of energy, as opposed to their current behaviour of being warped into an alternate universe as soon as they touch foam.

 

i've got to agree though on the point about impact angle being the most important thing. You would need to be quite close to see appreciable damage and get the right angles to actually penetrate.

[BungeeLemming]

in all of your comparisons you forgot about armor piercing shot wich is indeed designed to not scatter at impact. Dont forget to mention the whole dimension.

 

Also I highly doubt that a cannon ball can strike a water surface and still be able to pen anything. let alone 1 meter. holy chrap that would be OP.

 

What happens to cannonballs wich hit the water?

They may "pierce" the water surface and get redirected by physics (happens at steep impact angles)

Or they bounce off (narrow impact angles). Thats a very natural happening wich increases the accuracy at point blanc range significantly.

This is true. Everyone can find quotas on this.

 

If you want to determine the angles at wich those happenings occure you need some physics. I only remember deflection for light-/ sound-/ electromagnetic-waves wich may apply different calculations.

I guess they wont help a lot when looking at flying masses O_o