By
Ronny
I see many knowledgeable members here so i decided to make an account to ask some question
According to many historical accounts, the armor of WW II battleship is very thick: can be between 410-650 mm of steel
Thick enough that they can even resist penetration from 12-16 inch canon
Compared to these massive round, it is probably obvious that missiles such as Harpoon, Exocet will do little or nothing against the armor belt: No penetration and probably nothing more than a small dent.
Anti tank missiles such as AGM-65, AGM-114 or Brimstone can penetrate the armor but all their warhead will do is penetrating a tiny hole into the massive battleship, it likely will hit nothing significant given that a battleship have massive volume of space). Furthermore, i heard space armor is extremely effective against HEAT warhead as well).
But what if the two are combined? HEAT + explosive warhead: aka BROACH.
With a frontal shape charged and secondary follow through bomb
This is the working principles of the system:
BROACH was designed to help small cruise missile penetrate bunkers. So i have some question:
1- Because concrete and soil are very brittle, unlike steel, I think the precursor charge likely much drill bigger hole in them than it can drill on steel armor belt of a battleship, so even if we use missile with BROACH warhead to hit a battleship, it won't drill a hole big enough to allow the secondary warhead to pass through. Is that a correct assessment?
2- Looking at the cutaway of the missiles. How come the detonation of the frontal shaped charge doesn't damage/destroy the secondary warhead or at very least propel it to the opposite direction?
3- Can supersonic missiles such as Agm-88 (Mach2) , Asmp-A (Mach3) , Rampage , Asm-3 (Mach 3) , Hawc (Mach 5) penetrate the armor belt of a battleship? or they simply don't have enough velocity and density?