[Mustang19]

For older aircraft without complicated hydraulics systems and other things that could leak or catch fire, the only way it could be fatally wounded would be with a hit to the fuel tank, engine or pilot... so it's a case of "sh*t happens". Similar to the Japanese tanks of WW2 or the light tanks of the Spanish Civil War. The armor was so thin that there was no shrapnel to fly around after penetration... a shell would often go in one end and out the other without hitting anything important.

[NGTM-1R]

I find that a little hard to believe, considering how fragile the Swordfish was in service; this is the aircraft where it was decided, until they acquired rockets, it should not engage in gunfire duels with a U-Boat. (Which at the time would have had, at best, a pair of twin 20mm mounts.) Bismarck didn't have the kind of light AA that left bullet holes; her lightest AA guns were of 20mm calibur, up to 37mm and 105mm. All of them would have exploded on impact with any significant object. Granted the Stringbags, being mostly canvas, could in theory have had even a point-detonating AA fuzed round pass through them; but the sheer number, and experience later in the war, dictates that that number of them doing so is unlikely.

[IceFire]

May not be the case ngtm1r...depends on how the ammo was belted and depends on what rounds they were using.  There were problems with the HE rounds used by all sides in terms of what it would take to set them off (there were problems as you mention...a pre detonated or even a round that went through and then detonated...etc).  I don't know enough about the belting of AA guns on battleships but the typical WWII fighter with 20mm or larger type cannons would usually have a mix of AP and HE rounds to achieve the best effect on the target aircraft. 

An AP round against a Swordfish may prove somewhat harmless due to the simple construction and the possibility for the round to pass through one part of the plane, emerge from another, and not cause any significant damage.  Its also quite unlike a monocoque aluminum alloy kind of aircraft where a great deal of the structural strength is in the actual skin of the aircraft so its possible to sustain the same kind of hit I just mentioned and not loose much in the way of integrity.

But you are right...if hit by a 20mm or larger HE shell it would be very bad for the aircraft as evidenced by the experiences with Hurricanes in the Battle of Britain (which did quite well against the 7.92mm MG17's off Bf109s) which were allot easier to patch up from the small hits but absolutely devastated by larger rounds where the Spitfire was better able to absorb that kind of damage.  Of course any kind of hit to any of these aircraft has the potential of hitting something really important or something benign.  Luck of the draw at that point.

The biggest problem for the Swordfish is really not survivability from battle damage since most of the weapons employed would shred most types of aircraft...the real problem is that the Swordfish has a very low top speed so its ability to evade gunfire is limited.

[Mars]

IIRC almost all AAA guns onboard ships were time detonated HE rounds up until near the end of the war when they invented the small caliber proximity fuse.

[TrashMan]

Well with over 140 guns, from accurate 20 mm's through the famous 40 mm Bofors up to 5 inchers with proximity fuzed shells (in FreeSpace 2: Flak), what else can you expect?

anyone what to model a 300m cruiser with 140 light anti-aircraft guns for FS2?

[Mustang19]

Now that would just be unnecessary... as weak as FS flak seems at times it is actually a good deal more potent than the real thing. IMO the main problem is that FreeSpace ships don't have a utilitarian design and generally have terrible fields of fire (eg the Hecate, with loads of AAA but unable to kill a Seraphim wing). Plus the armament has to be split between the "bottom" and "top" of the ship, unlike in real life where you don't have to worry about air attack from under water.

What's needed is real tactics, a ship design that concentrates all of its firepower in one sector and relies on mutual support to get into a "phalanx" sort of formation where all sides are covered. Either that, or concentrate all firepower on one arc and constantly manuver the ship towards incoming bombers, since FS capships are so manueverable. But I digress.

[Desert Tyrant]

It's worth noting though that Bismarck's fire-control and AA guns aren't as good as, well, the Iowa-class.  Both ships used 20mm weapons, but Iowa's IIRC wasn't magazine-fed like the Bismarck's 20mm.  The 20mm used on Bismarck was semi-automatic and took much longer to reload than it actually took to fire. 

Granted Biamarck's was pretty decent though.

[Kosh]

as weak as FS flak seems at times it is actually a good deal more potent than the real thing.

FS flak will tear apart an unshielded fighter/bomber, but it isn't that effective against shields (except for super weak shields like the Serapis or Horus.) It's pretty much how it would be in real life.

[jr2]

Eh, try that philosophy on the Hardest difficulty level. 

[BengalTiger]

anyone what to model a 300m cruiser with 140 light anti-aircraft guns for FS2?

Whoever does that- make sure that the cruiser has 140 guns and not 140 turrets.

BTW- another nice picture:

url because the picture is HUGE

[Desert Tyrant]

anyone what to model a 300m cruiser with 140 light anti-aircraft guns for FS2?

Whoever does that- make sure that the cruiser has 140 guns and not 140 turrets.

BTW- another nice picture:

url because the picture is HUGE

Ah, what a lovely sight.  The Iowa-class was definately an awesome-inspiring group of BBs.

[TrashMan]

TAke a closer look at the picture...the force of the blast is moving the ship SIDEWAYS.

Holy ****z, I'd hate to be on the recieveing end!

[BengalTiger]

Recieving end :

[TrashMan]

Immagine a headshot with that!

In the immortal words of Grizzly (JA2): "Man, that's gotta hurt...But then again, maby not!"

[Desert Tyrant]

Immagine a headshot with that!

In the immortal words of Grizzly (JA2): "Man, that's gotta hurt...But then again, maby not!"

Um... A human hit by a 16in shell would either be turned into ****ing goo or be vapourised. 

Anyways, i've been thinking about Bismarck and KGV again.  The thing i've been wondering is: What the hell did the Germans spend their tonnage on Bismarck on?  The King George V was no less than 6,500 tons lighter, and almost actually as much as 9,000.  (KGV weighed 35,000 tons, Bismarck weiged 41- 44,000 tons.)  But yet the KGV had thicker armour generally, and was operationally only a know slower than Bismarck.  IIRC the only real complaint about KGV was that the armanant was weaker than comtempararies.  (KGV's 14in were definately inferior to, say, the 16/45, 16/50, and 18/45.  KGV's guns were roughly on par with the Kongo-class Battleship.)

So what did the Germans, yet again, spend an additional 6,500  to 9,000 tons on?  The armour was generally inferior to KGV, and the Bismarck's gun were roughly on-par with the KGV, and IIRC the KGV's AA wasn't weaker.(10 14in vs. 8 fifteens)

So... what.  (Also, as an aside, I'd rather have the KGVs than the Bismarcks... Heavier armour, and the fact that as far as BBs went KGV was actually cheap.  The US built two North Carolinas, the French built two Reichlius, the Germans two Bismarcks... but the British built five of the KGVs, only one, the ill-fated Prince of Wales, was ever sunk.)

[NGTM-1R]

Bismarck's belt armor was pretty much invunerable from 20,000 yards on in. Deck armor, not so. KGV's deck armor was better, belt worse.

And the ballistics of the 14" do not tell the whole story; the Brits had real problems with the 14" guns and it took several years to straighten them out. Similarly weight of shell was lighter than normal for a 14".

In answer to the question: Bismarck's secondaries. She had seperate antiair and antisurface secondaries, which was wasteful, but 5.9" antisurface guns are nothing to sneeze at if the range closes. They also achieved better rates of fire then KGV's 5.25" DP guns, because the 5.25" shell was a little too heavy for manual handling. On the other hand the 5.25" was generally superior to the 105mm Bismarck used for her primary antiair secondaries.

[Kosh]

Yes but the belt armor had a big flaw: It didn't go high enough to protect the bridge. Effectively that's why during its final battle it didn't return fire, the first shot hit the bridge and killed all the officers.

[Darius]

It's a pity HMS Vanguard wasn't around during the war...it would have been interesting to see how Britain's largest battleship would have fared in combat.

[IceFire]

Now that would just be unnecessary... as weak as FS flak seems at times it is actually a good deal more potent than the real thing.

Real flak was a very potent and dangerous weapon.  Hundreds of planes were lost in Europe to flak and examples like where RAF pilot and French fighter ace Pierre Closterman lead a group of 8 Tempests in a high speed attack run on a German airbase and were met with such a wall of flak that only himself and one other Tempest managed to escape unscathed and that their time over target was less than 12 seconds (this is a Tempest V at full bore diving in at about 450mph).  WWII US Navy shipboard AAA, as Mars points out, was modified later on to have proximity fuses and brought down large numbers of Japanese kamikaze aircraft.

So in real life flak was very potent.  Movies make it out to look like just one thing but really you had all different calibres of flak batteries that could put out allot of fire individually but were almost always used in groups and often with the benefit of optical or radar guidance systems that were primitive by modern standards but still deadly effective.

[Desert Tyrant]

It's a pity HMS Vanguard wasn't around during the war...it would have been interesting to see how Britain's largest battleship would have fared in combat.

Something i've wondered too.  I'm not very familiar with HMS Vanguard herself though.

Thanks for the info about Bismarck.  Am I the only person who finds it irritating when Bismarck fanboys bleat and prattle on about how Bismarck was the greatest warship evar, and Iowa and Yamato were inferoir?  It's bull**** all around.