Comments by "Frank DeMaris" (@kemarisite) on "The Drydock - Episode 082" video.

Note that, while 18" was most common for aerial torpedoes, the US Mark 13 was actually fatter, at 22.4", than the Mark 14 for subs and Mark 15 for destroyers (both 21"). The Japanese Type 93 carried a warhead of 1,080 lb at the start of the war, going up to to 1,700 lb with the Mod 3 in the middle of the war.
3
It occurs to me that the most likely result of setting off a missile in front of a battleship shell is that it may damage and tear off the windscreen (ballistic cap). AP shells used a cap to protect the body of the shell from impact t with the armor, and then a thin windscreen crimped or soldered in place to restore ballistic performance. If the windscreen is gone, then the ballistic performance becomes drastically different than what the firing solution was set for. The cap is much blunter than the windscreen, so a shell that is on a course to hit will fall short. OTOH, a shell that is on course for an "over" may turn into a hit.
2
@WALTERBROADDUS doesn't need to stop, just needs to miss. I thought I made that clear in the original comment. It would be kind of like firing a .30-06 rifle with 150 gr pointed soft point bullet to hit a distant target, and at some point replacing that bullet in flight with a 150 gr flat nose bullet for a .30-30. Yes, the bullet is still the same weight and retains its velocity, but the aerodynamic profile has changed drastically and I'd that change happens at, say, 200 yards on a 400 yard target the bullet may now lose velocity quickly enough, and fall far enough, to miss completely.
1
@snorri0411 the nose cone on an AP shell is just a thin windscreen. Remove that early enough and a shell that would otherwise hit will fall short because the shell and cap inside the windscreen have a much blunter profile. Phalanx and Goalkeeper, etc, probably don't have the range to make much difference to the trajectory by removing the windscreen, and also probably dont have enough momentum to change the trajectory enough through impact. Maybe you can get really lucky and remove the cap also so that the shell shatters on your own armor, but that may take multiple hits on the cap.
1
@xerxeskingofking from navweaps.com on the Japanese 14" guns: ^Dye for AP shells was introduced in 1941 and those projectiles using dye were designated as Type 1. The following dye colors were assigned: Kongô: Red Haruna: Black Kirishima: Blue Hiei: None (White) Fuso: N/A Yamashiro: N/A Ise: Orange Hyuga: N/A US 14" guns on New Mexico and Tennessee classes: After 1941 AP rounds had a nominal 1.5 lbs. (0.68 kg) dye bag but this was allowed to be as large as 3.0 lbs. (1.36 kg) in order to bring underweight projectiles up to standard. Battleships were assigned the following dye colors: New Mexico (BB-40) - Green Mississippi (BB-41) - Orange Idaho (BB-42) - Blue Tennessee (BB-43) - No Dye California (BB-44) - No Dye Basically, it's a pretty late development.
1
@GaldirEonai by the end of the war, the US Mark 13 could be dropped from several thousand feet at over 200 knots and still have high confidence in a hot, straight, and normal run. This allows the launching aircraft to stay out of range of light and medium AA.
1
@GaldirEonai no. There is lots of room for a dye pack between the windscreen and the armor-piercing cap. For the US 14"/50 the dye pack was nominally 1.5 lb, but could be as much as 3 lb to bring the shell up to the specified weight.
1
@lloydknighten5071 the V2 already had a range of 200 miles, so how much more of England do we need to threaten? By September 1944 when the first operational launches took place, the North Sea was an Allied lake on which nothing floats without permission from the US and UK, so how does it get that close to the English coast? And the V2 was liquid-fueled using liquid oxygen as the oxidizer, so the LOX was added immediately before launch. Why would a build a massive bomb of a LOX tank on a ship that was going to sail on an Allied Lake and be subje t to air attack the whole way? I think that author must have freebased a lot of the book advance. ;) It's not impossible, just hugely impractical. Now, give the Germans something like an Ohiio-class SSBN with rockets that exchange range for conventional warhead size (no Nazi nukes), and watch the Allies tear their hair out trying to find and kill it.
1
@fezzpop8410 depends on where along the trajectory you do it. Naval AP shells at the time had a fairly short pointed projectile, with a blunt cap to absorb shock on hitting the armor, and a thin windscreen to give it a good aerodynamic profile. Tear the windscreen off early enough and the shell will fall well short of where the intact shell would have landed.
1
@robertmills8640 while the smiley emoji suggests it's intended as a joke, I don't see anyone putting 20,000 yard (at slow speed) torpedoes on a battleship when we have the counter-example of West Virginia scoring a first-salvo hit on Yamashiro at more than 20,000 yards in 1944. 😉
1