Battleship armor pierced by 16" shell - photo

[Altair]

26" thick Yamato-class battleship armor pierced by a U.S. Navy 16" armor piercing shell. The plate was taken from the Kure Naval Yard where the battleships were built.




Previously:

WWII Yamato-class battleship steam turbines - photos
USS Pennsylvania battleship armored gun house - photo
15-inch Italian battleship guns - photo
Battleship firing broadsides - photo
Reloading a battleship gun - GIF and video

[mklotz]

I'm confused. What's the origin of this artifact?

All three of the Yamato class ships (Yamato, Musashi, Shinano) were sunk by aircraft and submarine. I'm not aware of any WWII Pacific naval battle where a Yamato class ship was under attack by an American battleship.

My guess it is may be a test piece but, if it is, where did the Japanese get a 16" gun?

[Altair]

https://www.history.navy.mil/our-col.../NH-82597.html

"From a YAMATO class battleship. This armor plate is 25" thick, and was penetrated by a US Navy 16" shot during post World War II tests. It is on display in Willard Park, Washington Navy Yard."

"This 26" thick section of armor plate of for the Yamato class battleships was found at the Kure Naval Base in Japan after the end of WWII and brought back to the US for testing."

[mklotz]

https://www.history.navy.mil/our-col.../NH-82597.html

"From a YAMATO class battleship. This armor plate is 25" thick, and was penetrated by a US Navy 16" shot during post World War II tests. It is on display in Willard Park, Washington Navy Yard."

"This 26" thick section of armor plate of for the Yamato class battleships was found at the Kure Naval Base in Japan after the end of WWII and brought back to the US for testing."

Many thanks for that. So the damage didn't occur until it was hauled back here where a 16" gun was available.

[hemmjo]

That would not be like shooting tins cans off a fence post with a .22.

For that "test" to be run, that piece of armor had to be secured to something able to resist the impact of that 16" shell. I wonder if there is video of that test?

[Seamus]

History and Technology - Ballistic Tests on the IJN Shinano's Turret Face Armor - NavWeaps

[Paul Alciatore]

When an irresistible force meets an immovable object .........

..... DO stand back!

[hemmjo]

History and Technology - Ballistic Tests on the IJN Shinano's Turret Face Armor - NavWeaps

From the link, I find this passage from the description of Test #1 interesting, "No damage to projectile indicated, though projectile had considerable remaining velocity and ended up in the Potomac River, never being recovered. "

[WmRMeyers]

From the link, I find this passage from the description of Test #1 interesting, "No damage to projectile indicated, though projectile had considerable remaining velocity and ended up in the Potomac River, never being recovered. "

I worked as a photographer at Eglin AFB, where they do (or at least did, back in the day) Operational Test, Development, and Evaluation (OTD&E) on weapons systems. We did quite a bit of work on the GBU-15 system. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GBU-15 Among other things, we threw the 2000lb bomb body down their sled track at about 1600fps into a 13' cube of steel reinforced concrete to test them. They tended to penetrate the cube of concrete, and fly another mile or two downrange. There as also a planar wing variant.
About 13 years after I left Eglin, I got to watch gun camera films from our guys dropping them on Iraq and along the road from Kuwait to Bagdad.

Bill

[mccwho]

Looks like they used at least 6 test pieces.