Naval Units at Close Range

[Mike Abberton]

They were designed to fire at ships (hard targets) at close ranges and the planners were surprised that when firing at shore targets (soft) many larger calibre shells bounced.

Pillboxes are hard targets , thereby keeping the high attack value, and raised, therefore providing a target that will "stop" a shell.

At least, that what was I was thinking.

umbro

Understood.
But, from what I read, the larger calibre shells were designed to be most effective while "plunging" down on a target and allowing the armor piercing shell to penetrate through deck armor.
The pillbox fits the description of hard target within the game. It was my thought that the trajectory of the shell would "bounce off" them also because it was not plunging fire.
If the formula change was applied to soft attacks, then the wooden "bunkers" become more effective to "shrug off the shells" than a hard target?
Would it not be in the designer's hands to keep those larger guns far enough away to allow for plunging fire?
Not trying to belabor the point. Just trying to prevent a situation where "unintended consequences" take over, in a place where a good idea started.
Especially if the effect would concern 2% or less of all scenarios?

Ed

Ed,

I don't think the plunging fire had more effect, it was that deck armor was generally thinner than belt armor. Plunging fire is generally long range fire, and with the size of naval gun shells, there was definitely some velocity loss (i.e. penetrative power loss), but because the deck of a ship is much larger than the exposed belt, you just can't armor it as effectively.

All that would would probably apply differently to land targets. Being much smaller than ships and not requiring the ability to float, you could probably design the tops to be quite thick to resist plunging fire better. Of course the best defenses were on the larger islands where you could use natural caves to hides the guns. A ship either needed a lucky down-the-throat shot (not easy to accomplish) or try to collapse the cave mouth somehow (not as easy as it might sound). In a lot of cases they had to be dug out at close range.

Mike