Well Nagato.... I believe these destroyers move faster and hit harder than all of you and your battleship colleagues (although I don't know if the Japanese DD's standard missile can match or be bigger than a single HEHC shell of Yamato if we talk Michael Bay boom) so yeah, they're quite something.
... did I forget to mention they also have anti-ship missiles(?) should you go full Nagamon?
Well Nagato.... I believe these destroyers move faster and hit harder than all of you and your battleship colleagues (although I don't know if the Japanese DD's standard missile can match or be bigger than a single HEHC shell of Yamato if we talk Michael Bay boom) so yeah, they're quite something.
... did I forget to mention they also have anti-ship missiles(?) should you go full Nagamon?
Well Nagato.... I believe these destroyers move faster and hit harder than all of you and your battleship colleagues (although I don't know if the Japanese DD's standard missile can match or be bigger than a single HEHC shell of Yamato if we talk Michael Bay boom) so yeah, they're quite something.
Oddly enough both weapons have about the same explosive content of around 135 pounds*. The modern missile uses pure HBX as explosive however which has about 65% more power by weight then then the TNA used in WWII Japanese shells. This gives the missile blast power equivalent to about 200 pounds of TNA (factoring the percentage of weight lost to stabilizer). This is also not far off the bursting charge of a WWII era 500 pound GP bomb.
It goes beyond that though standard missiles with external boosters have a maximum speed that's classified, but almost certainly exceeds mach 4 during the initial phase. It's impact velocity is probably unlikely to be less then Mach 3 and may well be somewhat more which is over twice as fast as period shells even at 'battle ranges' of around 20km, it would also make it's terminal attack in a dive approaching vertical. Based on a debate I was once had about modern vs. WWII ships we worked out that roughly speaking the kinetic energy of the weapon alone was equal to an 11 to 12 inch shell, with a bursting charge heavier then any battleship HE shell ever produced.
The weapon is not armor piercing by design unlike an AP shell, but the sheer speed and mass combined with the large bursting charge would still make it formidable regardless. This was what an older Talos SAM did to a destroy escort in one hit in a weapon test This missile didn't even have a warhead it simply smashed the ship with sheer kinetic force, if it had it's 225 pound warhead it probably would've broken the ship in half instantly, but as it was it still broke in two as it flooded. Talos was about twice as heavy, but about 30% slower then Standard.
*
Though this is actually quite bad for the 18" gun's size. The US 16" HE shell had 153 pounds for instance (Japanese 16" HE a meager 98~ pounds). This was due to the Japanese having made the odd decision to use a filler that was about 10% more energetic... but so sensitive that it required such larges amounts of padding within the cavity to keep from exploding prematurely on impact that it reduced the total fill weight to the point it was actually less effective then a larger, but less sensitive filler would've been. Even modern ordnance historians with access to records and modern knowledge are baffled by the thought process behind this choice.
And then there are these destroyers which are just awesome. Considering this is a line from the movie Battleship, it would be more appropriate if it's used by Missouri or any Iowa-class battleship.
Well Nagato.... I believe these destroyers move faster and hit harder than all of you and your battleship colleagues (although I don't know if the Japanese DD's standard missile can match or be bigger than a single HEHC shell of Yamato if we talk Michael Bay boom) so yeah, they're quite something.
... did I forget to mention they also have anti-ship missiles(?) should you go full Nagamon?
Though this is actually quite bad for the 18" gun's size. The US 16" HE shell had 153 pounds for instance (Japanese 16" HE a meager 98~ pounds). This was due to the Japanese having made the odd decision to use a filler that was about 10% more energetic... but so sensitive that it required such larges amounts of padding within the cavity to keep from exploding prematurely on impact that it reduced the total fill weight to the point it was actually less effective then a larger, but less sensitive filler would've been. Even modern ordnance historians with access to records and modern knowledge are baffled by the thought process behind this choice.
Padding is cheap, explosives are expensive?
That said, even if shells aren't as effective as missiles, in terms of internal volume and rate of fire, guns are more effective perhaps? I've had the idea for awhile that rather than aircraft being so effective, it was the fact that battleships couldn't engage targets from long distances that killed them off.
Planes can only launch so fast and carry so many bombs, and while they're likely to be much more accurate than guns, in terms of ordinance per second, a dedicated gun platform is surely better?
P.S. Also worth pointing out that modern destroyers are the size of WWII heavy cruisers.
