MODERN ARMOR.
By F.R. BRAINARD, U.S.N.
The building of a navy, which has been actively going on for the past few years, has drawn public attention to naval subjects, and recent important experiments with armor plates have attracted large attention, hence it may not be amiss to give a description of the manufacture and testing of armor. It would be interesting to wade through the history of armor, studying each little step in its development, but we shall simply take a hasty glance at the past, and then devote our attention to modern armor and its immediate future.
Modern armor has arrived at its present state of development through a long series of experiments. These experiments have been conducted with great care and skill, and have been varied from time to time as the improvements in the manufacture of materials have developed, and as the physical laws connected with the subject have been better understood. There has been very little war experience to draw from, and hence about all that is now known has been acquired in peaceful experiments.
The fundamental object to be obtained by the use of armor is to keep out the enemy's shot, and thus protect from destruction the vulnerable things that may be behind it. The first serious effort to do this dates with the introduction of iron armor. With this form of armor we have had a small amount of war experience. The combat of the Monitor and Merrimac, in Hampton Roads, in May, 1862, not only marked an epoch in the development of models of fighting ships, but also marked one in the use of armor. The Monitor's turret was composed of nine one-inch plates of wrought iron, bolted together. Plates built in this manner form what is known as laminated armor. (See Fig. 1.)
The side armor of the hull was composed of four one-inch plates. The Merrimac's casemate was composed of four one-inch plates or two two-inch plates backed by oak. The later monitors had laminated armor composed of one-inch plates. The foregoing, with the Albemarle and Tennessee rams under the Confederate flag, are about the sum of our practical experience in the use of armor.
European nations took up the subject of armor and energetically conducted experiments which have cost large sums of money, but have given much valuable data. For a long time wrought iron was the only material used for armor, and the resisting power depending on the thickness; and the caliber and penetration of guns rapidly increasing, it was not long before a point was reached where the requisite thickness made the load of armor so great that it was impracticable for a ship to carry it. The question then arose as to what were the most important parts of a ship to protect. The attempted solutions of this question brought out various systems of distributions.
Armored ships were formerly of two classes; in one the guns were mounted in broadside, in the other in turrets. Every part of the ship was protected with iron to a greater or less thickness. In more modern ships the guns are mounted in an armored citadel, in armored barbettes or turrets, the engines, boilers and waterline being the only other parts protected. There may be said to be three systems of armor distribution. The belt system consists in protecting the whole waterline by an armored belt, the armor being thickest abreast of the engines and boilers. The guns are protected by breastworks, turrets or barbettes, the other parts of the ship being unprotected. The French use the belt system, and our own monitors may be classed under it. The central citadel system consists in armoring that part of the waterline which is abreast of the engines and boilers. Forward and aft the waterline is unprotected, but a protective deck extends from the citadel in each direction, preventing the projectiles from entering the compartments below. The hull is divided into numerous compartments by water-tight bulkheads, and, having a reserve of flotation, the stability of the ship is not lost, even though the parts above the protective deck, forward and aft, be destroyed or filled with water. The guns are protected by turrets or barbettes. The deflective system consists in inclining the armor, or in so placing it that it will be difficult or impossible to make a projectile strike normal to the face of the plate. A plate that is inclined to the path of a projectile will, of course, offer greater resistance to penetration than one which is perpendicular; hence, when there is no other condition to outweigh this one, the armor is placed in such a manner as to be at the smallest possible angle with the probable path of the projectile. This system is designed to cause the projectile to glance or deflect on impact. Deflective armor should be at such an angle that the projectiles fired at it cannot bite, and hence the angle will vary according to the projectile most likely to be used. In the usual form of deflective deck the armor is at such a small inclination with the horizon that it becomes very effective. Turret and barbette armor may be considered as deflective armor. The term inclined armor denotes deflective armor that is inclined to the vertical. The kinds of armor that are in use may be designated as rolled iron, chilled cast iron, compound, forged and tempered steel, and nickel steel. Iron armor consists of wrought iron plates, rolled or forged, and of cast iron or chilled cast iron, as in the Gruson armor. Compound armor consists of a forged combination of a steel plate and an iron plate. Steel armor consists of wrought steel plates. Nickel-steel armor consists of plates made from an alloy of nickel and steel.
I have spoken above of laminated armor. To secure the full benefit of this kind, the plates must be neatly fitted to each other; the surfaces must make close contact. This requires accurate machining, and hence is expensive. To overcome this point sandwiched armor was suggested. This consists in placing a layer of wood between the laminations, as shown in Fig. 2.
It was found that laminated and sandwiched armor gave very much less resisting power than solid rolled plates of the same thickness. Wrought iron armor is made under the hammer or under the rolls, in the ordinary manner of making plates, and has been exhaustively studied and experimented with—more so than any other form of armor.
Chilled cast iron armor is manufactured by Gruson, in Germany, and is used in sea coast defense forts of Europe.
In 1867 several compound plates were made by Chas. Cammell & Co., of Sheffield, England, and were tested at Shoeburyness, in England, and at Tegel, in Russia. These plates were made by welding slabs of steel to iron; but the difficulties were so great that the idea was abandoned for the time.
Compound armor, as now manufactured, is of two types: Wilson's patent, a backing of rolled iron, faced with Bessemer steel; Ellis' patent, a backing of rolled iron, faced with a plate of hard rolled steel, cemented with a layer of Bessemer steel. Both these kinds are manufactured in England and France in sizes up to fifty tons weight. The Wilson process is used at the works of Messrs. Cammell & Co., of Sheffield, England, and the Ellis process at the Atlas Works of Sir John Brown & Co., of the same place. These are the two leading manufacturers of compound plate.
The method employed by Wilson in making compound plate is to first make a good wrought iron plate. To the surface of this and along each side of the length of the plate are fixed two small channel irons, as shown in Fig. 5.
The plate is then raised to a welding heat in a gas furnace, and transferred to an iron flask or mould. Wedges are driven in between the back of the plate and the side of the mould, thus forcing the channel irons up snug against the opposite side of the mould. Moulding sand is then packed around the back and sides of the plate (see Fig. 6).
The mould is lowered in a vertical position into a pit. Molten steel, manufactured by either the Siemens-Martin or Bessemer process, is then poured in through a trough that forms several streams, and forms the hard face of the plate. The molten steel as it runs down cleans the face of the wrought iron plate, scoring it in places, and, being of much higher temperature, the excessive heat carbonates the iron to a depth of one-eighth to three-sixteenths of an inch, forming a zone of mild steel between the hard steel and soft iron. The mould is placed in a vertical position to insure closeness of structure and the forcing of gases out of the steel. After solidifying, the whole plate is pressed, and passed through the rolls to obtain thorough welding. It is then bent, planed, fitted, tempered, and annealed to remove internal strains.
In 1887, Wilson took out a patent for improvements in his process of making compound plates. In this method of manufacture he takes a wrought iron, fibrous plate, fifteen inches thick, built up from a number of thin plates. While hot from the forging press, he places this plate in an iron mould (see Fig. 7)
about 28 inches deep, and upon it runs "ingot iron" or very mild steel to a depth of thirteen inches. In this form of mould the plate rests on brickwork, and is held in place by two grooved side clamps or strips which are caused to grip the plate by means of screws which extend through the sides of the mould. After solidifying, the plate, which is twenty-eight inches thick, is reheated and rolled down to eighteen inches. This is the iron backing of the finished plate, and it is again put in the iron mould and heated, when a layer of hard steel is run on the exposed surface of the original wrought iron plate to a depth of eight inches. This makes a plate about twenty-eight inches thick. It is taken from the mould, reheated, rolled, hammered or pressed down to twenty inches. After cooling, it is bent, planed, and fitted as desired, then tempered and annealed to relieve internal strains.
The method employed by Ellis in making compound plates is to take two separate plates, one of good wrought iron and one of hard forged steel, placing the forged steel plate on the wrought iron plate, keeping them separate by a wedge frame or berm of steel around three sides, and placing small blocks of steel at various points near the middle of the plates (see Fig. 8).
These blocks are called distance blocks. After covering all the exposed steel surfaces with ganister, the plates are put in a gas furnace and heated to a welding heat. They are then lowered into a vertical iron pit with the open side uppermost. The plates are held in position by hydraulic rams, which also prevent bulging. Molten steel of medium softness is then poured into the space between the plates, by means of a distributing trough having holes in the bottom, and after this has solidified, the whole plate is placed under the hydraulic press and reduced about twenty per cent. in thickness. The plate is then passed through the rolls, bent, planed, fitted, tempered, and annealed to reduce internal strains.
In heating the compound plates for rolling, the plate is placed in the furnace with the steel face down, so that the iron part gets well heated and the steel does not become too hot. Great care must be taken not to overheat the plate, and in working, many passes are given the plate with small closings of the rolls. The steel part of a compound plate is usually about one third of the full thickness of the plate.
Forged steel armor, tempered in oil, is fabricated at Le Creusot, France, by Schneider & Co., using open-hearth steel, and forging under the 100 ton hammer. The ingots are cast, with twenty-five per cent. sinking head and are cubical in form. The porter bar is attached to a lug on one side of the ingot. By means of a crane with a curved jib which gives springiness under the hammer, the ingot is thrust into the heating furnace. On arriving at a good forging heat it is swung around to the 100 ton hammer, under which it is worked down to the required shape. A seventy-five ton ingot requires about eight reheatings before being reduced to shape. Having been reduced to shape, the plate is carefully annealed, then raised to a high tempering heat, and the face tempered in oil. It is reannealed to take out the internal strains, care being taken not to reduce the face hardness more than necessary. The Schneider process of tempering is based upon the utilization of the absorption of heat caused by the fusing or melting of a solid substance, and of the fact that so long as a solid is melting or dissolving in a liquid substance, the liquid cannot get appreciably hotter, except locally around the heating surface. The body to be hardened is plunged at the requisite temperature into a bath containing the solid melting body, or is kept under pressure in the solid material of low melting point until the required extraction of heat has taken place, more solid material being added if necessary as that originally present melts and dissolves.
Nickel steel armor is made in a similar manner to the steel plates, the material used in casting the ingot being an alloy of nickel and steel containing between three and four per cent. of nickel.
The Harvey process of making armor consists in taking an all-steel plate and carbonizing the face. This carbonizing process is very similar to the cementation process of producing steel, and by it the face of the plate is made high in carbon and very hard.
The system invented by Sir Joseph Whitworth, of Manchester, England, consists in what might be called scale armor. A section of a sample of the armor represents four plates. The outer layer, one inch thick, is composed of steel of a tensile strength of 80 tons per square inch; the second layer, one inch thick, of steel whose tensile strength is 40 tons per square inch; the third and fourth layers, each one-half inch thickness, of mild steel. The outer layer is in small squares of about ten inches on a side, and is fastened to the second layer by bolts at the corners and one in the middle of each square. The surface is flush. (See Fig. 9.)
The end sought by the above system is to break up the shot by the hard steel face and to restrict any starring or cracking of the metal to the limit of the squares or scales struck. The bolts are of high carbon and are extremely hard steel.
Armor plates must often be bent or curved to single or double curvature and sometimes to a warped surface to fit the form of the ship. There are several methods of bending plates. One method employs a cast iron slab of the required form, which is placed on the piston of a hydraulic press. The armor plate is placed face down on this slab, and on top of the plate are laid packing blocks of cast iron, of such sizes and shapes as to conform to the required curve. These blocks take against the upper table of the press, when the piston is forced up, and the hot plate is thus dished to the proper form.
In the French method of bending, an anvil or bed plate of the required curve is used, and the armor plate is forced to take the curve by being hammered all over its upper surface with a specially designed steam hammer.
The edges of the plate are trimmed by large, powerful slotting machines or circular saws; the latter, however, operate in exactly the same manner as a slotter, except that there is no return motion to the tool. Each tooth of the saw is but a slotting tool, and these teeth are, by screws, rendered capable of being nicely adjusted in the circumference of the saw.
The plates are fastened to the hulls and backing by heavy bolts, varying in size according to the weight of the individual plate. For the 6,000 ton armored ships, these bolts are from 2.75 to 3.1 inches in diameter and from 18.45 to 23 inches in length. They are tapped two or three inches into the armor and do not go through the plate. They pass through wrought iron tubes in the backing and set up with cups, washers and nuts against the inner skin of the ship.
At steel works where plates for our new navy are being manufactured, there are inspectors who look after the government's interests. Officers of the navy are detailed for this work, and their duty is to watch the manufacture of plates through each part of the process and to see that the conditions of the specifications and contract are complied with.
The inspection and testing of armor plates consists in examining them for pits, scales, laminations, forging cracks, etc., in determining the chemical analysis of specimens taken from different parts, in determining the physical qualities of specimens taken longitudinally and transversely, and the ballistic test. Specifications for these different tests are constantly undergoing change, and it would be impossible to state, with exactness, what the requirements are or will be in the near future. The ballistic test is the important one, and is made by taking one plate of a group and subjecting it to the fire of a suitable gun. The other tests are simply to insure, as far as practicable, that all the other plates of the group are similar to and are capable of standing as severe a ballistic test as the test plate.
The following will give an idea of the ballistic test as prescribed by the Bureau of Ordnance, Navy Department. The test plate, irrespective of its thickness, is to be backed by thirty-six inches of oak or other substantial wood. Near the middle region of the plate an equilateral triangle will be marked, each side of which will be three and one-half calibers long. The lower side of the triangle will be horizontal. Three shots will be fired, the points of impact being as near as possible the extremities of the triangle. The velocity of the shot will be such as to give the projectile sufficient energy to just pass through a wrought iron plate of equal thickness to the test plate, and through its wood backing. The velocity is calculated by the Gavre formula:
V = the velocity of the projectile in feet per second.
a = the diameter of the projectile in inches.
w = the weight of the projectile in pounds.
E = the thickness of the backing in inches.
e = the thickness of the plate in inches.
Using the above formula we can make out a table as follows:
-------+-------+-------------+-------+-------+------+---------+
Plate. |Backi'g| Gun, service| w, | a, | V. | Energy, |
Inches.|Inches.| shot. |Pounds.|Inches.| f. 8.| Impact. |
| | | | | | f. tons.|
-------+-------+-------------+-------+-------+------+---------+
6 | 36 | 6" B.L.R. | 100 | 5.96 | 1389 | 1337 |
7 | 36 | 6" " | 100 | 5.96 | 1528 | 1619 |
8 | 36 | 8" " | 250 | 7.96 | 1213 | 2550 |
9 | 36 | 8" " | 250 | 7.96 | 1308 | 2966 |
10 | 36 | 8" " | 250 | 7.96 | 1399 | 3390 |
11 | 36 | 8" " | 250 | 7.96 | 1489 | 3839 |
12 | 36 | 10" " | 500 | 9.96 | 1247 | 5386 |
13 | 36 | 10" " | 500 | 9.96 | 1315 | 5987 |
14 | 36 | 10" " | 500 | 9.96 | 1381 | 6608 |
15 | 36 | 12" " | 850 | 11.96 | 1215 | 8699 |
16 | 36 | 12" " | 850 | 11.96 | 1269 | 9710 |
17 | 36 | 12" " | 850 | 11.96 | 1332 | 10454 |
18 | 36 | 12" " | 850 | 11.96 | 1374 | 11124 |
19 | 36 | 12" " | 850 | 11.96 | 1425 | 11965 |
20 | 36 | 12" " | 850 | 11.96 | 1476 | 12837 |
-------+-------+-------------+-------+-------+------+---------+
No projectile or fragment of the plate or projectile must get wholly through the plate and backing. The plate must not break up or give such cracks as to expose the backing, previous to the third shot.
The penetration of projectiles of different forms into various styles of armor has been very thoroughly studied and many attempts have been made to bring the subject down to mathematical formulæ. These formulæ are based on several suppositions, and agree very closely with results obtained in actual experiments, but there are so many varying conditions that it is extremely doubtful if any formulæ will ever be written that will properly express the penetration.
Many different forms have been given to the heads of projectiles, as flat, ogival, hemispherical, conoidal, parabolic, blunt trifaced, etc.
The flat headed projectile has the shape of a right cylinder, and acts like a punch, driving the material of the armor plate in front of it. These projectiles are especially valuable when firing at oblique armor, for they will bite or cut into the armor when striking at an angle of thirty degrees.
The ogival head acts more as a wedge, pushing the metal aside, and generally will give more penetration in thick solid plates than the flat headed projectile. The ogival head is usually designed by using a radius of two calibers.
The hemispherical, conoidal, parabolic and blunt trifaced all give more or less of the wedging effect. The blunt trifaced has all the good qualities of the ogival of two calibers. It bites at a slightly less angle, and the three faces start cracks radiating from the point of impact.
Forged steel is the best material for armor-piercing projectiles, but many are made of chilled cast iron, on account of its great hardness and cheapness.
The best weight for a projectile is found by the formula
w = d³ (0.45 to 0.5)
w being the weight in pounds, d the diameter in inches and 0.45 to 0.5 having been determined by experiment.
With a light projectile we get a flat trajectory, and accuracy at short ranges is increased. With a heavy projectile the resistance of the air has less effect and the projectile is advantageously employed at long ranges.
In the following formulæ, used in calculating the penetration of projectiles in rolled iron armor,
g = the force of gravity.
w = the weight of projectile in pounds.
d = the diameter of projectile in inches.
v = the striking velocity in feet per second.
P = the penetration in inches.
Major Noble, R.A., gives
U.S. Naval Ordnance Proving Ground uses
Col. Maitland gives
Maitland's latest formula, now used in England, is
General Froloff, Russian army, gives
for plates less than two and one-half inches thick, and
for plates more than two and one-half inches thick.
If θ be the angle between the path of the projectile and the face of the plate, then v in the above formulæ becomes v sin θ.
When we come to back the plates, their power to resist penetration becomes greater, and our formula changes. The Gavre formula, given above, is used to determine the velocity necessary for a projectile to pass entirely through an iron plate and its wood backing.
Compound and steel armor are said to give about 29 per cent. more resisting power than wrought iron, but in one experiment at the proving ground, at Annapolis, a compound plate gave over 50 per cent. more resisting power than wrought iron.
The Italian government, after most expensive and elaborate comparative tests, has decided in favor of the Creusot or Schneider all-steel plates, and has established a plant for their manufacture at Terni, near Rome.
The French use both steel and compound plates; the Russians, compound; the Germans, compound; the Swedes and Danes use both. Spain has adopted and accepted the Creusot plate for its new formidable armored vessel, the Pelayo; and China too has recently become a purchaser of Creusot plates.
Certain general rules may be laid down for attacking armor. If the armor is iron, it is useless to attack with projectiles having less than 1,000 feet striking velocity for each caliber in thickness of plate. It is unadvisable to fire steel or chilled iron filled shells at thick armor, unless a normal hit can be made. When perforation is to be attempted, steel-forged armor-piercing shells, unfilled, should be used. They may be filled if the guns are of great power as compared to the armor. Steel and compound armor are not likely to be pierced by a single blow, but continued hammering may break up the plate, and that with comparatively low-powered guns.
Wrought iron must be perforated, and hard armor, compound or steel, must be broken up. Against wrought iron plates the projectile may be made of chilled cast iron, but hard armor exacts for its penetration or destruction the use of steel, forged and tempered. Against unarmored ships, and against unarmored portions of ironclads, the value of rapid-firing guns, especially those of large caliber, can hardly be overestimated.
The relative value of steel and compound armor is much debated, and at present the rivalry is great, but the weight of evidence and opinion seems to favor the all-steel plate. The hard face of a compound plate is supposed to break up the projectile, that is, make the projectile expend its energy on itself rather than upon the plate, and the backing of wrought iron is, by its greater ductility, to prevent the destruction of the plate. It seems probable that these two systems will approach each other as the development goes on. An alloy of nickel and steel is now attracting attention and bids fair to give very good results.
The problem to be solved, as far as naval armor is concerned, is to get the greatest amount of protection with the least possible weight and volume, and this reduction of weight and volume must be accomplished, in the main, by reducing the thickness of the plates by increasing the resisting power of the material. In the compound plate great surface hardness is readily and safely attained, but it has not yet been definitely determined what the proper proportionate thickness of iron and steel is.
A considerable thickness of steel is necessary to aid, by its stiffness, in preventing the very ductile iron from giving back to such an extent as to distort the steel face and thus tear or separate the parts of the plate. The ductile iron gives a very low resisting power, its duty being to hold the steel face up to its work. If now we substitute a soft steel plate in the place of the ductile iron, we will get greater resisting power, but our compound plate then becomes virtually an all-steel one, only differing in process of manufacture. The greatest faults of the compound plate are the imperfect welding of the parts and the lack of solidity of the iron. When fired at, the surface has a tendency to chip.
In the all-steel plate we have the greatest resisting power throughout, but there are manufacturing difficulties, and surface hardness equal to that of the compound plate has not been obtained. The manufacturing difficulties are being gradually overcome, and artillerists are in high hopes that the requisite surface hardness will soon be obtained.
The following may be stated as well proved:
1. That steel armor promises to replace both iron and compound.
2. That projectiles designed for the piercing of hard armor must be made of steel.
3. That the larger the plate, the better it is able to absorb the energy of impact without injury to itself.
4. That the backing must be as rigid as possible.
[FROM ENGINEERING.]