All or nothing (armour)
Encyclopedia
All or nothing is a method of armoring battleship
Battleship
A battleship is a large armored warship with a main battery consisting of heavy caliber guns. Battleships were larger, better armed and armored than cruisers and destroyers. As the largest armed ships in a fleet, battleships were used to attain command of the sea and represented the apex of a...

s, which involves heavily armoring the areas most important to a ship while the rest of the ship receives significantly less armor. The "all or nothing" concept avoided light or moderate thicknesses of armor: armor was used in the greatest practicable thickness or not at all, thereby providing "either total or negligible protection". Compared to previous armoring systems, "all or nothing" ships had thicker armor covering a smaller proportion of the hull. The ironclad battleship HMS Inflexible
HMS Inflexible (1876)
HMS Inflexible was a Victorian ironclad battleship carrying her main armament in centrally placed turrets. The ship was constructed in the 1870s for the Royal Navy to oppose the perceived growing threat from the Italian Regia Marina in the Mediterranean.The Italian Navy had started constructing a...

 launched in 1876 had featured a heavily armored central citadel, with relatively unarmored ends; however, by the era of HMS Dreadnought
HMS Dreadnought (1906)
HMS Dreadnought was a battleship of the British Royal Navy that revolutionised naval power. Her entry into service in 1906 represented such a marked advance in naval technology that her name came to be associated with an entire generation of battleships, the "dreadnoughts", as well as the class of...

, battleships were armored over the length of the ship with varying zones of heavy, moderate or light armor. The U.S. Navy adopted what was formally called "all or nothing" armor in the Standard type battleship
Standard type battleship
The Standard-type battleship was a production line of twelve battleships across five classes ordered for the United States Navy between 1911 and 1916 and commissioned between 1916 and 1923...

s, starting with the Nevada class
Nevada class battleship
The Nevada class battleships were the United States Navy's first battleship design equipped with triple gun turrets , as well as introducing the so-called "all or nothing" armor scheme, in which protection of vital areas was optimized against heavy caliber guns, leaving other parts...

 laid down in 1912. "All or nothing" armor was later adopted by other navies after the First World War
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

, beginning with the Royal Navy
Royal Navy
The Royal Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Founded in the 16th century, it is the oldest service branch and is known as the Senior Service...

 in its Nelson class
Nelson class battleship
The Nelson class was a class of two battleships of the British Royal Navy, built shortly after, and under the terms of, the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922...

.

Rationale

The logic of the design was simple. If the ship was hit in vital areas (the ammunition and propellant magazines; the propulsion plant; the fire-control and command sections), her survival was in jeopardy. On the other hand, if the ship were hit in non-vital areas (non-explosive stores, crew berthing and rest areas, offices and administrative areas), it would most likely not result in the ship's destruction.

The "all-or-nothing" philosophy of armor design required the rethinking of the ship’s design, her armor system and the integration of the ship’s design architecture with the armor protection system. With this rethinking of design, naval architects had to examine every system and function of a warship, and determine which functions and systems were critical (and in what priority) to the survival and mission accomplishment of the warship. This analysis led to designs in which all vital systems and functions were located in a single area within the hull of the vessel, the armored citadel; within and beneath which the propulsion plant, communications systems, weapons, ammunition stores, and command & control of the ship resided. Everything else resided outside of this armored citadel. When battle stations were called, the whole crew retreated into this area behind armored bulkheads and armored watertight doors, which were sealed so that each compartment within, and the armored citadel as a whole, were virtually immune to enemy action by any but concentrated and direct attack.
The all or nothing system was intended to ensure that battleships could survive against the heaviest armor-piercing shells currently in use, while at the same time being able to carry a powerful armament and retain a useful speed and endurance. This was made possible by dispensing with the large areas of relatively light armor which had been used in previous battleship designs; the weight saved was used to strengthen the armor protecting the "vitals" of the ship. In effect, the scheme accepted vulnerability to medium-caliber and high-explosive shells striking the unarmored sections of the hull, in order to improve resistance against armor-piercing shells without increasing the overall weight of armor. The unarmored parts of the ship would not offer enough resistance to armor-piercing shells to trigger their firing mechanisms (designed to explode after penetrating armor) so the shells would pass through without exploding, while the vital parts could have armor thick enough to resist the heaviest shells.

In the ideal form of the system, all of a battleship's armor would be concentrated to form an armored "citadel" around the ship's magazine spaces: an armored box of uniform thickness designed to defend against the largest enemy guns. Save for the turrets, the ammunition hoists, conning tower
Conning tower
A conning tower is a raised platform on a ship or submarine, often armored, from which an officer can con the vessel; i.e., give directions to the helmsman. It is usually located as high on the ship as practical, to give the conning team good visibility....

 and part of its steering gear, nothing in the way of armor protected the remainder of the ship. By stripping away the armor from all other parts of the ship the armor of the citadel could be made thicker.

The armored citadel can be visualized as an open-bottomed rectangular armored raft with sloped sides sitting within the hull of the ship. From this box, shafts known as barbette
Barbette
A barbette is a protective circular armour feature around a cannon or heavy artillery gun. The name comes from the French phrase en barbette referring to the practice of firing a field gun over a parapet rather than through an opening . The former gives better angles of fire but less protection...

s would lead upwards to the ship's main gun turrets and conning tower. Through compartmentalization and the redundancy of key systems, any damage done to the ship outside of this armored box would be survivable, and as long as those systems within the box remain intact, the ship could continue to fight. To maximize the thickness of armor available for a given weight it was desirable that the citadel be as small as possible, this being achieved with, for example, triple turrets as well as double and quadruple (quad) gun mounts, the turrets having an all-forward layout.

Evolution

The majority of the battleships up through World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

 vintage had armor disposed in belts of varying thickness around the hull, concentrating the main thickness at the point where the majority of the enemy shells would impact. The result of long years of experience, these bands of armor were effective protection when ships fought at close range. As the caliber of guns grew and fire-control system
Fire-control system
A fire-control system is a number of components working together, usually a gun data computer, a director, and radar, which is designed to assist a weapon system in hitting its target. It performs the same task as a human gunner firing a weapon, but attempts to do so faster and more...

s improved, engagement ranges increased, so that a greater number of hits would result from plunging fire
Plunging fire
Plunging fire is gunfire directed upon an enemy from an elevated position, or gunfire aimed so as to fall on an enemy from above.In naval warfare plunging fire was often used to penetrate an enemy ship's thinner deck armor rather than firing directly at an enemy ship's side...

 against the ship's thin deck armor rather than its well protected sides.
Although the U.S. Navy had begun work on the first all or nothing ship in 1911, with the , the Royal Navy did not believe that long range gunnery would be important nor of the vulnerability of the ship's magazine spaces. However, experiences in the First World War, particularly the Battle of Jutland
Battle of Jutland
The Battle of Jutland was a naval battle between the British Royal Navy's Grand Fleet and the Imperial German Navy's High Seas Fleet during the First World War. The battle was fought on 31 May and 1 June 1916 in the North Sea near Jutland, Denmark. It was the largest naval battle and the only...

, showed that a ship could survive extensive damage as long as this was outside their magazine spaces, but any shell that breached the defenses of these spaces had catastrophic effects. The logical conclusion was that there was no point in having armor which could not stop a shell penetrating into the magazine spaces, and that any armor that did not contribute to this goal was wasted armor.

The end of World War I and the Washington treaty put a temporary halt in the construction of new battleships. This hiatus was used to refine the protection for the next generation of battleships. It was at this time that the airplane and aerial bombs began to make an impact on naval warfare. With the signing of the Washington Treaty
Washington Naval Treaty
The Washington Naval Treaty, also known as the Five-Power Treaty, was an attempt to cap and limit, and "prevent 'further' costly escalation" of the naval arms race that had begun after World War I between various International powers, each of which had significant naval fleets. The treaty was...

 the Allies
Allies of World War I
The Entente Powers were the countries at war with the Central Powers during World War I. The members of the Triple Entente were the United Kingdom, France, and the Russian Empire; Italy entered the war on their side in 1915...

 had an excess of old battleships, especially from the former Imperial German Navy
Kaiserliche Marine
The Imperial German Navy was the German Navy created at the time of the formation of the German Empire. It existed between 1871 and 1919, growing out of the small Prussian Navy and Norddeutsche Bundesmarine, which primarily had the mission of coastal defense. Kaiser Wilhelm II greatly expanded...

. These were expended in gunnery and bombing trials.

In the light of these experiments, it was believed that aerial bombs and the shells from the guns of enemy battleships would be fused
Fuse (explosives)
In an explosive, pyrotechnic device or military munition, a fuse is the part of the device that initiates function. In common usage, the word fuse is used indiscriminately...

 to explode only after penetrating into a ships vitals. If on its way through the ship there was nothing to activate the fuse, then the shell or bomb could pass through the ship without detonating, or if it did detonate, the blast would be outside of its armor. The ship would only sink if its own magazines were penetrated; thus the maximum thickness of armor would be around the magazine area, leading to the final manifestation of the ‘all or nothing’ scheme.

In practice

No navy built pure "all or nothing" battleships, although most navies put the theory into use to some degree. Designed and built within the full constraints of the Washington Treaty, the Royal Navy
Royal Navy
The Royal Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Founded in the 16th century, it is the oldest service branch and is known as the Senior Service...

's Nelson
Nelson class battleship
The Nelson class was a class of two battleships of the British Royal Navy, built shortly after, and under the terms of, the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922...

 class and the French navy
French Navy
The French Navy, officially the Marine nationale and often called La Royale is the maritime arm of the French military. It includes a full range of fighting vessels, from patrol boats to a nuclear powered aircraft carrier and 10 nuclear-powered submarines, four of which are capable of launching...

's Dunkerque
Dunkerque class battleship
The Dunkerque class was a new type of warship of the French Navy built during the 1930s, labeled as 'fast battleships'. Not as large as other contemporary battleships, they were designed to counter the threat of the German pocket battleships of the Deutschland class. They had a specific main...

 class came closest to the ideal.

The misgivings of building a pure "all or nothing" ship was that these had areas still vulnerable to guns of even modest warships, small arms fire, and blast damage from a ship's own guns. For instance, blast damage was to plague the careers of the Nelsons, a situation aggravated by the positioning of her guns. It was also considered demoralizing for crew, for example those serving in the secondary batteries, to know that they had no protection. The superstructure, for instance, housed crucial command stations, communications, and radar equipment. Other critical areas such as the rudder, propellers, and bow could not be armored, so damage to these areas could reduce a ship's maneuverability and buoyancy.

From the on to its , the United States Navy
United States Navy
The United States Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the seven uniformed services of the United States. The U.S. Navy is the largest in the world; its battle fleet tonnage is greater than that of the next 13 largest navies combined. The U.S...

 pioneered the all or nothing approach without taking it to its logical conclusion. For example, the US designed its battleships to give the crew additional protection instead of relying only on the armored deck of the citadel. These vessels had three armored decks: a sacrificial armored top deck to decap and set off bombs and shells; a splinter deck between the top; and citadel decks to protect the majority of the crew from shell and bomb fragments. In World War II-era battleships and some refitted Standard type battleship
Standard type battleship
The Standard-type battleship was a production line of twelve battleships across five classes ordered for the United States Navy between 1911 and 1916 and commissioned between 1916 and 1923...

s, the secondary armament was also in armored turrets, the same type of mounts also found in newer fleet carriers and cruisers, since this was a vital defense against enemy aircraft (particularly Kamikaze
Kamikaze
The were suicide attacks by military aviators from the Empire of Japan against Allied naval vessels in the closing stages of the Pacific campaign of World War II, designed to destroy as many warships as possible....

s).

Regardless of armoring scheme used, battleships still had crucial areas that could not be protected such as the bow, rudder, and propellers; good examples include Bismarck and Prince of Wales. The superstructure housing command facilities, communications, and radar also remained vulnerable; for instance Tirpitz suffered extensive topside damage in Operation Tungsten
Operation Tungsten
Operation Tungsten was a British naval operation during World War II. it was one of a number of aerial attacks on the German battleship Tirpitz while she was in Norwegian waters...

.

In action

The battleship versus battleship showdown that all sides planned for never came about, so the benefits of the all or nothing ship's design was never fully tested.

There were few battleship-to-battleship encounters that took place in the Second World War. In the Atlantic, these included the Battle of Mers-el-Kébir in July of 1940, Battle of Dakar
Battle of Dakar
The Battle of Dakar, also known as Operation Menace, was an unsuccessful attempt in September 1940 by the Allies to capture the strategic port of Dakar in French West Africa , which was under Vichy French control, and to install the Free French under General Charles de Gaulle there.-Background:At...

 in September of 1940, the Battle of Denmark Strait and Last battle of the battleship Bismarck in May 1941, the Battle of Casablanca
Naval Battle of Casablanca
The Naval Battle of Casablanca was a series of naval engagements fought between American ships covering the invasion of North Africa and Vichy French ships defending the neutrality of French Morocco in accordance with the Second Armistice at Compiègne during World War II...

 in November 1942, and the Battle of North Cape
Battle of North Cape
The Battle of the North Cape was a Second World War naval battle which occurred on 26 December 1943, as part of the Arctic Campaign. The German battlecruiser , on an operation to attack Arctic Convoys of war materiel from the Western Allies to the USSR, was brought to battle and sunk by superior...

 in 1943. In the Pacific, there was the Second Naval Battle of Guadalcanal
Naval Battle of Guadalcanal
The Naval Battle of Guadalcanal, sometimes referred to as the Third and Fourth Battles of Savo Island, the Battle of the Solomons, The Battle of Friday the 13th, or, in Japanese sources, as the , took place from 12–15 November 1942, and was the decisive engagement in a series of naval battles...

 in November 1942 and the Battle of Surigao Strait in October 1944, part of the larger Battle of Leyte Gulf
Battle of Leyte Gulf
The Battle of Leyte Gulf, also called the "Battles for Leyte Gulf", and formerly known as the "Second Battle of the Philippine Sea", is generally considered to be the largest naval battle of World War II and, by some criteria, possibly the largest naval battle in history.It was fought in waters...

.
In the Battle of Denmark Strait, HMS Prince of Wales was hit repeatedly by 15 in (38 cm) AP shells, causing damage without seriously endangering the ship. HMS Hood
HMS Hood (51)
HMS Hood was the last battlecruiser built for the Royal Navy. One of four s ordered in mid-1916, her design—although drastically revised after the Battle of Jutland and improved while she was under construction—still had serious limitations. For this reason she was the only ship of her class to be...

 was built to an early standard and suffered a magazine explosion allowed by poor deck armor. A tilt of the ship towards Bismarck
German battleship Bismarck
Bismarck was the first of two s built for the German Kriegsmarine during World War II. Named after Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, the primary force behind the German unification in 1871, the ship was laid down at the Blohm & Voss shipyard in Hamburg in July 1936 and launched nearly three years later...

in her final turn exposed the deck armor when she made ready to unmask her rear battery. Using the older banded armor design that was geared towards shorter-range fire as in the Battle of Jutland
Battle of Jutland
The Battle of Jutland was a naval battle between the British Royal Navy's Grand Fleet and the Imperial German Navy's High Seas Fleet during the First World War. The battle was fought on 31 May and 1 June 1916 in the North Sea near Jutland, Denmark. It was the largest naval battle and the only...

, the Kriegsmarine
Kriegsmarine
The Kriegsmarine was the name of the German Navy during the Nazi regime . It superseded the Kaiserliche Marine of World War I and the post-war Reichsmarine. The Kriegsmarine was one of three official branches of the Wehrmacht, the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany.The Kriegsmarine grew rapidly...

's Bismarck
Bismarck class battleship
The Bismarck class was a pair of battleships built by the German Kriegsmarine shortly before the outbreak of World War II. The ships were the largest warships built by the German Navy and the heaviest capital ships ever completed in Europe...

-class was well-built and compartmentalised, and proved difficult to sink. Bismarck withstood tremendous punishment during her last battle, as an expedition later found out that the King George V's 14-inch shells only dented the Bismarck's citadel. Bismarck's sister ship Tirpitz suffered extensive topside damage from Royal Navy aerial strikes during Operation Tungsten
Operation Tungsten
Operation Tungsten was a British naval operation during World War II. it was one of a number of aerial attacks on the German battleship Tirpitz while she was in Norwegian waters...

 but her vitals were relatively unharmed.

In the Second Naval Battle of Guadalcanal
Naval Battle of Guadalcanal
The Naval Battle of Guadalcanal, sometimes referred to as the Third and Fourth Battles of Savo Island, the Battle of the Solomons, The Battle of Friday the 13th, or, in Japanese sources, as the , took place from 12–15 November 1942, and was the decisive engagement in a series of naval battles...

 (also known as the fourth battle of Savo Island) USS South Dakota
USS South Dakota (BB-57)
USS South Dakota was a battleship in the United States Navy from 1942 until 1947. The lead ship of her class, South Dakota was the third ship of the US Navy to be named in honor of the 40th state. During World War II, she first served in a fifteen-month tour in the Pacific theater, where she saw...

 was hit by a 14 in (36 cm) armor-piercing round from the Japanese battleship Kirishima
Japanese battleship Kirishima
was a warship of the Imperial Japanese Navy during World War I and World War II. Designed by British naval engineer George Thurston, she was the third launched of the four Kongō-class battlecruisers, among the most heavily armed ships in any navy when built...

 which shattered on a barbette without serious damage. Though South Dakota was in no danger of sinking, she was put out of action by faulty circuit breakers as well as damage from smaller caliber fire.

The Battle of Surigao Strait was the last battleship versus battleship encounter. Once the Japanese forces (after first being decimated by US destroyer torpedoes) reached the main US line, the deciding factor was the much greater numbers of the American forces, plus their superior radar, so the battleship scheme of US battleships were not tested.

See also

  • Pre-dreadnought protection
  • N3 class battleship
    N3 class battleship
    The N3 class was a dreadnought battleship class designed for the Royal Navy after World War I, incorporating all the lessons learned from that conflict. They were very similar in design to the s, but had larger guns and thicker armour...

  • G3 battlecruiser
    G3 battlecruiser
    The G3 battlecruisers were a class of battlecruisers planned by the Royal Navy after the end of World War I in response to naval expansion programs by the United States and Japan. The four ships of this class would have been larger, faster and more heavily-armed than any existing battleship...


External links

  • "All or Nothing" Protection article at The Naval Technical Board.
  • A Survey of the American "Standard Type" Battleship a comparison of American standard type battleships against those of other nations, at The Naval Technical Board.
  • BB59 armor USS Massachusetts
    USS Massachusetts (BB-59)
    USS Massachusetts , known as "Big Mamie" to her crewmembers during World War II, was a battleship of the second South Dakota-class. She was the seventh ship of the United States Navy to be named in honor of the sixth state, and one of two ships of her class to be donated for use as a museum ship...

    site.
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