Penetrating the citadel armor around the magazine often results in a spectacular one-shot kill. The ship's magazines are located in or around the turret barbettes, and contain the main caliber shells, as well as the gunpowder charges. In effect, the scheme accepts vulnerability to medium-caliber and high-explosive shells striking the unarmored sections of the hull, in order to improve resistance against the heaviest armor-piercing shells, while at the same time being able to carry a powerful armament and retain useful speed and endurance.įrom the citadel box, shafts known as barbettes lead upwards to the ship's main gun turrets and conning tower. This approach of providing either total or negligible protection is referred to as "all or nothing".
Most of the other compartments are almost completely unarmored.
Therefore, some later battleship designers tried to save some of that weight by placing heavy armor only around the vital parts of the ship: the ammunition and propellant magazines, the propulsion plant, the fire-control, command and communications sections. The armor tends to be very heavy: on a typical battleship it takes up around 40% of the total displacement of the vessel. In this regard the developers attempted to adhere to historical realism and simulate all significant layers of armor.
A projectile that enters the ship can encounter up to four or five layers of armor and may stop or ricochet at each layer.
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