Compound armor
The Compound Armor was a kind of armor that approximately 1880 warships was used. It consisted of wrought iron with a forged steel layer and replaced the pure wrought iron or steel armor previously used.
The first ideas for compound armor came from the Austrian artillery lieutenant Friedrich Thiele. In 1870 he proposed the combination of steel and wrought iron plates. The wrought iron should be on the outside and the steel on the inside of the armor. The armor was further developed in parallel by Cammell, Laird & Company and John Brown & Company . Contrary to Thiele’s original idea, the outside of the armor plate consisted of a layer of hard but brittle steel that made up about a third of the total thickness. The thicker part of the plate facing the ship was made of wrought iron, which was much tougher than the steel. Both materials were forged together and rolled out to the desired thickness . So the bullets of that time could be countered with a sufficiently hard and durable armor protection.
In Germany, Dillinger Hütte acquired the patent for the manufacture of compound armor. The first German warship equipped with it was the SMS Oldenburg .
The compound armor was already obsolete after a few years by the Harvey armor and the Kc armor developed by Friedrich Alfred Krupp as well as the further development of the projectiles.
literature
- Dirk Nottelmann : The Brandenburg class. The climax of German armored shipbuilding . ES Mittler & Sohn, Hamburg et al. 2002, ISBN 3-8132-0740-4 , p. 142 .
Footnotes
- ^ Erwin Sieche: Cruisers and cruiser projects of the kuk Kriegsmarine 1889–1918 . ES Mittler & Sohn et al., Hamburg et al. 2002, ISBN 3-8132-0766-8 , p. 17 .