Quote:
Originally posted by fastpat
Calculated speed at impact of the Tall Boy was 2500 miles per hour. It was a great deal more than conventional armor pierching bombs. A Lancaster could only carry one.
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Tallboy was the successor to the Grand Slam wasn't it?
I think they used the Grandslams to take out the Sharnhorst IIRC.
BTW, a single salvo from an Iowa throws 24,000+ lbs of iron at the target with an initial muzzle velocity of almost Mach 3.
A Mk8 16" AP projectile weighs more than a lot of porsches do...2700lbs.
On 11 Apr 1945, USS Missouri was struck dead on the superstructure by a Kamikaze attack. Not a single US crewman was killed. The armor on an Iowa class battleship's armored superstructure is as much as 19" thick. If you're ever at Pearl you can still see the scars where the plane hit.
You can actually see three projectiles in flight in this pic.