Largest Possible and Feasible Battleship Armaments

[Jefgte]

I have read about Musashi, that the blast of the bombs explosions damage the boilers too.
I imagine that shells blast could damage boilers too.
The blast penetrate the boilers by the ventilating shaft.

Jef

[Sachmle]

Delta asks:

Could a boiler explosion in itself pose a danger to the ship, or was that mostly isolated to wood framed vessels that could easily catch fire? I don't recall hearing of any major vessels in either World War suffering boiler damage that destroyed the ship. Mostly torpedoes, mines, and aerial attack or magazine explosions destroyed ships. Never heard of a boiler explosion dooming a steel warship.

In and of itself? Not to my knowledge and highly unlikely IMHO. However, the cascade effect has a nasty habit of dooming said ship. This cascade effect is basically:

1) Now you've lost a boiler room, and most likely all the men in it. Less boilers = less speed, less boiler room men = less damage control. Did anyone survive to shut off the fuel supply to those boilers that were destroyed? Who will put out the fires caused?

2) Now you're slower and probably have a fire somewhere. Fire requires damage control. You only have so many damage control teams, and now at least one is busy. Slower = easier to hit/more likely to get hit. Presumably now you've been hit more and need more damage control. Soon you'll run out.

2a) This is when "Golden Twinkies"¹ tend to occur. Be wary.

3) Now you're out of damage control teams and you're still being hit. Soon, something vital is inoperable/extreme hazard to the ship, so you have to divert damage control to these imminent dangers, leaving other issues untended too.

4) You're still getting hit, you're still out of damage control teams, now you've taken enough damage that your DC teams are starting to get cut down as well as general crew. Now you're in a bind.

5) That 'other' issue just became critical because you had to ignore it too long. You're damaged enough that you're no longer fighting back effectively, and now you really start getting hammered since the other guy can fire without interruption. (Think Bismarck after KGV and Rodney silenced her MB)

6) Now you're a floating hulk, and a good deal of your crew is dead. Abandon ship time.

¹Golden Twinkies are catastrophic hits, usually magazine shots. GT= Poof, you're dead.

[Kaiser Kirk]

Sachmle covered it well.  Only thing I have to add is that when the boiler goes, it releases it's steam...that super heated steam under 200-850 atmospheres of pressure. Everyone in that compartment is dead. That path the shell tore open on it's way...the steam will expand that direction, those folks are in big trouble too. On Battleships, they are heavily compartmentalized, and this would not be fatal, just painful. Smaller ships, like DDs, this can be a real problem,

[Nobody]

I have to agree, however, Kirk you greatly exaggerated the steam pressure & temperature. In our (game) time boiler pressure would be around 14 to 16 bar (kg/cm² ~atm) and even in the decades to come rarely exceed 18 to 20. In reality only Germany tried high-pressure (50 to 120 bar) steam plants. As far as I know noone else even tried this until well after the war.
Nevertheless, although the steam will still be visible at this lower temperatures the effect will still be that anyone adjacent to the damaged boiler will die or be heavily injured.

[Kaiser Kirk]

You're correct, I was using numbers more appropriate to WWII, 850 would be USN top end then.

[Nobody]

Even then, no. No power-plant on earth uses a pressure of 850 atmospheres. And especially the Americans were reluctant to use more than ~20 until fifties.
Should I wrong here I would be very happy to see some (counter-)examples.

[Sachmle]

850 atmospheres would be ~12,500 psi. I think maybe Kirk had an extra 0 and meant 85 atmospheres, or ~1250 psi.

[Kaiser Kirk]

No, I'm apparently misremembering something. The number 850 in relation to USN DD boilers seems correct... could it be PSI?  Gah, the problem of trying to recall stuff read ages ago.

[Sachmle]

850 psi doesn't sound unreasonable.

[P3D]

That 850 is not psi but Fahrenheit.

Interwar machinery was  around 300psi/20atm. That 20atm corresponds to ~210C saturated steam temperature.

Dunkerque/Richelieu: 384psi or 27kg/cm2, 662F/350C, sat. temp.
KGV: 400psi, 700F (28 kg/cm2, 370C), sat. temp. 448F/230C
Bismarck: 56kg/cm2, 450C, sat.temp. (800PSI, 840F)
Enterprise: 400psi, 648F
North Carolina: 565psi, 850F
Post-WWII US: 1200psi, 950F