Fitz, thanks for giving us more insight into what happened on the USS Stark. After considering that damage control parties certainly were the reason the ship survived at all, this is my greatest fear when we talk of all the automation the USN is pursuing for its next classes of vessels: with much of the crew devoted to monitoring consoles and computer screens, are we going to have sufficient damage control personnel on hand AND still have enough people manning their combat condition positions? Arbalest, thank you for helping explain more clearly the comparison of AP performance of gun-fired shells vs "semi-armor piercing" missile warheads. I think that when "semi-armor piercing" was stuck in the classification of missile warheads for ASMs, they were implying most likely as compared to the relatively thin, mostly splinterproof plating used on the majority of post-WW2 ships, not heavily armored battleships and cruisers with 6+ inches or more of actual armor. And again, some people foolishly think a thin-skinned missile weighing 3000pounds and traveling at over 700mph is as effective as a 2700pound 16" battleship round at over 2000fps. I seriously doubt that just a 300-400 pound chunk of HE and 200-300 pounds of burning solid propellant would buckle an armored belt designed to withstand 1-ton projectiles strong enough to actually pierce their way through. Now, if ASMs were equipped with HEAT/HEDP-type shaped charges, then I would see cause for concern (a 15" diameter HEAT charge could easily "burn" through 3 feet or more of armor plate.) But current anti-ship missiles were never designed in mind to get through that much armor. At most, they might have enough kinetic energy at impact to breach through a few inches of the outer hull plating (most ships barely have that much, and in many vessels it's not actually solid armor so much as face-hardened plating), and maybe a bulkhead or two internally. But against an actual armor belt several inches thick, it would be similar to bouncing a 70mm rocket off the nose of an M1 tank : certainly it would detonate, but it would just not have enough explosive oomph to do little more than get the crew's attention and maybe damage some minor external fixtures. A large-enough HE warhead, like the 1000pounds of a Tomahawk, could actually crack the armor in certain spots, but as far as blowing out a chunk sizeable enough to actually sink something like an Iowa is most likely not going to happen, not if it impacts into an armor belt over a foot thick. If the choice was mine, I'd choose to be on the battleship. If it becomes an "ASM magnet", no big deal: that means the ASMs aren't going after the thin-skinned ships they could actually sink outright. And if the ASMs arc upwards and dive down on their terminal approach, they become easier game for CIWS, unlike sea-skimmers that stay low to the water the whole time. Besides, all the previous arguments suggest that an armored battleship could actually survive a salvo of ASMs across its beam anyway (consider for a second the damage those ships were designed to absorb in the first place: multiple hits of one ton penetrating shells impacting at supersonic speeds.) Of course, if one considers how many US ships in WW2 took hits from kamikazes, which easily weighed a few tons and filled with over a thousand pounds of explosives and fuel, and the ships DIDN'T sink (include fairly thin-skinned destroyers, light cruisers, and escort carriers in that in addition to heavily-armored battlewagons), I think that many modern ASMs actually need to hit magazines or fuel bunkerage to guarantee enough damage to sink a ship, and extra fuel onboard the missile to cause enough fires to prevent adequate damage control efforts. But with today's level of complexities inside a modern warhship, sinking it is not actually necessary to put it out of warfighting commission. Enough damage to enough components could disable a ship from firing and guiding its weapons. It is for this reason that I think a supersonic ASM designed to pull up at the last few seconds and detonate over the ship, showering it with a downward-focused giant claymore-type warhead with thousands of (incendiary) flechette-like fragments could be even more detrimental than breaching a massive hole in the side of a hull: most radar systems, waveguides, and power conduits feeding them are not adequately armored enough, and if a ship loses its sensor capability, it ends up being just as worthless as if its sunk. Besides, most damage control crews are trained in stabilizing a ship through closing bulkhead doors, pumping out excess water, and putting out fires. How many ships carry enough components to completely rebuild destroyed radars and fire control systems at sea, and in a timely manner?

Great, your source indicates the FX1400 penetrated the deck of Roma. My photograph showing the moment of impact shows it impacting the side of the hull. Coincidentally, the first hit on Roma also impacted the hull, not the deck and the weapon that hit Italia in the same engagement also impacted the hull at the waterline and passed all the way through the ship and out the other side. But if your going to claim that a 1,400 kg SAP bomb travelling at only 600 km/h can penetrate a 152mm deck, how is it that a 4,500 kg missile travelling at 3,200 km/h with a 1,000 kg SAP warhead can not do the same? And I''m not going to discuss whether or not Stark was at GQ since I never made the claim they were. Stark's level of altertness allowed her to fight back if she felt she was under attack. Stark did not think it was under attack. If she had been at GQ it would have been irrelevant if she didn't think she was under attack. Why did Sheffield sink and Stark did not? Sheffield was 8,000 miles from home and had been abandoned. She sank in a severe storm while under tow almost a week after being hit because firefighting water filled her upper decks, her fuel had been burned out (making her top-heavy) and there was no one on board to do anything about any of it. Stark was towed to a nearby port in clear weather. One suspects that being hit farther forward rather than amidships contained the damage to an extent that the ship did not suffer as badly as Stark. HMS Glamorgan was hit in the helicopter hangar, which destroyed the Wessex and killed 6 men in the hangar, 6 more in the galley below and disabling two of the ships gas turbines. It took approximately 2 1/2 hours to control the fire (I don't know how long it took to put out) but fighting it caused a severe list - again from the inability to shed fire fighting water which you were so cynical of earlier. She was able to steam at a reduced speed of 24 knots to a nearby repair ship. Glamorgan was stern-on (literally running away) from the Exocet after firing chaff. Because of this the weapon hit a non-crtical part of the ship and, unlike Stark and Sheffield, there was no loss of firefighting ability. Glamorgan is also a much bigger ship. On the minus side, other than chaff Glamorgan had little in the way of hard-kill defenses that could fire astern. 3 different instances, 3 different circumstancs, 3 completely different ship designs. Or do you simply assume that all missile hits are identical? BTW - In another one of your major assumption/errors HMS Sheffield was not by any means the first ship hit by an anti-ship missile in combat. Since I have previously already listed a number of actual examples of specific ships hit by missiles prior to Sheffield, including one you talk about in this very same post, I find your level of ignorance on this rather shocking, Mr Pays Attention to Detail. If you'd like to get back to basics, that's great. Fire clearly did more damage than the warhead in the Sheffield and Stark attacks. All the sources indicate this is so. You still deny it. You keep going on about how I allegedly claimed most anti-ship missiles are DESIGNED to spread fire from unburned propellent. With a few noted exceptions I never made that claim. That the fires from buring propellant are a happy accident of anti-ship missiles hits is absolutely true. That these in turn can cause far greater damage than the initial blast of the warhead is also absolutely true with examples provided (which makes the examples of Ardent or Coventry irrelevant BTW). I'm not sure where you get the idea either that anti-ship missiles are getting bigger. In the west we are essentially still in our first generation of modern anti-ship missiles and by and large they are all in the 7-800kg class with warheads no larger than around 220 kg. Even the second generation (ANS), which never appeared, there was no increase in warhead size. In the east the Russian's started with very large weapons, but the trend there is getting smaller, not larger. 3M80 and 3M24 are notable examples of this trend. PS I've known Tony D for years. You should try and actually speak with him before making these assumptions. Every time you assume things (like there was no fire from the first hit on Stark, remember that?) you end up being badly wrong.

"After considering that damage control parties certainly were the reason the ship survived at all, this is my greatest fear when we talk of all the automation the USN is pursuing for its next classes of vessels: with much of the crew devoted to monitoring consoles and computer screens, are we going to have sufficient damage control personnel on hand AND still have enough people manning their combat condition positions?" It's actually the other way around. Fewer guys monitoring consoles and computer screens, about the same at defense lockers. DD(X) for example, with a crew half the size of the preceeding DDG-51 class has about the same number of personel at defense lockers. In theory at least, damage control should not be affected. Now in the Stark incident, several of the damage control chiefs were killed or injured in the attack, so loss of personel could still be a problem. As for missiles, go back to the way beginning of this thread. The large Russian types are all designed as carrier-killers. Most dive on their targets. That means they hit the flight deck, which is heavily protected. Just penetrating the armored flight deck alone though is not sufficient to insure critical damage. They have to also defeat the hangar deck, and maybe a few below that too to reach the magazines, JP-5 storage and so on. These missiles are designed to do that. If Arbalest wants to believe that even the heaviest ASuW missile will simply vaporize on impact with a 6-inch steel deck, more power to em.' We've seen how wrong he is about everything else too. We can always start talking about deep penetrators with fuses that count the number of levels (decks) they pass through before detonating.

Why do you keep going on about watertight doors on Sheffield as if that was the ONLY thing that affected the crews ability to fight the fire, when clearly this was not so. Remember what I said earlier about you hacking at trees in spite of the forest? You narrow your focus so much so often that you miss the big picture.

on the note of the big Russian carrier killer ASMs: that's just it: they're big. An AS-3 is very closely in size to an F-5 almost. And if the escort screen, or the carrier's CIWS (SeaSparrow, Phalanx, et al) cannot intercept such as big target (must present a fairly large RCS, as compared to a "little" Exocet), then IMHO someone on one of those ships needs to be fired for failing to effectively train their crews adequately enough: if you can't bring down a fighter-sized target, what chance have you of defending the battle group? I realize that at supersonic closing speeds, there are very few precious seconds for a CIWS to effectively down a big ASM and prevent warhead impact. But I'll borrow from the annals of CIWS/anti-missile history: the UK's SeaWolf has claimed (via radar-controlled intercept) to have actually brought down at least one 4.5" naval shell. Now, this may have been an all-hype, under-ideal-conditions, staged engagement, but the issue is that if ANY anti-missile system can actually strike/deflect an artillery shell of ANY large caliber as fired from a ship's gun, then bringing down missiles themselves should be no more difficult, seeing as you have a larger, and often somewhat slower, target. As for supporting or disclaiming arguments for the German Fritz-X glide bomb, reaching into my reference library (books & encycs), vol 10 pg 1037 of the Illus Encyc of 20th Century Weapons and Warfare, "Fritz-X was based on the standard SD-1400 armor piercing bomb with the addition of four wings and a 12-sided tail unit... Fritz-X was dropped from a height of 5500-7000m and could pierce 130mm of armour plating when delivered from this altitude... The launch aircraft dropped the bomb at a range of some 5km while in a straight and level flight... Drop time from 7000m was 42 seconds, dive brakes limiting the speed to 290m/sec." And as for bringing down diving weapons, US experience starting in WW2 with proximity fuzed ammo in 3" and 5" caliber guns was becoming more effective late in the war against kamikaze attacks, and as high speed electronics have taken over the thinking and gun/missile servos to control an engagement, modern systems should have almost no difficulties in bringing down the stray ASM: it is only in massed attacks that there would be any expected difficulties (good thing that was the Russian tactics: if I'm launching ASMs the size of small manned aircraft, I better launch enough so that at least one gets through.) As for the Stark incident, wasn't their CIWS turned off (and for that matter, the ship's battle condition), for the most part, due to the (perceived) low threat level at the time? Looking at the history of what few ASM combat there has been, how many of the targetted vessels actually had any type of CIWS/anti missile systems up and running, trying to bring down the ASM? Any? And back to my previous post about warheads vs armor (heavy armor), I just don't think most modern ASMs were designed with the intent to be able to pierce/punch their way through >15cm of armor. A lot of commercial shipping like the really big cargo container ships and double-hulled supertankers may have equivalent thicknesses of hull plating, but they are not armor: they are "merely" plate steel designed for structural strength, not actual protection other than minor abrasion from small floating debris. And look at the recent trends of naval shipbuilding, in using aluminum alloys and composite components where once heavy-gauge steel plating and armor were used. Leave the CIWS/anti missile systems turned off, and fire a handful of modern ASMs against a modern cruiser and a WW2-era battlewagon, and chances are, unless a magazine actually gets detonated, the WW2 ship will still be afloat, just because of the armor survining the missile impacts and warhead detonations. I just don't see that ships with the protection level of the Iowas would fair less survivable than modern, thin-skinned hulls made of steel and aluminum plating instead of actual armor.

To be sure the USN has spent obscene amounts of money to defend against the very threat of these monsters. It took 40 years to find the answer to the AAW problem - but not everyone has those sorts of resources. Stark's Mk 15 CIWS was turned off but I have very serious doubts about its ability to destroy one incoming Exocet, let alone two in succession. The Mk 92 FCS it appears never saw the incoming threat and could not bring SM-1 or the 76mm gun to bear, nor did SLQ-32 give any warning. In a perfect world, these systems should have detected and engaged the inbounds automatically. You mentioned Kamikaze's. Let's not forget one of the other lessons of that experience was the uselessness of 20mm caliber weapons. "And back to my previous post about warheads vs armor (heavy armor), I just don't think most modern ASMs were designed with the intent to be able to pierce/punch their way through >15cm of armor." Why not? Carrier flight decks are very thickly armoured and the big missiles designed to deal with them all have steep diving terminal engagement profiles. In other words, they have to defeat the deck armour to be effective. Besides, it doesn't take all that much to defeat a 15cm plate. Your argument as to survivability seems to assume a couple of things. 1. That the ships are equally you are using for comparison have the same susceptibility to being hit, and... 2. Armor always equals better protection. To the first point, the Iowa's are extremely susceptible to missile attack and missile hits. A DDG-51 by comparison, is far less so. The ARMOR has changed. It is no longer plate steel but electronics and information systems and the new stuff works better. From a structural standpoint David K Brown, writing about the experiences of cruiser combat in WWII noted that good subdivision, unpierced bulkheads, unit machinery and such was of greater value than armor in preventing fatal damage to a ship. BTW - Superstructures were very rarely armored. A protected con in battleships being the major exception. The use of aluminum for superstructures, while it has taken a lot of heat and resulted in much reduced use of that material can not actually be blamed for the loss of any ship. Nor has it been demonstrated in combat that alumimun superstructures suffer significantly more from damage than steel.

I was going to ignore this, but I can't. Arbalest, when did I misquote you? Name an instance. Any will do. Because if you want to get into that pissing contest your going to lose. You have consistently attributed statements to me that I never made and taken more than I can count completely out of context. OTOH, Every time I quoted you it was in its entirety. As for sources, you keep asking questions and raising doubts. I keep answering those issues, and in doing so frequently consult references from highly respected authors and publications to which anyone has reasonable access. Why? Because I want to be as sure as I can that what I am posting is accurate and correct, otherwise I do no service either to myself or anyone else here. You in return make assumptions and accusations and almost never back any of it up with any sort of concrete evidence. You assume that warhead detonation did most of the damage to Stark without any evidence to back it up. You assume that the first missile that hit Stark started no fires. You assume (even when I had already posted otherwise) that Sheffield's fire spread only because of open watertight doors. You assumed those doors were deliberately left open because Sheffield was not ready for combat (even when the correct information had already been posted). You used that assumption to make the claim that Stark's bulkheads would have been modified as a result of Falkland's experience (only to deny it later). You were wrong on every count and so many more. Why? Because you never checked. You never supported your arguments with facts. You just made those things up, and you keep doing it, over and over and over again. It would be one thing if you raised those issues as "what-if's", but you didn't. You stated them as if they were fact when the fact was you made it all up! For some reason you seem to be more interested in either hanging on to false notions or in proving me wrong than finding out the truth. Bugger all why. Quite frankly its disrespectful to me and the board. I work hard to make sure my posts are as accurate as I can make them. You keep filling people's heads with nonsense you make up, wasting my time and theirs. I've quite frankly had enough.

->"You mentioned Kamikaze's. Let's not forget one of the other lessons of that experience was the uselessness of 20mm caliber weapons. " Yes but, there's a big difference between error-prone humans frantically controlling 20mm Oerlikon guns and precision-controlled, radar and EO-directed 20mm gatling fire pitching a stream of tungsten APDS ammo at 3000rds/min plus. I wonder how well a kamikaze would fair against a Phalanx? As for 20mm itself being too light: cruise missiles are much smaller, and much less structurally built, than manned aircraft. It doesn't take an excessive amount of damage to destroy an incoming missile with physical (KE) impacts as it would to disable or destroy a manned aircraft like kamikaze. Another thing to consider: today there are various fuzed 30mm, 35mm, and 40mm shells, all which depend on fragments much smaller than the core of 20mm APDS to destroy a target. But all things being equal, the guided missile is actually one of the most fragile weapons ever built, and it cannot take an excessive amount of damage and still continue to function, not on the level of manned aircraft like those much-more-ruggedly-built WW2 kamikaze. The only problem with missiles though is that their kinetic energy can, even after destruction, still carry enough pieces (possibly including chunks of explosive and solid propellant) to impact the intended target and still cause damage. ->"Carrier flight decks are very thickly armoured and the big missiles designed to deal with them all have steep diving terminal engagement profiles. In other words, they have to defeat the deck armour to be effective. " Maybe so but, not everybody we'll fight against has big missiles with that level of power. The majority of potential adversaries do, however, have scores of Exocet & Tomahawk-sized weapons. And it is that moment when a sea skimmer pitches up to go into its terminal dive phase that it is in its most vulnerable state. If it comes in at a higher altitude in the first place, it's almost impossible NOT to detect it. ->"Besides, it doesn't take all that much to defeat a 15cm plate." Just what I said when I mentioned the construction of modern large commercial vessels: steel plate is not the same as purpose-forged steel armor. Anyone with experience and knowledge in metallurgy can tell you that. ->"Your argument as to survivability seems to assume a couple of things. 1. That the ships are equally you are using for comparison have the same susceptibility to being hit, and... 2. Armor always equals better protection. To the first point, the Iowa's are extremely susceptible to missile attack and missile hits. A DDG-51 by comparison, is far less so. The ARMOR has changed. It is no longer plate steel but electronics and information systems and the new stuff works better." I was basing my assumption on hull structural integrity, nothing more. Besides, physical armor is always there: it's never down for repairs and troubleshooting, it never suffers from software glitches or other electrical malfunctions, and it never misinterprets between potential military threats and civilian non-concerns. I notice that all their electronic gadgets didn't save the Stark or the Cole. I wonder how well a WW2-era Brooklyn or Cleveland class cruiser would've faired under the same situations. ->"BTW - Superstructures were very rarely armored. A protected con in battleships being the major exception. The use of aluminum for superstructures, while it has taken a lot of heat and resulted in much reduced use of that material can not actually be blamed for the loss of any ship. Nor has it been demonstrated in combat that alumimun superstructures suffer significantly more from damage than steel. " That's interesting because, one of the concerns I remember reading about the Stark incident was that the ensuing fires were hot enough to ignite various portions of the ship that were prediminantly composed of aluminum, and that it actually added more to the overall final damage. Or was that just one more of those urban legends spread by military conspiracists? Again, anyone with metallurgical knowledge and experience will tell you that aluminum has a much lower melting and ignition point than steel (aluminum is even one of the components in the solid propellant of the Shuttles' SRBs). And considering just how much aluminum construction has gone into many vessels, maybe it's a good thing more of them HAVEN'T been hit by ASMs with several liters of fuel in their tanks: that way, people keep believing there's no harm in continuing to build them that way. ...but I DO notice we've learned that steel armors are still the better choice for AFVs, as opposed to aluminum. Are we to believe that the massively larger warheads in ASMs, as compared to ATGMs, don't "burn" as hot as the smaller warheads in anti-tank missiles?

"Yes but, there's a big difference between error-prone humans frantically controlling 20mm Oerlikon guns and precision-controlled, radar and EO-directed 20mm gatling fire pitching a stream of tungsten APDS ammo at 3000rds/min plus. I wonder how well a kamikaze would fair against a Phalanx?" I don't think there's so much difference as you might think. The problem with the Kamikaze is that you can't just shoot it down. You have to destroy it, completely. A Kamikaze can be shot to pieces with 20mm rounds and all the chunks and parts still plunge into the target. The problem with 20mm rounds was two-fold; 1. Lack of destructive effect on the target - it could shoot all kinds of holes in an aircraft, but couldn't destroy it. 2. Range - By the time the Kamikaze was in range of the 20mm it was already too late. Even if you shoot it to pieces those pieces still impact the ship. Poiont #2 is still a problem to this day. With a Mach 0.9 sea-skimmer (Harpoon, Exocet, Otomat) the safe kill distance is about 1 km. That means you have to destroy the missile while it is still at least 1 km away or the fragments of the missile will continue on into the ship - a point you seem to well understand. There is even some argument that such damage could be more lethal to combat effectiveness than a direct hit. Think USS Warden was a small fragmentation warhead airburst showed the ship in fragments, shredding radar antenna, cutting waveguides, electric cable runs etc. If your like me you spend more time than you should watching the Discovery and Military channels. If your like me then, you have seen the stock footage of Phalanx in action on the test range. If your really like me you noticed that as Phalanx opens up the target drone keeps approaching, and approaching and approaching. Finally Phalanx has to rotate to stay on target and elevate sharply as the target drone (simulating a subsonic-sea-skimmer) passes overhead and is finally destroyed. I heard once that the range safety officer actually detonated the self destruct in that footage, Phalanx didn't kill it. The RN bought Phalanx after the Falkland's because they needed something, anything and they needed it yesterday. Phalanx was available, cheap, easy to fit and imparted relatively little impact on the ships to which it was mounted. Later in the 80's the RN did a comparitive study. Against an Exocet-type target they judged that Phalanx was unlikely to destroy the target until it got within 300 meters of the ship. Goalkeeper scored better at 800 meters. Clearly both figures are well below the desired 1,000 meters. The RN stopped buying Goalkeeper and Phalanx a short time later. Remember too that Phalanx was intended to be an interim system - the final solution to the CIWS requirement was RAM. RAM as it turned out was very, very late and Phalanx had lived on far longer, and in far greater numbers than I suspect anyone intended. "Maybe so but, not everybody we'll fight against has big missiles with that level of power." True, but a lot of people we don't like do, and anyone else who doesn't already can acquire them at any time, should they feel the need. They are not terribly expensive, particularly compared to the target. "And it is that moment when a sea skimmer pitches up to go into its terminal dive phase that it is in its most vulnerable state. If it comes in at a higher altitude in the first place, it's almost impossible NOT to detect it." That's why the high-fliers are so fast - M3.0+. Sea skimmers can be bugger-all to detect too. Note that Stark, Sheffield and Glamorgan all first detected thier respective inbounds with the Mk 1 eyeball, not a half-billion dollars worth of electronic doo-dads. "I was basing my assumption on hull structural integrity, nothing more." Aluminum isn't used in hull structure. LAdders, fittings, crew lockers and so on yes, but not hull structure. "I DO notice we've learned that steel armors are still the better choice for AFVs, as opposed to aluminum." The M-113, the most successful AFV ever built, is made from aluminum, as is the M-2/3 Bradley and AAV-7.

F- Here is a list: 1) Your words, from http://www.strategypage.com/messageboards/messages/8-8559.asp: "I'm not sure how you conclude that things would have gone better on Sheffield had the warhead actually detonated." My original words, from http://www.strategypage.com/messageboards/messages/8-8556.asp: "My opinion and conclusions are that had the Exocet warhead detonated, events on the Sheffield would have ended very much sooner. Given that it did not explode, had the watertight doors still closed, the fire would have been contained very much sooner, with much less damage." My reminder to you, from http://www.strategypage.com/messageboards/messages/8-8562.asp: "The use of the word "sooner" does not equal "better", and my statement context is clear and does not make such an implication." I then included a reprint of my original posted section. 2) Your words, from http://www.strategypage.com/messageboards/messages/8-8626.asp: "Earlier you were discussing how there would have certainly been STRUCTURAL changes made to the Stark to make it more resistant to damage." My original words, from http://www.strategypage.com/messageboards/messages/8-8586.asp: "The Stark, as designed, may have been no better than the Sheffield, but after the Sheffield results were examined, and lessons learned, the Stark, and every other US and UK warship, was likely much better prepared." My followup words, from http://www.strategypage.com/messageboards/messages/8-8638.asp: "You are inventing the "structural changes" strawman. My written words were "was likely much better prepared", and I was thinking more along the lines of system redundancy (so systems are less likely to go down), tactics, and fire control (procedures, halon suppression systems, things to force doors closed/plug gaps), although I admit to having assumed that some work was done on ensuring watertight door close, and minor things of this nature." You first suggested structural issues. You posted http://www.strategypage.com/messageboards/messages/8-8589.asp: "Great, whre's the evidence for this? How many of the FFG-7 class were taken in, completely guttted, and fitted with new, fictional bulkheads that don't buckle under shock and pressure and whose watertight doors never fail? Whre is your evidence that these alleged changes prevented Stark's loss? In what fiscal years were these changes budgeted for and how much did they cost? When did Stark go into the yard and which yard did the work?" You seem to wonder why I take issue with your conclusions. It is because you read things the way you want to read them, and then make conclusions that may or may not be correct. 3) Your words, from http://www.strategypage.com/messageboards/messages/8-8642.asp: "Fire clearly did more damage than the warhead in the Sheffield and Stark attacks. All the sources indicate this is so. You still deny it." Show me where I deny that the fire did more damage than the warhead in the Sheffield and Stark attacks. The context of the discussion was primary kill mechanism, at least as I wrote my posts. The Sheffield fire was never controlled, and the results speak for themselves. The Stark fire eventually was controlled. 4) Your words, from http://www.strategypage.com/messageboards/messages/8-8656.asp: "You assume that the first missile that hit Stark started no fires." My original words, from http://www.strategypage.com/messageboards/messages/8-8597.asp "Now that I think about it, the Exocet that hit the Stark, and passed through without exploding, seems to have started no fires. I’m also curious about the rocket motor on the Exocet that exploded on the Stark; 1) did it continue to burn, 2) was it ejected back out the missile entry hole, 3) was it mainly consumed as part of the explosion, 4) some of 1, 2 and 3, or 5) does anyone know?" But, as per my clarification, http://www.strategypage.com/messageboards/messages/8-8638.asp: "My "Now that I think about it, . . . , or 5) does anyone know?" paragraph is indeed poorly worded. It ends with a question, which I assumed would be applied to the entire paragraph. I did not have the detailed information. Therefore, this one is on me." "Therefore, this one is on me". Excluding the question in my paragraph, did you at least bother to read this, at the end? 5) Your words, from http://www.strategypage.com/messageboards/messages/8-8656.asp: "You assume (even when I had already posted otherwise) that Sheffield's fire spread only because of open watertight doors." The quote you provided from Max Hastings http://www.strategypage.com/messageboards/messages/8-8551.asp: "Damage control teams at once began to try to establish smoke boundaries to stem the spread of the fire raging around the area o fimpact, but many of the watertight doors would no longer close. It was impossible to move between the forward and aft areas of the ship below decks. The heat was already intense." The