I would think so, yes. Close range would favor Bismarck.Karl Heidenreich wrote:In terms of armour, then, Iowa has a better upper belt than Bismarck, but the main belt is even between these fictional contestors, isn´t it? Also, the citadel part of both ships is heavily armoured and there is no radical advantage from one over the other?
The difference will be in terms of speed (Iowa is faster than BismarcK) and with long range fire (16" against 15"). The Bismarck will have to play the Hood part of Denmarck Straits trying to approach as much as possible to Iowa, then?
Just to clarify, Iowa has no upper belt, per se. Bismarck has more volume behind some armor than Iowa. But the upper armored area of Bismarck is not protected against battleship fire. Also, Bismarcks lower citadel area containing the engineering spaces is better protected against short range fire than Iowas is.
To rephrase: It is effectively impossible to penetrate into Bismarck's engineering spaces and main gun magazines with close range gunnery because of the arrangement of the armor and the fact that a shell would have to penetrate the turtleback after it got through the main belt.
On Iowa and most other schemes, once you penetrate the main belt there is no significant amount of armor behind it.