Maciej wrote: "Yes in “ordinary battle” and try to penetrate citadel in 1:1 fight Littorio should be more capable"
Hi Maciej,
Correct. Once we all accept that at average to short battle distance,
in a broadside confrontation, Littorio's have a huge advantage over KGV's (basically from 12 to 22 km Littorio's are immune at any inclination against the British 14" , even accepting the British tests results, while KGV's are never at 0° inclination, are not immune at 20 km with 20° inclination or at 18 km with 30°), we can move to your question regarding "lucky" hits:
"But in case of “critical (un)lucky hits”?"
Here I do agree the shallow belt is exposing Littorio's to more risks than KGV's.
Thanks for the very clear pictures above, I'm afraid I will never be able to produce such self-explanatory graphs......
The risk of such hits, as your graph shows clearly, is evident at long ranges (the 22km of your example, at 12 km it's negligible due to the long distance that the shell has to travel UW.....
I have always said that at relatively long ranges, KGV's have an advantage due to their horizontal protection and also due to the shallow belt. Therefore, in our scenario, if the British admiral is carefully avoiding to close range, keeping at least over 20 km and controlling his ship's inclination, he would have an advantage over Littorio's squadron.
On the other side, if he is determined to close range (as well as the Italian one according to our scenario), as per British doctrine, he would face an Italian ship with a significant inclination, thus the distance that has to be traveled UW by the British shell would be much larger than 6.2 meters in the worst case, already starting from 22 km and enhancing while the distance is closed. Once the distance is short to average, even if the 2 battlefleets turn on almost parallel courses, the flat trajectories will avoid the risk of any under-belt penetration.
Regarding your proposed scenario of 6 degrees roll, I agree again that this would even more expose Littorio's to a huge risk, but from 22 km, I don't expect many hits with a sea like the one you propose
, thus this situation is a very, very "lucky" one, even if it cannot be discarded at all, of course......
In conclusion, IMHO the real risk for Littorio's is not coming from UW hits, I would be more concerned by a long range (as well a bit "lucky") hit impacting the outboard horizontal armor without passing through the 70 mm upper belt, due to the Littorio's inclination, and having "only" the 36 OD+10HT upper deck and the main 90 (machinery) to 100 (magazines) OD + 12 mm HT of the main armor deck to penetrate........
Bye, Alberto