Why Were Stealth Ships Invented 70 Years Before Radar?

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Explains why no Ironclads were ever spotted on radar during the civil war

The battle of hampton roads was almost comical. They shot each other for literal hours without relevant damage, nevermind casualties. The people watching from shore actually got bored. Viriginia ran aground for a while, but nothing was made of it. The Monitor lost it's captain and retreated for a moment. So Viriginia declared victory and drove off. Then Monitor came back, found no Virginia and declared victory. But virginia did spend a month in Drydock afterwards, while monitor stuck around off shore. So it definitely got the worse of the "duel".

very few people talk about ironclads, they're sorta forgotten, being stuck in between world war ships and sailing ships.

Another thing about sloped armor is that the effective thickness is increased relative to perpendicular armor.

I have a better question: Are civil war ironclads stealth?

A point worth mentioning about angling. Another reason to angle surfaces up is to prevent radar signals from bouncing off the water. if hull surfaces are angled down, the hull and the water will also create a cat's eye effect, making it show up more easily on radar. I think you actually mentioned this on a different video (something about flared vs. tumblehome bows if I recall). That's why aircraft carriers don't really bother with any radar dampening features the way destroyers do. The most important feature of an aircraft carrier is deck space, because it directly effects how many planes you can carry and how fast they can deploy. There are exceptions, but those exceptions are smaller carrier/destroyer hybrids used by small navy's or for clandestine opps rather than large scale deployments. Making something like a nimitz class carrier "stealthy" would require a ship with such a wide hull at the water line that it would be impractically slow and difficult to maneuver missed

TLDR: sloped surfaces deflect things

it's not just that sloped surfaces deflect things, but often it has more to do with the fact that it sort of makes things "thicker", because of trigonometry. while i could definitely see it doing more deflecting back in olden days when the force of projectiles were much smaller, deflection becomes harder as you get cannons that fire faster, heavier shells.

I'd love to have seen the battle between the Monitor and Virginia. I think I read somewhere that the battle went on so long with nothing happening that site see'ers started to go home lol. Don't know if that's true, or who the source was.

I love the technology of the Civil War. And the ironclads are one of if not the most impressive things to come out of the war. Before the Monitor arrived, the Virginia had the run of the harbor and sunk /caused the retreat of 3 wooden vessels. That day signaled the end of the wooden warship and made the naval fleets of all other nations obsolete overnight.

Also keep in mind that angling the armor increases the thickness when impacting at an angle!

Fascinating! Congrats on the growth of this channel, up over 500k now!😎🔥🙌

The Merrimac was in dry dock when she was burned which made salvage much easier. That dry dock is is Dry Dock #1 at Norfolk Naval Ship Yard and it is still in service.

As always, Your continuing producing great episodes is what keeps me coming back, (and you say that keeps the channel going - win-win-win!) Thanks for your efforts.

Might be a good idea to put the 5 criteria of how well ships reflect as a word onto the screen while you are explaining each one

Deflecting cannon balls and deflecting radar energy is eerily the same.

Love the cannon animation, never expected there to be very fitting metallic clunking sounds with the cannon shells. I guess we can say it is this attention to detail that have made your channel so special.

Another awesome video. Glad you are getting some sponsors too.

I feel like the iron clads as depicted here is more like u-boats or submarines in that they move everything they can as low as they can. The Monitor is a good example as the round tower translates into a sail or conning's tower.