What kind of “bullets” do the big guns fire?
1. An AP (Armor Piercing) round that weighed about 2700 pounds and was used against other ships or hardened concrete targets. The AP rounds are designed to penetrate more than 28-1/2 feet of reinforced concrete or 16 inches of class A armor. 2. An HC (High Capacity) round that weighed about 1900 pounds and was used for shore bombardment. An HC round generally makes a hole about 20 feet deep and 50 feet in diameter (depending upon what it lands on, of course). Fun Fact! On one of my tours I had a gentleman who was a Korean War veteran who had been in the Army. At one point during his service he was assigned to do gunnery spotting for our guns. He said that one day we were firing on a target that was on top of a hill. He said our first salvo of shells missed the target, but our second salvo not only took out the target, but took the entire top of the hill off! Are the projectiles mostly full of explosives? No, actually the armor piercing shell only has about 41 pounds of explosives in it
