ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the best means through which to design armor-penetrating weapons. The armoring of moving vehicles against enemy weapons has a long history, from Korean naval sailing ships used against an invading Japanese fleet to the placing of rows of personnel shields on the sides of Viking longships to Leonardo da Vinci’s studies of armored turtle-like land vehicles with cannons (the first “tanks”). However, until the beginning of the nineteenth century, the ability to economically make anything but small handmade iron and steel objects such as swords or pieces of suits of armor did not exist. All of this had direct effects in determining what was needed in weapons to damage and destroy ironclad warships, especially how to penetrate their protective armor and, of course, how to make the armor better to frustrate those weapons.
