[GonzoGOP]

First two points completely valid. It would be a long shot for the RPG to hit the mag. My point was on a ship with no armor, nothing bigger than a ma deuce, a relatively small crew to fight fires, and holds full of ammo and fuel you don't go charging into battle. That's why the supply ship is supposed to be escorted.

As to the third point, no the amount of explosive in the warhead isn't important. It just has to be enough to set off something in the mag. Up until WWII several warships had been lost due to electrical sparks in the magazines. Have you seen those pictures of an RPG hitting a loaded tank. At first there is just a little puff of smoke, that's the RPG. Then the ammo in the tank cooks off and the turret goes flying. Now the M-1 has the ammo stored away from the crew, so just the back of the turret blows off, but still the explosion isn't from the RPG, it just sets off the ammo that is already there.

One minor point, the Arizona was a bomb hit, she isn't believed to have taken any torpedoes due to Vestal being moored outside her. Oklahoma, California and West Virginia went down to torpedoes

[Francis McClobber]

You are correct in pointing out that it doesn’t take much to get ordnance to cook off. But the impetus has to get there to do the job. From that standpoint, comparing an RPG’s penetrating force on a ship’s hull to a torpedo or a 500 lb aerial delivery doesn’t quite add up. True, an RPG can rain a world of hurt down on a tank, but not a ship.