Today we take a look at HMS Barham, a Queen Elizabeth class battleship that is the main prize of the Steel Baron.
So join me as we take a look at its stats, give it a quick test sail and give my overall thoughts on its inclusion in War Thunder.
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Steel Baron Event details ➡️ https://warthunder.com/en/news/9042-event-get-hms-barham-in-the-steel-baron-event-en
HMS Barham devblog ➡️ https://warthunder.com/en/news/9064-development-steel-baron-hms-barham-en
Game: War Thunder ⬅️
#warthunder #hmsbarham #barham #queenelizabeth #battleship #event #steelbaron
So join me as we take a look at its stats, give it a quick test sail and give my overall thoughts on its inclusion in War Thunder.
Social Media ⬇️
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/toreno.bsky.social
Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/Toreno4
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/toreno170
Mastodon: Toreno17@mastodon.social
Threads: https://www.threads.net/@toreno170
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/Toreno17
Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/toreno5/videos
Steel Baron Event details ➡️ https://warthunder.com/en/news/9042-event-get-hms-barham-in-the-steel-baron-event-en
HMS Barham devblog ➡️ https://warthunder.com/en/news/9064-development-steel-baron-hms-barham-en
Game: War Thunder ⬅️
#warthunder #hmsbarham #barham #queenelizabeth #battleship #event #steelbaron
Category
🎮️
GamingTranscript
00:00Hello everybody, Tran0 here, and today we're taking a look at the main vehicle prize for the
00:04Steel Baron event, which is HMS Barham, one of the Queen Elizabeth class battleships,
00:10which is coming into the game at rank 6 battle rating 7.0. So this is quite an interesting
00:16addition because of course this is one of the Queen Elizabeth class battleships, and of course
00:20at the moment Britain doesn't really have any 7.0 naval vessels outside of HMS Hood. So the addition
00:27of Barham is quite interesting because of course on the American tech tree we got the USS Mississippi
00:32which laid the way for USS Tennessee to be added, so hopefully this is laying the way for future
00:36Queen Elizabeth class battleships to be added. So we take a look at the vessel itself and see how
00:42good it is and what we can sort of expect from some of the future Queen Elizabeth class battleships.
00:47And of course it looks like it's been added in its World War One configuration because of course
00:52it doesn't really have much in the way of anti-aircraft armament, but you have got these
00:56four twin turrets with the 15-inch gun, so you've got two at the front, two at the back,
01:01and then you can fire your semi-armor-piercing ballistic capped shells, 427 millimeters
01:06penetration at 5,000 meters at 0 degree angle to 169 millimeters at a 60 degree angle,
01:13and then you can upgrade that to fire your APC shells, so again at the same range 516 millimeters
01:19at 0 degrees to 197 at 60 degrees. So pretty effective shells, and then for your secondary
01:25armament you can fire your standard HE shells or you can fire these semi-armor-piercing shells,
01:31so 101 millimeters penetration at a 5,000 meters, and you can see for the main guns they've got a
01:37reload rate of 1.5 rounds a minute, which can be improved to two rounds a minute. Of course the
01:43horizontal targeting is only 1.7 degrees a second, though it is a battleship gun so it is expected to
01:48be a bit slow, but the vertical targeting is 4.2 degrees a second, so a little bit faster,
01:54and you've got your 14 six-inch guns at the side here, so seven for each side of the ship, and for
01:59each side you've got one at the back here for rear firing, and you can also fire at the front with
02:04these ones here by the looks of things, so good for chase fire. Unfortunately we don't really have
02:09much in the way of anti-aircraft guns. You've just got two 76 millimeter guns, and honestly I would
02:16not be surprised if they're just firing solid shot. Maybe they've got some time to fuse shells,
02:20but even they're not going to be exactly great. Basically this is going to be very vulnerable to
02:24enemy aircraft. By the looks of things we've got four range finders and five fire directors,
02:30so you've got a range finder above each of the main turrets. You've got some fire directors just
02:34behind them as well. The range finders on the turrets aren't exactly very good, only got a
02:39measure accuracy of 79%, and it takes 20 seconds to get a firing solution, but then you've got some
02:45more effective fire directors, 93% accuracy, only 15 seconds to get a firing solution.
02:51And one of those fire directors is right up here at the top of the ship, and then you've got two
02:55more here. So at least one, possibly three of your fire directors are pretty safe from enemy fire.
03:00It seems very unlikely you're going to take a shell up there, so it should be very hard to
03:04lose all of your fire directors, unless the radio station takes a bad hit. And you have also got
03:11these torpedo tubes. You've got two for each side at the front here, and then two for each side at
03:15the rear. They've got a range of about 7.3 kilometres, so you could potentially use them
03:20at a bit of a distance, but honestly I can't see them being very successful. You might be better
03:25just leaving them so you've got less chance of them being ammo racked. And as for the armour,
03:30so you can see it maxes out at about 330 millimetres around the waterline,
03:35tapers off to about 152 millimetres towards the upper decks. You've still got a bit of 203
03:40millimetres under the water, but then below that only about 50 millimetres. The upper deck's only
03:45about 25 millimetres, but you've got some 50 millimetre bits underneath there, and over here
03:50it's about 38 millimetres. Looking at the turrets themselves, turret face is about 330 millimetres,
03:56the roof's only 108, and it tapers off a little bit towards the sides and rear of the turret.
04:02The bar bets are only 254, which isn't the worst in the world but not the best either,
04:07and again there's some weak spots there towards the rear. Again only 177 millimetres at the very
04:13rear of that turret, and when you can see for this rear turret it's actually got even less
04:17armour at the front, so yeah, some of these are going to be a little bit vulnerable.
04:21The bridge is decently well protected, though the roof armour isn't the best there either,
04:26so if a shell hits the roof there it might still destroy your bridge. But at least that
04:31rangefinder seems to be encased entirely in 152 millimetres of armour, which is pretty good.
04:36Then moving towards the rear, again the armour does seem to taper off a little bit here so
04:41your steering system might be a little bit vulnerable, and again those rear torpedoes,
04:46you don't want to get hit there because you could easily get ammo racked, so like I said earlier,
04:50probably better off just not bringing them along. And you've got a pretty high crew complement of
04:541184, and you've got a top speed of 23.7 miles per hour, which is pretty good for a battleship,
05:01I think. Then you've got your various camouflage schemes that can be applied, so you've got your
05:06pretty iconic Dazzle camouflage there, which would be pretty good to see in-game.
05:11We'll just take this out for a quick test sail,
05:15see if we can just get one salvo off on, say, that vessel over there.
05:20Oh, did one of the secondary guns just fire? Oh, is that the deck-mounted one, by the looks of things?
05:28Oh, interestingly, it's gone for the vessels, not the enemy aircraft. I'm going to set it to enemy
05:34aircraft a second, see if it does actually try to engage them, because if it doesn't, that might be
05:39a bit of a problem, because it would mean we've got literally no anti-aircraft defence. I'm pretty
05:46sure they did give it some very good anti-aircraft defence after World War I, but, uh, yeah, during
05:52the war, and maybe the immediate aftermath, yeah, not the best. Maybe they even upgraded it during
05:56World War I. I know some ships have got some very basic anti-aircraft armament, at least.
06:03It's definitely going to be a bit of a problem if it doesn't have anything at all.
06:07Oh, looks like I direct hit. Yeah, it took out a decent bunch of the crew. We're already up to our
06:14top speed, so it's 28 miles per hour when everything's, uh, spaded, so that's a very quick,
06:20good speed for a battleship. I mean, I think the SMS Vondertand is about this top speed,
06:26and that's a battlecruiser, so, you know, this is officially a battleship, so,
06:29that's a pretty good speed. Get another server off while that's still going,
06:36while that's still going in. And again, we've done another good chunk of damage. I'm going to
06:42turn the engines off, see if it starts, uh, slowing down slowly. We've set the secondaries
06:48to go after everything, and, uh, I think we've got a good amount of damage, so I'm going to
06:55reset the secondaries to go after everything.
07:01Yeah, so you can see the guns are doing pretty good damage.
07:05Not the fastest reload in the world, but again, they're battleship guns, it's to be expected.
07:12Okay, looks like the, um, anti-aircraft shells do have some sort of timed fuse
07:16on them, so they are, they do look like they are officially supposed to be anti-aircraft
07:20guns, they're just not engaging enemy aircraft for some reason.
07:26Maybe that's something you more have to do as a player, rather than leaving it to the AI,
07:31which is a bit unfortunate, especially since we've only got the two guns, and I don't want to
07:34really be taking my attention away to fire just one gun at an enemy aircraft.
07:40Anyway, that is HMS Barham. Yeah, this seems like a pretty good battleship.
07:44I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to unlock it just because of, um, time constraints,
07:47but I'm definitely hoping that we'll get some more Queen Elizabeth-class battleships
07:51in the future. Be nice to get Warspike, Queen Elizabeth, and some of the other vessels. And
07:57yeah, I'm hoping that this means that Britain is going to start getting some more top-tier
08:01battleships in another update. Anyway, just a quick video looking at HMS Barham,
08:06hopefully you've enjoyed it. I've been Torano, and I'll see you next time.