HMS Barham First Impressions - Steel Baron Event - War Thunder - video Dailymotion

Toreno

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.  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

Transcript

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.

HMS Barham First Impressions - Steel Baron Event - War Thunder

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