Shoot below waterline so that the water slows the shells down (very tricky, and mostly relies on luck with dispersion).

Shoot from further away so that shells lose velocity and/or penetration, or so that the shells would plunge down through the deck (not all ships can do this even at max range).

So how to avoid citadel overpens? Here are some options:

Note: the test was conducted using 5' AP shells, if you use battleship caliber shells they have a whole lot more penetration and retain velocity better due to their weight, so it could overpenetrate even from medium distances. Result: Overpenetration ribbon.Īt 2.5 km, the shells lost enough penetration and/or velocity that it didn't go right through the ship and detonated inside the citadel. All we have to do is shoot some AP shells into it at close range.Īnd here's a video of it, using Sims' 5' AP SC Mk38 shells at ranges of 0.5 km and 2.5 km respectively.Īt 0.5 km, the AP shells have so much penetration and velocity left over that the shell simply went through the citadel. A very suitable candidate for testing citadel overpen. If a shell penetrated it, it simply can't miss the citadel. The ship is narrow and its armor is relatively thin. To showcase a citadel overpenetration, I present to you the Kuma:Īs you can see from the screenshot above (taken from the PT server using the new armor viewer), the Kuma's citadel is its whole midsection (except for the superstructure above it). Usually it's the former, and can be explained. But to be fair, occasionally it might be a bug (and I do have a few replays/screenshots of these). In most cases, people didn't really pay attention to their hit ribbons or misidentified their hits. To which I might reply, 'Can I see the replay?' So if it overpenetrated, it's not a citadel hit, so no citadel ribbon, even though the shell passed through the citadel.īut, 'Aha!', someone might say, 'I have anecdotal evidence that I overpenetrated a citadel and got a citadel hit!' To get a citadel hit with an AP shell it must actually detonate inside the citadel.

The result is an overpenetration ribbon and 10% shell damage. The reason for this is because the shell has plenty of penetration left and the fuze delay is too long or didn't even arm (if the armor was too thin). Quite simply, it is when an AP shell overpenetrated the citadel, and exited through the other side of the ship.

So this time, the explanation comes with pictures and videos for ease of understanding. This is yet another topic which I often have to explain repeatedly, as people are usually either ignorant, misinformed or simply skeptical about it.

Ship citadel world of warships