Belt armor is a layer of heavy metal armor plated onto or within outer hulls of warships, typically on battleships, battlecruisers, cruisers, and on all modern aircraft carriers.[1] Furthermore, heavy warships have armored decks to protect them from either aerial bombing or from "plunging fire" of long-range naval shells or guided missiles descending onto them at steep angles. This is especially important for aircraft carriers, which have been always prime targetrs for air and missile attacks, and which have their vulnerable hangar decks loaded with fueled-up and armed aircraft, and also aircraft undergoing repairs and fueling, one deck below the main deck. All U.S. Navy, Royal Navy, French Navy, and other countries' aircraft carriers built since 1945 have had heavily-armored flight decks.
Typically, the main armor belt covered the warship from its main deck down to some distance below the warship's waterline. If the armor belt is/was built within the hull, rather than forming the outer hull, it would be installed at an inclined angle to improve the warship's protection.
When the warship is struck by an artillery shell (from ship or from shore) or an underwater torpedo, the belt armor is designed to prevent penetration into the heart of the ship, either by being too thick of an obstacle for the explosive warhead to penetrate, or else by being sloped to a degree that would deflect downwards the artillery shell or the torpedo, and also its explosive force if it detonates. Frequently, the main belt's armor plates were supplemented with a torpedo bulkhead spaced several meters behind the main belt, designed to maintain the ship's watertight integrity even if the main belt was penetrated. Furthermore, the outer spaces around the main belt are/were always filled with storage tanks that can contain either fuel oil, seawater, or fresh water. There, the liquids in the tanks absorb or scatter much of the explosive force of warheads and shells.
It needs to be noted that in combat, a warship can be seriously damaged underwater not only by torpedoes, but also by heavy naval artillery shells that plunge into the ocean a short distance "short" of the targeted ship. Those shells, especially armor-piercing shells, can pass through a short stetch of water and strike the warship some distance below her waterline, and then detonate there. This is something that absolutely must be protected against, because hits by such shells would present a severe risk of sinking the warship, just as torpedoes do.
If their was air space between the armor belt and the hull, that would also add to the buoyancy of the warship, but this has rarely been done, because liquids offer superior protection to the ship against either torpedoes or the shells mentioned above. Some kinds of naval warships also had belt armor that was thinner than what was really necessary for their protection. This was done with some warships, especially battlecruisers and aircraft carriers, to make them significantly lighter and faster in steaming through the seas, in order to take heavy striking power to the enemy rapidly, or in the case of aircraft carriers, so that their speed made/makes them much more capable of launching their warplanes and recovering the warplanes from flight. This is always done by steaming the aircraft carrier rapidly into any wind that is present, and nearly all large aircraft carriers have had speeds of 30 knots of more: for example, the sister ships USS Lexington (CV-2) and USS Saratoga (CV-3), the second and third aircraft carriers to enter the U.S. Navy, back in 1927. These were completed on the hulls of under-construction battlecruisers with powerful engines, giving them very high speed
   | WW2 Armour schemes - Armor Schemes on W.W.II Battleships |
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