HMS Undaunted

This phot was taken on the second attempt to sink her. Sunk with an Exocet missile launched from HMS Norfolk.

Here's the effects of the first Exocet strike a few weeks before..http://www.shipsnostalgia.com/gallery/showphoto.php/photo/266963/title/hms-undaunted/cat/511
http://www.shipsnostalgia.com/gallery/showphoto.php/photo/266659/title/hms-undauntedgibralt/cat/511

So if she stood up to the first Exocet. What does that tell us about later (Sheffield) about warship design?

Wish you had met my old Dad Nick, you could have spent hours talking about the fragility of modern warships compared to the one's he served on in the late 40's and early 50's, Tyne, Musketeer, Milne etc!!!

It must be remembered that Sheffield was destroyed by fire resulting from the missile hit, largely caused by unburnt exocet fuel, in the case of Undaunted she was largely devoid of flammable items, not steaming hence no electrical or hydraulic power which again reduced fire and the missile was launched at optimum parameters ensuring it would strike and detonate as per a perfect profile, often such explosive blasts 'blow out fire' at the fire instant. judging by the above hit it would have struck the boiler room, imagine if that was manned and running, probably the force would have made the blast even greater and severed the ship? Sheffield seem to stand up to the initial exocet hit reasonably well, it was the resultant fire that lost her. One of the conclusions from the post war explosive trials in Scotland was that a fully battened down armoured ship would often suffer far greater blast damage than a lighter constructed vessel, simply as the blast wave was contained and tended the vessel tended to act like a bomb, hence weaken blast areas were introduced post war to reduce such pressures inside a ship. illustrious fire in 1986 was a good example of such blast plates in operation.