What a P-500 hit could do to an Iowa

Could Slava's large anti-ship missiles sink an Iowa-class battleship?

They could inflict severe damage or a mission kill, especially with multiple well-placed hits, but Iowa's armour and internal subdivision made sinking it much less certain.

The exchange makes hit number and location more important than any single claim about the warhead. A shaped charge might penetrate armour, but an Iowa's subdivision was built to isolate shell damage and made the ship very different from a compact tank target. The proposed attack profile also depended on coordinated sea-skimming missiles, with one weapon possibly remaining higher to support the others near the target. That scheme required extensive integration to work as intended. Missile mass, residual fuel, and an external detonation could still transmit damaging shock into machinery, while a superstructure hit would devastate unarmoured spaces. A hit near a turret could jam or shift heavy equipment and threaten the magazine route, though magazine detonation remains an exceptional loss mechanism. Hits to machinery or armour could leave the ship as a mission kill because the 1980s industrial base had little ready capacity to replace major plate, guns, or turret components. Iowa might survive several outcomes that would sink a smaller ship, but survival would not mean quick restoration to combat.