Within the EUCLID project, ‘Survivability, Durability and Performance of Naval Composite Structures’, one task is to develop improved fibre composite joints for naval ship superstructures. In many practical situations, the structures are subjected to loading at very high strain rates like slamming, impact, underwater explosions or blast effect. Material and structural response vary significantly under such loading as compared to static loading. In this paper, the results from a series of Split Hopkinson Pressure Bar tests on the woven composites are presented. These tests were done in two configurations: in-plane and out-of-plan compression test. It is observed that the failure strength varies with the different loading directions. The results indicate that the stress–strain curves, maximum engineering stresses and strains evolve as strain rate changes. The woven composites have higher values of engineering stress and dynamic stiffness for in-plane than for out-of-plane compression at the same strain rate; however, the in-plane strain at maximum stress is higher than that of out-of-plane compression. During the experiments, a high speed camera was used to determine the damage mechanisms. The specimens are mainly damaged in a crushing and shear failure mode under out-of-plane loading, as for in-plane test, the failure was dominated by fibre buckling and delamination.