IJN Yamato Class Battleships

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#21

Have you seen the Springsharp software ( http://www.springsharp.com/ )? It looks like it would be rather a useful tool for what you’re trying to do, as well as bring in more things like the effectiveness of the armour scheme.

Also, if you’re properly interested I would suggest the Battleship .vs. Battleship on the Warships1/Navweaps bulletin board ( http://p216.ezboard.com/fwarships1discussionboardsfrm1 ) - there are a hell of a lot of people on there who really know their stuff, and there is a lot you could potentially learn from them.

Of course I could be stating the blindingly obvious in which case apologies, but they both seemed like things you might find useful.

#22

Without Thermopylae there would most likely never have been a Salamis. Without Salamis the western world as we know it today would have been strangled at birth, and we would most likely live in a repressive theocracy or primitive tribe.
Sometimes the sacrifice is worth it…

#23

Thank you very much pdf27 and it looks great and as I am wrichting this message it is beign downloaded and the forum looks great and I just want to say thank you very much.

It will help me very much.

Thanx again.

Henk

#24

Think the japanese didn’t want to use the Yamato for this mission because they believe it is sacred because Yamato means something sacred. And as for several other ships aswell.

#25

Yamato wasn’t built with the suicide attack in mind, but her sister the Mushashi was already sunk. She could wait to be sunk, or go out all guns blazing.

AA was never good on pre-war ships on both sides. It took Pearl Harbour to show the full potential of aircraft against ships. The wasted space you refer to where was it on deck? If so remember that all guns need space to rotate and also substantial machinary and magazines under the deck as well, there may not have been space for extra guns. Even AA need chutes for the ammo to come up.

The conning tower on most ships is high, that is its purpose. The aircraft may have been a waste during ww2, but they were her scouts. A job taken over by the carrier aircraft.

I thought the yamato was very well armoured, not necesarily against air attack but again a pre-war design. It is worth noting that american carriers had no armour under their flight decks which caused several ships to suffer damage. Apparently British flat tops were armoured, so often the Kamikaze were simply pushed off the deck!!!

Don’t know about the range finders and life boats, how manydid she carry then?

#26

Without Thermopylae there would most likely never have been a Salamis. Without Salamis the western world as we know it today would have been strangled at birth, and we would most likely live in a repressive theocracy or primitive tribe.
Sometimes the sacrifice is worth it…[/quote]

Of course chap, you are spot on there. However, it is equally pheasible to say that the Japanese feared the collapse of their culture and so were prepared to make the sacrifice. Not forgetting that it was widely believed in Japan that when the Americans landed in Japan that they would enslave the entire nation, although completely unfounded it is enough IMHO to motivate men to make the ultimate sacrifice.

#27

It’s a little more complicated than that - in the US carriers the strength (and therefore armoured) deck was the hangar deck, with the flight deck being a light superstructure on top. In the British armoured carriers it was the flight deck.
While this does make it more likely that a carrier with an armoured deck can shrug off an attack completely, if the attack penetrates the armoured deck then the carrier is royally screwed. From memory at least one of the British armoured carriers was a constructive total loss after a hanger deck fire - the whole ship was actually bent due to the intense heat and difficulty fighting the fire. In the US carriers damage control was much easier.
Secondly, the armoured carriers can carry a much smaller air group. This didn’t matter very much when the RN carriers were operating in their original design role around Western Europe, but put them in the Pacific and the fact that they could only carry half the aircraft that the US carriers could for the same size of ship becomes important. Not only that, but the RN carriers had a lower sortie rate as they couldn’t shuffle as many aircraft down to the hangar deck (an armoured deck forces you to use much smaller aircraft lifts) and couldn’t warm up aircraft below decks (the US carriers had open sections at the rear).
This all means that while the UK carriers were more likely to survive a bomb strike, the US carriers were much more likely not to get hit in the first place due to their massively stronger air wing which has far more chance of shooting down an incoming attack. It is notable that all the late war/postwar British carriers dropped the armoured carrier design, and nobody else picked it up. However, on all modern carriers the flight deck is the strength deck for structural reasons, so the British may well have been barking up the right tree for completely the wrong reasons.

That’s rather arguable - remember that this isn’t some new attitude in Japan, but one that has been a fairly consistent thread throughout their history. Arguably they weren’t all that unique either - some of the stuff I’ve been reading recently suggests that this sort of attitude (taken to a slightly less extreme level than in Japan) was actually rather prevalent in Europe shortly before the outbreak of WW1.
I think the point I’m really groping for here is that the Japanese willingness to attack against suicidal odds, sacrifice themselves, etc. predates the point at which they realised their culture might be in danger. As such I think you’re barking up the wrong tree here, but I can’t really think of any good examples to prove it.

#28

Cheers for that pdf. Didn’t know some of the detail in that. I was more trying to show that there were various ideas at the time on where the armour should be to counter the perceived threats. I think most pre-war battleships had most of their armour to protect against other battleships as opposed to torpedos (aerial or water launched) or bombs.

#29

If you look at the design of the Bismarck and Tirpitz you can see that they knew that a air attack on a battleship is not good and thus made precotions to be able to try and stop a air attack so it is not completely right to say that theydid not have that in mind when they designed battleships.

Take a look at the deck of Yamoto early in the war and then have a look at the ship again later in the war, they emproved the AA capabalaty of the ship, but still they did not do all they could. Look how the Germans emproved the AA on the Tirpitz.

Henk

#30

Henk.

I have already covered this in either this thread or another one. All through the war Yamato had her AA defences augmented, sometimes by removing her secondary gun batteries. Her air defence at the start was pretty poor when compared to her defence capabilities at the end.

Why Bismarck and Tirpitz would have better air defence is open to discussion. Perhaps because the waters they would be operating in were closed in, in comparison to the Pacific, or perhaps the Germans saw the possiblity in air attacks. The primary job of the battleship was to smash other battleships, this didn’t really change until later in the war.

#31

Well, they understood the principle but didn’t really get it in practice. Tirpitz was effectively a floating wreck by the time it was actually sunk due to the activities of the Fleet Air Arm and RAF Bomber Command. Bismarck was crippled by a pretty light air attack.
Incidentally, Bismarck wasn’t nearly as well armoured as popular history would make out. While it proved pretty difficult to sink (largely due to the fact that the RN was so angry with it for sinking Hood that they closed in too far - hence the shells destroyed everything above water but let little water into the hull) it was a mission kill very rapidly and was completely unable to fire back within a very short time of starting the final engagement. Essentially it was an upgraded 1918 design of Dreadnough (the Baden class with slight improvements) and even a 1920s treaty battleship like Rodney was able to smash it with little difficulty. They got very lucky at Denmark Strait (Hood was poorly handled and still got hit by the archetypal “Golden BB”, while PoW still had a lot of dockyard workers on board trying to get it finished) and this seems to have created the mythos around Bismarck.

Increasingly off-topic I know, but this sort of thing interests me.

#32

off topic aswell, the germans got lucky with sinking the Hood because one of the Bismarks salvos fired and the bullet hit the Hoods rear ammunition storage which of course would kill any ship considering the amount of ammo in the storage. And sparking a fire then exploding.

#33

Well firstly the Yamoto was more armoured yes, but her AA was not effective and the Bismarck had the problem of the aircraft flying to low adn thus not able to shoot them. The Tirpitz was sunk by a 3 six ton bombs and the earlyer air raids on the ship was not effective and thus used the six ton bomb.

The Rodney was bull. It is the worst battleship design I have ever seen in my whole live. In the battle with the Bismarck it got hit and the wter came pouring in everywhere and the superstructure was permanently damaged and was falling appart. The guns bounced out of their barberets adn made the ship thus a bad gun platform. AA guns on the Rodney and the Nelson was poor. It never saw combat against other navel dhips during the war.

Actualy calling it a battleship is not a bood thing the Yamoto and the US battleships was better, but it did out gun the Bismarck. The Baden was one of the best battleships of its time.

Sorry for being off topic.

Henk

#34

Henk, attacking aircraft seldom fly in ways to make it easier for the ships to shoot them down.

I think the bismarck was hit by aerial torpedos rather than bombs.

#35

Not exactly - Op Tungsten killed 122 and wounded 346 including the captain. It also undid the 6 months of repair work done since the X-craft attacks. This was a carrier based raid using either 500, 600, or 1600lb bombs.
In another carrier strike (Op Goodwood - actually a series of strikes) the ship was hit again repeatedly and one bomb came to rest in No.4 switch room. Unfortunately it was a dud, but had it gone off it would have wrecked the fire control and switchboard systems, and possibly sunk the ship. Neither of these raids would I in any way describe as “not effective” - they left the Tirpitz as a mission kill for quite some time. The series of attacks left the Tirpitz able to perform no operational deployments from when it was first hit by the X-craft in September 1943 until it was sunk by bomber command in November 1944. I would suggest that this series of raids was actually rather effective and did exactly what they had to.

If the Rodney was so bad, why did it sink the Bismarck with so little difficulty? KGV was there too, but had major problems with it’s triple turrets which weren’t fixed until later in the war and which left Rodney to do most of the damage. Bismarck by contrast did no damage to any of the British heavy ships, with the only damage I’m aware of being what reads like splinter damage to the destroyers Cossack and Zulu.
Not quite sure what you’re on about with “never saw combat against other naval ships during the war” - Rodney was the ship which did most damage to the Bismarck. She also drove the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau in March 1941 (largely because they realised how badly they were outgunned).

It’s clearly a battleship, and the Nelson class (of which Rodney is the other member) were arguably among the better treaty battleships. Remember what this means - they had to conform to the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922. Hence the requirement to weigh only 35,000 tonnes (Bismarck was 10,000 tonnes heavier). And the Baden class may well have been among the better battleships of it’s time, but it’s time was WW1. The Allied navies learnt a lot by the gunnery trials they conducted post-WW1, and this led to a radical revision of armour schemes for new build ships. Bismarck still had a WW1 style armour scheme, and it showed in how easily it was mission killed when KGV and Rodney finally caught up with it. Essentially the armour scheme worked very well at keeping the ship floating, but was awful at keeping it in fighting condition. Even at Denmark Strait the relatively minor damage it recieved was sufficient to prevent it from continuing it’s mission agains the North Atlantic convoys.

#36

Yes, I did not say it was hit by a bomb it was hit by a torpedo by Sworfish carrier aircraft. I must agree with you it is not easy to hit aircaft on the open seas on a battleship.

Henk

#37

In John Tolands book, he states that the Yamamoto had the best armour of any Battleship in WW2, particularly the Torpedo belt was thicker than any other Batleship alfoat. The Mushasi took about 30 Torpedo hits before it sank , please correct me here if you know better as another book I have says 17. 30 may be combined torpedo and bomb.

How anyone can say they were inferior battleships is beyond me. On a one one one engagement I’m sure they would have done OK.

Remember the Slot etc…

#38

I think it was combined. Hold on.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_battleship_Musashi

During this battle on 24 October 1944, she was attacked by American carrier-based aircraft armed with bombs and torpedoes. After taking 17 bomb and 20 torpedo hits and 18 near misses, the ship capsized to port, and sank at 1935hrs. on October 24, taking more than 1023 of her 2399 crew with her; 1376 of the crew were rescued by the destroyers Kiyoshimo and Shimakaze.

#39

Yes,it was combined. Ok, I will correct myself. The Yamoto and Mushasi had the best armour. :oops:

Firefly anilise the Rodney and dig up a book called THE DISCOVERY OF THE BISMARCK by Robert D Ballard who also discoverd the Titanic and in there you will read what a american who was on the Rodney because she was deu for a refit in the US and was on her way there when she was called into battle to sink the Bismarck. He said how poor the ship was and how bad the damage was.

Then you will realise you do get shitty battleships.

Henk

#40

Well, according to the various accounts I’ve read Rodney didn’t get hit once in the battle. However, it’s hardly surprising it was in dire condition - IIRC it was on the way to New York for a major refit (something I don’t think it had had since being launched in the mid 1920s) so general wear and tear are likely to cause significant damage all by themselves. They’re unlikely to have that big an effect on battleworthiness however.