It's like spending a fortune creating a too elaborate halloween costume, Only to show up too late at the party, wearing something that is too hot, makes it impossible to dance, talk or drink and everyone is already too drunk to appreciate your masterpiece.
@@raygiordano1045 it was only during wartime that they lacked to those resources and with the Japanese at least they had plans to limit that it's just the Americans foiled all of their plans. I cannot however speak on the German plans
@@the_undead The Japanese were dependant on imports before the war. A lot of their iron, steel, and most of their oil were imported from the U.S. Embargoes before the war and submarine warfare during the war did a good job of cutting Japan's supplies. Even if Japan had plenty of resources, their meager industry wasn't able to produce enough to replace loses, let alone keep up with the U.S. The Germans were reliant on Sweden for iron and Romania for oil. There wasn't a lot that could be done about Swedish imports, but refineries are very vulnerable to attack, likewise the means of transportation of fuel.
@@raygiordano1045 I can't speak on the Japanese plans to deal with the iron imports but if I remember correctly the whole reason they invaded the Dutch East Indies was because they could get maybe not enough oil to fully supply themselves but it would be oil production that they could add on top of their existing supply and any supplies they steal from invaded countries Naval basis etc. Again this is assuming that my memory serves in this situation
YAMATO and MUSASHI had an anti-torpedo system that had no liquid layers (no water and/or fuel oil), as was used in all other modern large WWII warships to help soak up the blast and water-hammer effects. I think that this was done to save weight, allowing thicker armor. The system was designed to use the extremely wide hull to allow such a large space that the spaced internal bulkheads of the anti-torpedo side system did not need water to help support them and soak up energy. Unfortunately, actual wartime damage showed that the system had some Achilles' Heels in that the ship support structure could deform and cause internal I-beams to punch deep holes into the hull, even to the last bulkhead of that protection system, bypassing the need to penetrate all of the spaced plates by water pressure and blast shock, as was expected. Also, the anti-diving-shell thick tapered lower belt was pressed up against the bottom edge of the inclined waterline 15.8-16.1" Vickers Hardened face-hardened belt armor (VH, a successful face-hardened armor -- it only had to pass the same spec as the WWI-era Vickers Cemented (VC) armor that it got in 1912 with the IJN KONGO so its reduced resistance compared to more recent foreign armors was not due to inferior workmanship but over-conservative design and manufacturing processes -- that did not add the thin cemented surface layer as unnecessary, which was completely true against high-quality AP shell by WWII; only the Japanese in WWII successfully used non-cemented face-hardened armor much, with the US having some before WWI, but with mixed results as to their success against large-caliber AP shells and the companies that were using it, Midvale and Bethlehem, stopped doing so after they won a US Supreme Court judgement in 1912 nullifying Krupp's KC armor patents). For some reason, they did not key the two vertically-aligned plates together using nickel-steel keying strips pressed into matching slots in-between them, as most other navies did by WWII (after poor WWI results), so when the torpedo blast pressure hit the wedge-shaped upper portion of that lower belt, it was able to tear it away from the main belt, opening up a huge hole in the anti-torpedo system at the top several feet below the waterline. Not a good idea when real hits showed what REALLY happened due to torpedo hits even on a ship as big as YAMATO.
@@frankwalder3608 Indeed but it seems it would have been impossible to comletely correct such defficiencies and you have to add the fact yamato hull was not designed to withstand the kind of torps the US navy used at the end of the war, when yamato had been built, the explosing charges of torpedoes were usually significantly lower. Furthermore having taken almost no parts in the WW1 naval slugfest, the IJN only modern taste of combat that is the war against russia did not allow them to progress as significantly as other nations in the field of structural damage caused by concusion. In fact Yamato and Musashi expected resilience was quite theorical whereas the Royan Navy and the US navy had had time to really think over the matter of structural damages induces by the pressure of blasts.
@@vlad78th @Frank Walder Do you know any online sources about those repairs and the general armor deficiencies of Yamato? I'd like to learn more about this.
@@frankwalder3608 PART 1. No, it wasn't. The damage indicated that the thick wedge-shaped tapering lower belt plate (~8" thick of NVNC armor -- the same steel as the VH non-cemented form of very thick YAMATO Class face-hardened side armor but not face-hardened (Japanese engineers were very intelligent and made entirely bottom-line-rational decisions when allowed by their at the time overly-conservative culture) -- at the top where it touches the bottom of the ~16" VH inclined waterline belt), which also formed the upper part of one of the anti-torpedo system's layered spaced bulkheads, was much to rigid to handle torpedo concussion, blast, and shockwave effects properly. The same thing was found out by the US in its SOUTH DAKOTA and IOWA Class anti-diving-projectile lower belt of very similar, but even thicker design, also used as one of the 5-spaced-layer anti-torpedo side system. Unlike the US lower belt, however, the Japanese anti-torpedo system could not be fixed significantly because: (1) The Japanese VH waterline belt and the NVNC tapered anti-diving-projectile lower belt met where the bottom of the former and the top of the latter were pressed tightly together with reinforced I-beam internal supports and overlapping external clamping plates plates at the joint of the two. Unlike the meetings between the many vertical joints in the row of thick plates in each belt layer (VH to VH and NVNC to NVNC), which were locked together by heavy interlocking edge grooves with nickel-steel keying stirps pressed into the grooves to firmly hold the joined plates together, the horizontal joints of the VH and NVNC boundary, unlike with the US boundary between the Class "A" waterline belt and the STS tapering lower belt, HAD NO KEYING STRIPS!! The ONLY thing holding the two rows of plates together was this external support system. While adequate in keeping the waterline VH belt and lower NVNC belt rigid against a heavy projectile impact, this same reinforcement system was totally and completely inadequate and counter-productive for supporting the lower belt when hit by the huge blast of the torpedo warhead detonation followed by the collapse of the bubble formed in the ocean by this blast that slammed back as the "water hammer" (essentially the "Fist of God" made up of high-speed water moving horizontally into the hole in the outer hull made by the warhead blast as the ocean comes back to refill with water the blast-expanded gas-filled bubble on the external side, but there is nothing on the ship hull side to slow it down -- air pressure is not even noticeable here). You need for the anti-torpedo layers, flexible, rather thin high-tensile steel plates -- not the much more rigid hardened homogeneous, ductile armor plates actually used in the lower belt layer -- that will bulge inward and stretch as much as possible before they tear open. As a result, when the MUSASHI torpedo hit occurred, the NVNC lower belt and VH armor waterline belt "parted company", with the lower belt upper edge being ripped free of the VH belt (which did not move very much, if at all) and bent backward into the ship . This pushed its internal upper end joint supports backward with it, punching holes through several inner bulkheads behind the lower belt layer and totally sabotaging those inner bulkheads' ability to keep the nearby ship volume from flooding. The repairs to MUSASHI increased the reinforcement behind the upper end the lower belt, but to fix the oversight of not creating the keying system between the waterline and lower belt (which could have been done, as in the US design) would have required tearing the hull apart over its entire amidships length on both sides and shipping all of the plates involved back to the manufacturer -- the shipyard could not possibly handle such a thing -- for redesign, then heavy machining to cut the needed keying grooves, and then manufacturing the many keying strips needed, after which the whole thing has to be shipped back to the shipyard and put back together one pair of plates at a time, and the ship then go through a complete, long, new-build shakedown. Impossible. Thus, additi9nal torpedo hits could not really be protected properly against and a different strategy of trying to handle the massive flooding that would always occur had to be devised. With the US designs strong keying strips joining the waterline and lower belt edges tightly together, it was the bottom edge of this lower belt near the joint at the lower hull's triple bottom, where the bulkhead was only 1.25" STS thick for most of it length behind the lower hull, that had the most tearing, not the top. Thus the damage due to the US Navy's simulated torpedo hits on SOUTH DAKOTA caused some excessive flooding, but much less internal hull bulkhead and deck damage than the MUSASHI suffered from its hit. (2) The US system, when this over-rigid lower belt problem was discovered in post-building tests of a mock-up of the SOUTH DAKOTA anti-torpedo system against the large submarine-fired torpedoes -- the system was still adequate against the smaller aircraft-dropped torpedoes at the start of WWII, but by the end of WWII even these had become much more powerful by the use of new explosives like the US Navy aluminum/enhanced-RDX mixture called Torpex (40% more powerful than TNT) and were similar to submarine torpedoes at the start of WWII in their effectiveness --.could do the following to mitigate to a large extent the fault: The original side protection had the outermost layer of the 4 spaces between the outer hull of 1" High-Tensile Steel (HTS) -- except directly in front of the Class "A" waterline belt, where the hull was 1.25" (SOUTH DAKOTA) or 1.5" (IOWA) STS armor -- and innermost HTS protective bulkhead (with a thin Mild Steel (MS) leakage-limiting bulkhead with a narrow gap just behind it) as an air gap ("void") about 4' wide at the top, the 3rd deck, which also was the bottom edge of the waterline belt, as mentioned (there was a gap in front of the waterline belt, too, that was 3' wide at the level of the upper edge of the waterline belt, the 2nd Deck, which was the primary 5-6" STS armored deck, too). Due to the slope of the waterline and lower belt being the same 19-degree tilt all of the way down to the ship bottom, this outermost gap got wider and wider as one went downward, which was of course the thing to do since the blast and following water-hammer effects of the torpedo warhead detonation were worse and worse the more compressed the water was deeper down. The 3 more inner HTS system bulkheads also were tilted the same, so they had constant width from top (at the level of the bottom edge of the waterline belt) to bottom, with the ship's triple bottom reinforcing the bottom edges of the bulkheads. The space directly behind the lower belt bulkhead (second space inboard) was water or, if needed, fuel-oil filled and kept filled with one or the other at all times. The next space (third from the outer hull) was separate by a 0.75" HTS bulkhead, more stretchable than the STS and about 80% as strong, and filled by water or fuel-oil, too. And the final space (fourth) was another void, behind which was the final 0.75" HTS 'holding" bulkhead protected the "vitals" of the ship. With all of the layers being like that and no lower belt special bulkhead thickness/steel type change, the system was proof at the start of WWII against most submarine torpedoes (at least circa 500 pounds or more of TNT, the "standard explosive" for such comparisons). With the lower belt change, the existing system could not stop early-WWII submarine torpedoes completely, though it would greatly reduce the internal damage caused by a hit and give the ship a chance to perhaps patch up the flooding and do some repairs to put back flooded spaces into operation again. CONTINUED
@@ajlancjc99 well, for the guide anyway, not the Japanese 😆 Seriously, Japan should not ever be allowed to have a military again. The last time Japan had a real military they murdered several times the number of civilians then the Nazis did, and their culture is nearly as xenophobic and racist today as it was back then.
@Don White both China and Russia have incredibly weak economies (China's is a complete paper tiger and Russia doesn't even try to hide how weak their economy is) and both of their militaries are pitiful in comparison to the United States. If you're afraid of either one of those countries or even both together then you need to see a surgeon about those undescended bálls. You also need to read up on your history. Germany was responsible for about 16 million terminations. Japan was responsible for over 50 million, and that is not even including the people that perished due to the famines that the Japanese caused. If you include those people the number shoots up to well over 100 million. not only that, but Japan to this day is ruled by the same elite families that it was ruled by back then because we never prosecuted the vast majority of the war criminals because so many of them held positions of power, and we were trying to be pragmatic about reconstruction. The Japanese people have enshrined Emperor Hirohito as a god, when he should have been publicly hanged from the neck until he was dêãd for his crimes, and the Japanese Imperial family abolished. If Germans today worshipped Hïtlêr, how do you think the world would view it? to this very day they teach in Japanese schools that their unprovoked attack on Pearl Harbor was an act of self-defense, and most of them are ignorant enough to believe it. That is a serious problem, it shows that they have learned nothing. No, neither country should ever be allowed to have a military again. Not only is Japan just as rãçïst as it was back then, but literally every single time Germany has been a global military power they have started a World War. so even though Germany has gone too far in the other direction when it comes to bigotry, they have proven at every possible opportunity that they are not to be trusted with any real military power. it would seem that it is you who needs to wake up, grow a pair, and pick up a history book.
@@micfail2 i am willing to give you the second WW as started by Germany, but the first started on 28 June 1914, when Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian Serb Yugoslav nationalist, assassinated the Austro-Hungarian heir Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, leading to the July Crisis. In response, on 23 July, Austria-Hungary issued an ultimatum to Serbia. Serbia's reply failed to satisfy the Austrians, and the two moved to a war footing. A network of interlocking alliances enlarged the crisis from a bilateral issue in the Balkans to one involving most of Europe. By July 1914, the great powers of Europe were divided into two coalitions: the Triple Entente-consisting of France, Russia, and Britain-and the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy (the Triple Alliance was only defensive in nature, allowing Italy to stay out of the war until April 1915, when it joined the Allied Powers after its relations with Austria-Hungary deteriorated).Russia felt it necessary to back Serbia and, after Austria-Hungary shelled the Serbian capital of Belgrade on the 28 July, approved partial mobilisation. Full Russian mobilisation was announced on the evening of 30 July; on the 31st, Austria-Hungary and Germany did the same, while Germany demanded Russia demobilise within twelve hours. When Russia failed to comply, Germany declared war on Russia on 1 August in support of Austria-Hungary, with Austria-Hungary following suit on 6 August; France ordered full mobilisation in support of Russia on 2 August. --> Russia, Austro-Hungaria and Serbia are the main countries that started the conflict. Imagine it like a alliance of Mexico and Canada both beeing industrialy near equals to the US and Mexico relying on the buildup off their reservist armies when mobilising before together outmatching the USA in military numbers and both hostile towards the USA. Guatemala as an US allie and Honduras as a mexican allie get into a military conflict. Mexico in support of Honduras mobilises all its troops, building up large forces even on the US-border. How would any given president of the USA react when Mexico after 3 days is not going to back down and is willing to escalete the conflict further? If you think of taking out the threat with your professional standing army before it is to late your reaction is exactly the same as the german in 1914. The Schlieffen-Plan was just unnessecary and brought the brits into the fight. And in 1914 every single european major power was armed up to its teeth, waiting for the next war to come, the Balkans was just the powder keg to light it all up. Just because the victors shove the blame up your b-hole doesn't mean you deserv it.
One author pointed at the Yamatos as a prime example of the art of "how to mislead without actually lying". The Japanese gov't assured the world that no, they were not building any 40-50,000 battleships. :P
@@manilajohn0182 The author noted that Japan had withdrawn from the treaty system and retreated behind a wall of secrecy, but occasionally emitted reassuring noises to put the rest of the world off track about what was going on behind all those armed guards and sisal mats surrounding the building slips. :)
@@mrz80 There's nothing unusual about that at all, my friend. After the Japanese withdrew from the naval treaties, they were under no more obligation than any other nation to state details about what they were constructing. The British mislead the Germans in the exact same way prior to WW1. It's what nations do to other nations whom are viewed in an adversarial light- and they do it still. Cheers...
Fun fact: During the search for the IJN Musashi’s wreck, the crew searching for her found about 200 blueprints of her where she was built. Sadly, I have not been able to find these documents online.
Every time I hear about how the Musashi and Yamato were sunk, I'm reminded of a comedy bit by Ron White. "Now, I don't know how many of them it actually would have taken to kick my ass, but I knew how many they were planning to use."
They sent them to die, that was the theme of all 4 of the axis super battleships. They were all pummeled to death without cover. They were a waste anyway, those would have been far better utilized as other fleet or air assets. the Terpitz would have yielded something like 20 destroyers. The 18” guns are overrated, Iowas 16’s fired a heavier projectile, faster, further and more accurately. In a cage match of an Iowa and Yamato class, the Yamato would lose every time unless it had surprise within gun range. The Iowa’s could act with impunity by out ranging and out gunning the Yamato class while using their superior speed and maneuverability to always keep Yamato in her range but not the other way.
stayros stamelos either way its mental masturbation, not to say it isn’t interesting. A cage match scenario isn’t how it works as we know. I maintain my premise that the 4 axis super battleships were objectively a waste. All 4 did nothing of significance that couldn’t have been done better by other assets, better utilized. The Americans building their 4 Iowa’s are a different grading criteria, they had the resources (anyway you cut it) to build their 4 or originally 6 fast-battleships. People mention the enormous cost of the Manhattan project, the B29 project was just as expensive for reference while the anglo American bomber force was already far superior and those are just to name a few. The US did not have to choose Iowas or destroyers etc. like the axis did. That is why I suggest that the 4 axis battleships are a waste while the 4 Iowa’s are whatever, a note in history. They came at a time when they had become obsolete by naval aircraft, whats 20 miles of strike range with what 4% accuracy when you can send planes hundreds of miles with better accuracy. You can build more planes and ships with those resources and they will be a better overall force. I maintain that the main armament for both ships are overrated for ship to ship, they look cool shooting though. Germany didn’t even have a deep water navy, it was illogical to have 2 large battleships without associated battle group. no matter what, U boats or destroyers would have been better. They had zero carriers, but two big battleships that did nothing. The Iowa’s are really the only ones that were used for what they were actually good at, a mobile artillery platform for amphibious landings. Ship to ship combat, not so much. I heard that when they used the South Dakota for target practice, Iowa and a couple other ships shot at her, apparently she was eventually torpedoed after being nuked (allegedly lifting her from the water) and shot at ineffectively at range.
stayros stamelos my premise is that they could have engaged with the US like the soviets did during the Cold War with success; little action after little action to achieve their goals. I believe that if they played it in a way that the USN pacific fleet did respond as you say. Then the USN would have been turned back by a stronger force than they were expecting as was largely the theme of the first year of pacific fighting. So you may get the automatic and very likely unsuccessful response but you don’t get the blank check that they got for such a resonating sneak attack on what was viewed as homeland. The blank check and instant approval of war fighting material is what doomed the IJN. The instant go ahead on the whole 2nd generation of fighting tools wouldn’t have happened without an attack like pearl.
@stayros stamelos Yamato's guns might have had longer range, but it was more than offset by the fact that Iowa would be over the horizon at that distance. Attempting to use visual targeting at that range wouldn't work nearly as well as radar. The float planes Yamato carried were supposed to be spotters but Iowa would never be caught in daylight without air cover.
Submarines? Have u even watched the video ? Only one was sunk by sub that was an aircraft carrier the battleships both got sunk by aircraft carriers lol
Its a major part of why they did so little. The japanese were obsessed with the idea of an epic all out battle that would decide the outcome of the war and were pretty much terrified of the idea their superships would be in harbor getting patched up when it happened. So they held back, and continued to hold back, until there was nothing left but the hopelessly outnumbered superships and a never give up never surrender mentality.
Battleship: I am the pinnacle of human engineering! Nothing can oppose me on the surface of the seas! Submarine: Haha, torpedo go brrrrr. Carrier: Haha, airplanes go brrrr.
@@lordredlead2336 Are you talking about the IJN Taihō which was built on a battleship hull? That was sunk by a sub only by crew incompetence and lack of training.
The Yamato is once my most favorite ships in my life, that is the first thing that came to mind when i think about Warships. so much so that my classmates from primary(elementary) school bullied me for my obsession to warships, let alone the Yamato. This ship is what made me first play World of Warships in the first place, and made me discover History, Anime, and Science Fiction. I appreciate that this ship's existence changed my life as a young teenager 😄
A most interesting series, to which I have come only lately. I was both XO and Captain in USCGC INGHAM, a member of the USCG Secretary Class of Cutters of 1936. INGHAM is still afloat as a museum ship in Key West, FL. She served in the Battle of the Atlantic, the Pacific, was in commission during the Korean War, and served in USCG Squadron 3 in Viet Nam. I was her XO in VN, and then fleeted up to command her. These are beautiful ships, two examples still afloat, and served for 50 years. I am certain that the loyal followers of this series would enjoy a Coast Guard Cutter, and mine is the most decorated ship in both USCG and , I believe, USN. Not sure of that, and followers of this series are welcome to correct me. Joseph H. Wubbold CAPT USCG (Ret)- Captain Joe
I also commanded USCGC NORTHWIND, a polar icebreaker built in 1944. She was a member of a class of 7 ships, plus the Canadian LABRADOR, built to the same plans and scantlings. Some of these ships were lend leased to the USSR during WWII, and all of them lived very long lives. My NORTHWIND was reengined once, and she worked in the ice every year of her life except for the year she was reengined. I add this to my comment on INGHAM, because the USCG has a history of taking good care of our ships, and they last for many years beyond what their designers expected. And there are a number of Cutters that would qualify for any standards used by Drachinifel to decide which ships to feature. In the meantime, thanks and mahalo for the great and extensive research that goes into these "Guides". As one interested in all ships, and having trained in square rigged sail in USCGC EAGLE, ex-HORST WESSEL, -another recommendation for featuring- I find every one of these Guides that I have watched to be not only well researched but presented in a very seamanlike way. Bravo Zulu. Captain Joe
@@MW-bi1pi I also commanded USCGC RELIANCE, the lead ship in a class of 210' Cutters all named for desirable human qualities. e.g. CONFIDENCE. There is no PRURIENCE, nor a CHASTITY. Almost all of them are still in commission after more than 50 years, having had a major refit. The first batch had a CODAG plant. By the time I was RELIANCE, the gas turbines had been removed. They all have a flight deck, but no hangar. When a helicopter is strapped down on the flight deck, the stability characteristics change dramatically. These ships will roll, pitch , heave, yaw, all at the same time. Although the Good Captain loves the crew and ship under his or her command, RELIANCE was the hardest ship to love of the six I commanded. I tell you all of this, in case you are looking for a good Cutter with which to start your education on Coast Guard Cutters. Thank you for a most interesting series. Captain Joe
you know what ironic , Vietnam coast guard using ex American coast guard ship that used to patrol it coast during Vietnam war the Hamilton 4000t ship + another Hamilton gona be sold to us this year lol , they are great coast guard ship and those 4000t gona made the Chinese coast guard rethink befor raming our coast guard ship lol
@@inouelenhatduy Jerry, thank you for your note. The irony of this does not escape me. Further, retired USCG Patrol boats are used by Sea Shepherd. Regardless of ones opinion of whaling and poaching, the Sea Shepherd approach of fomenting collisions and near collisions to make the point flies in the face of all of my command at sea, the avoidance of collision, and the rescue of the mariner in distress. My first command at sea was one of the sisters to one of the former Patrol boats, of the 95' class. The HAMILTONs are complex ships, even today, and require good maintenance. Please take good care of them, for they all served us well for many years. The shipyard facilities at the former Subic Bay base, should, if still intact, serve you and them well. Captain Joe
A spectacularly expensive way to sink a CVE and a DD. It's worth noting that the Shinano wasn't really finished when she was sunk by only 4 torpedoes. Her "water-tight" doors were not, yet. I've never understood why the IJN sent her out like that or exactly how they were planning on using her. It's almost like they lost their minds after Midway.
Well, part of the reason that birthed for example the ten-go missions was (if I remember the records correctly) that emperor asked something along the lines of "and what will the navy contribute" even tho they knew they had no supplies and no chance in hell at the end of the war... One of the only steady supplies on Yamato seemed to be good food (which a lot of other ships lacked) and lots and lots and lots of liquor, because they all knew they were going on a suicide mission.
Shinano got moved because Yokosuka was being hit routinely by air raids. It was either risk getting her sunk by bombers or risk submarine attack. And since the IJN took submarines a lot less seriously than aircraft... Moving her got her killed, but they at least had a legitimate reason for doing it.
pudding it not the emperor comment , more like the army which made japan navy to decide a ten-go mission , cause remember japan navy and army hate each other during ww2 lol
The issue was Shinano has been photographed by a recon bomber that the Japanese knew about and Shinano was ordered to move to Kure to complete fitting out. Shinano’s captain requested that the ship not be moved as her watertight doors had not been fitted, many holes in the bulkheads for wires and etc. had not been sealed and bailing and fire fighting systems were inoperable. His request was denied and less than a day after Shinano set sail USS Archerfish sent her to the bottom with 4 torpedo hits
@@Frostfly The original version is really bad. The American version is just as bad. The remade version that came out a few years ago is actually pretty good.
The great irony of the Yamato class super dreadnoughts is by the time Yamato was commissioned, the Japanese themselves had already proven how vulnerable capital ships were. They carefully studied the Toranto Raid. Using what they learned, attacked Pearl Harbor and sank multiple American capital ships. They also sank HMS Prince of Wales, and HMS Repulse using air power alone. They knew Bismarck was crippled by a WWI bi-plane before she was shot to pieces. Japan needed more fleet carriers. By the time Shinano was launched in 1944 most of the Imperial Japanese navy had already been destroyed, and even if she entered service and survived the war there weren't enough experienced pilots left in the air arm to be stationed onboard her. Also there weren't enough advanced carrier born aircraft left to be on her deck.
MakeMeThinkAgain: That is correct. By the time Shinano was commissioned and on her sea trials, there was very little left of the Imperial Japanese army air arm in both planes, and experienced pilots. Also, the Japanese could not match the American R/D on new combat aircraft, and by '44, the Corsairs and Hellcats were making mince meat of the Zero. By '45 they had the KI-61, and KI-100 which which stunned the Americans in durability, maneuverability and both low/high altitude combat ability, but it was far too late.
The Swordfish was a 1930s bi-plane, not a World War I bi-plane. Then again bi-planes were pretty much relics of World War I, but the Swordfish could still go about 100 km/h faster than any bi-plane from World War I.
Shinano was so flawed that the Japanese intended to use that monster as an "auxiliary" carrier, not a fleet, or front-line carrier. The conversion was probably a half-fast endeavor made necessary by the deteriorating strategic position; IOW they were desperate AF for any available weapon.
It was their pilot training program that was the Japanese fleets downfall. They trained a few hundred pilots per year and were not able to keep the level of training when they realized (too late) that they needed pilots in the tens of thousands per year. The US had a plan in place from 1940 to rapidly upgrade their pilot training programs, some completing before the war broke out. After Pearl the training of US pilots got better over time while the Japanese decreased rapidly. In the Campaign for Saipan and Guam; the Japanese committed more naval power than they had at any other time during the war but achieved little due to the vast difference between the quality of pilots.
The Type 3 shrapnel/incendiary shells were also used for shore bombardment, such as at Guadalcanal, and were pretty good at that for air bursts using the time fuze, when combined with the more conventional Type 0 nose-impact-fuzed HE shells, which worked quite well, too, as a waterline hit on USS SOUTH DAKOTA by a 14" Type 0 shell blew a large hole in the 1.25" (32mm) homogeneous Special Treatment Steel (STS, the Bureau of Ships term for homogeneous armor, to separate it from the virtually identical Bureau of Ordnance Class "B" armor (a "ricebowl" thing)) waterline hull in front of the recessed and inclined 12.1" (308mm) Class "A" (face-hardened) armored belt -- no damage happened to the main belt there, but some light flooding to a region around the impact below the waterline in the gap between the outer hull and the innermost layer of the anti-torpedo side system. A Japanese Type 91 AP shell hit there might have been much more serious. The Japanese ship, KIRISHIMA, had Type 0 and Type 3 shells in its hoists for shore bombardment and it took several salvos of those shells to finally get its AP shells into the guns, which only got one hit with one of those from its final salvo, a rather strange weather deck/barbette of Turret 3 hit on SOUTH DAKOTA that could not penetrate either the 1.5" STS deck (too highly oblique) or the 17.3" Class "A" barbette side armor (WAY too thick) but was caused to ricochet downwards off the barbette by it peeling the deck away from its joint with the barbette like a smiling mouth and inserting its upper body into that hole when it detonated, causing considerable local superficial (as far as ship battle operation was concerned) damage in the space between the weather deck and the 2nd main armor deck, which was itself undamaged.
USS Archerfish, which torpedoed the Shinano, was still going in 1966. She visited Auckland for the anniversary of the Battle of the Coral Sea and was open to the public - I went aboard.
She should have been made into a museum ship, instead of being sunk as a target. It's amazing you were able to board a ship that sank a......sort of Yamato class battleship. You are very lucky
Research following discovery of the wreck allows a more accurate estimate of the number of hits before Yamato sank : 35 torpedoes and 19 bombs. Although the ship's doom was cast much earlier in the attack as damage control and defence became non-existent, the damage taken before actual sinking is incredible.
If they had put these ships to better usage, both individually and as part of a larger strategic plan, I think they could've made a huge difference. The Japanese instead tried to protect them and lost the bulk of their fleet in piece-meal engagements and poorly implemented plans so by the time they did use them, it was already too late to make any real difference.
@@tyree9055 The real issue was that battleships IN GENERAL were obsolete and wasteful by WWII, the Yamatos are far from unique in this aspect (they simply get singled out for it).
@@bkjeong4302 I disagree quite frankly. Just because a piece of equipment is old, doesn't mean that it has no value. The question is how to use it. Nothing surpassed the battleship in terms of it's shore bombardment capability (except perhaps those rocket launching carriers - which I don't know enough about their range and accuracy to comment upon). But there's no better defense for your carriers than a battleship and its huge AA compliment in a fleet operation. If you blunder into one another at night or are trying to take another fleet out in a surface battle, they were still the kings (unless the waterway was too restricted). Simply put, everything has a value and a purpose!
@@tyree9055 No just no. Battleships are NOT good at defending carriers compared to other, cheaper alternatives. A battleship’s AA capability is in large part due to its size, and because of square-cube law a ship’s displacement increases much faster than the available deck space for AA; building, say, more CLAAs would get you a similar level of AA protection while using less resources. And then there is the fact AA in general has been overhyped; even as late as July 1945, the most effective and primary air defence of navies was CAP launched off carriers, NOT AA. And why are you assuming battleships are needed to defend carriers against surface attack, when the only carriers surface ships can reasonably catch are the slow-ass CVEs? If you actually run into an enemy surface fleet while in charge of a fast carrier strike force, you’re too incompetent to be in charge in the first place. As for shore bombardment; there are PLENTY of cases where battleships proved unnecessary in this role (including a few where destroyers actually did a better job due to being more able and more willing to get up close and directly open up at enemy fortifications), and even if it was true that battleships were needed for shore bombardment, building ANY new battleships leading up to WWII would be still pointless when there are already more than enough older battleships.
The official objective of the Battle of Samar was to disrupt the US landing, but the TRUE objective was to destroy the American secret weapon: the USS Johnston. Nothing less than a fleet lead by the Yamato itself could match such a weapon.
However, I understand what the Japanese strategy was behind relegating IJN Shinano to being an escort carrier rather then a full fleet carrier. By the time Shinano was commissioned, Japan was racing to commission smaller carrier conversions made from ships ranging from old freighters to passenger liners. The idea was this: If you had an American task force of three fleet carriers along with assorted escorts, and each carrier had 90 planes... And a Japanese task force of 6 smaller, but faster escort carriers carrying only 40 planes each... Thats 270 planes for the US, and 240 planes for the Japanese. However, For the Japanese there are 6 flight decks to launch from, and The Americans 3. The Japanese can get more planes up in the air and fighting then the Americans can in a given amount of time. A clear advantage under the right circumstances.... Its a version of the concept "Defeat in Detail" IJN Shinano would have taken up station at the rear of any carrier group and been a "Mother ship" using her sheer size to supply, rearm, and repair planes and other ships....
Only they underestimate the US building power. They can build fleet carriers as fast as IJN convert their converted carriers. And US built escort carriers like pouring rice from the rice box
You give a lot of credit to Japanese planning. however. The Japanese did not start an escort carrier building program until 1944, the U.S. started in 1939/40. The U.S./British concept was for convoy protection and sub hunting in the Atlantic. Re-supply of land bases and fleet carriers and support of fleet carriers evolved quickly from there. It would seem logical that if your Japanese strategic theory is true, escort carrier production would have started before or earlier in the war. It would also seem logical that given the losses of Japanese fleet carriers, and the inability to replace them due to time and material shortages becoming a real issue, escort carriers would seem the only viable solution. Especially after seeing the success of escort carriers in the U.S. and British fleets. Also, by the time the Shinano would become available, there were virtually no more Japanese fleet carriers to re-supply., Kido Butai had been destroyed two years earlier at Midway. By that time Japan was pretty much fighting a defensive war. The Shinano would be used to re-supply the remaining island bases in a last ditch effort to support the rings of defense of the home islands. Of the two scenario's, yours and mine, one should ask, which has the support of documented history behind it? I am not saying your theory is not sound strategy, it obviously worked for the Allies, I am just saying I do not think it actually happened that way in Japan.
If only they had a pilot training program worthy of the name. The Great Mariana’s Turkey shoot showed how impotent Japanese Naval airpower had become by 1944.
@@6handicap604 The Japanese actually put a surprising number of new carriers (and not just conversions) into service in WWII. The real killer was the loss of pilots.
One of the officer's who was on the Yamato during the Battle off Samar (part of the Battle of Leyte Gulf), told American interrogators a few months after the end of the war that he didn't know the size of Yamato's main gun battery. He said that information was classified and he wasn't cleared to know the specifics. That man was an Admiral. (I believe he was Admiral Kurita's Chief of Staff, but I'd have to double check, it could have been a different officer.) That tells us how closely the Japanese guarded the Yamato's secrets. Even an Admiral might not be told everything.
Well Japan likes their secrets... Just remember not to mention WW2 if you ever visit Japan, there is a chance the person won't even know it happened, let alone their war crimes.
This was a fascinating look into a legend. Yamato is my favourite class of battleship. I know how this battleship has impacted many others, such as Russell Spurr, author of 'A Glorious Way To Die', and Polish author, Janusz Skulski, with his two Anatomy of the Ship, on Yamato, his second published after Musashi was discovered by the late co-founder of Microsoft, Paul G. Allen's team of researchers from the M/Y Octopus, which was an eight year odyssey, in discovering her from three attempts. Thank you for the interest in her, yourself. Take care, and all the best.
In my opinion, this is your best one yet. Absolutely awesome. I don't remember the context of the conversation, but a few years ago I was was talking with my pastor about the Yamato and Musashi, the biggest, most powerful battleships ever built, and built to be unsinkable, and he asked me what happened to them. I smiled, and replied, "What happened to them? The United States Navy happened to them. They're both at the bottom of the Pacific!".
Interesting story about USS Archerfish. I got to meet Admiral Joseph Enright, Jr., the son of Archerfish's commanding officer. I learned that Captain Enright, Sr. reported the attack to ComSubPac, and they didn't believe his story. They instead gave him credit for another Japanese carrier. Archerfish would eventually be given credit for Shinano after the war when all was revealed.
When a submarine Commander reports having sunk a specific enemy aircraft carrier by name and is not believed by his superiors, who were not there, that is incompetence and stupidity, not "fog of war."
@@JBrandeis1 Shinano was the most secretive of the japanese superbattleships. There have only ever been 2 photographs of her in existence and it was not until well after the war that the ship was known to have existed. Granted, they should have listened to Enright, but he claimed to have sunk a carrier weighing over 60,000 tons when no such ship was known of. Just to put some perspective in here.
And one of those photos was taken by a civilian as she left port, for the only time. It wasn't till after the war for that photo to come to light. I think they were both after launching. Upon penalty of death, no one involved with Shinano's construction was allowed to talk about it.
Wait, so WG can make Shinano(BB form) a T9 premium with a ton of 100mm duel purpose guns for increased AA while reduce her armor (bow armor below 32mm for overmatch). So, an IJN Alabama with 9 18.1 inch guns...…… Dang...….. I'm actually interested ……..
Recent subscriber, here, because I find this series to be so very interesting. Of course, I'm eccentric, as evidenced by the fact that I play Rule the Waves.
Excellent video I loved how you pointed out both the strengths and falws of these huge ships. All too many comment on just how powerful their guns were and how thick their armour was but ignore the lesser quality of that armour. Thick armour is nice, but if it is too brittle it will shatter and cause damage to the ship rather than protecting it. Another point against these ships is the massive cost of building up the infrastructure required to just construct them. Building slips had to be strengthened as did the cranes. A special ship built just to transport the huge gun turrets from the builders to the construction dock. The list goes on and should be added to the cost of the class. Another "weak" point of the class was the massive muzzle blast of those huge guns. The reason all the AA guns had shields was not to protect the crew from strafing aircraft but to protect them from the blast of the main guns, which could easily concuss anyone on the deck. And just imagine the horrific shock and blast damage,20inch guns would do to the ship and crew. Sometimes bigger isn't better and a British RN saying comes to mind "A lot of good ships are better than a few outstanding one's"
To be fair, even with that low steel quality the armour design was good enough that it took a lot of effort to kill these two. It’s certainly better than that other famous Axis battleship which had vastly superior armour quality but horrific armour design.... The crappiness of most Japanese AA guns is probably a much bigger issue than the blast damage from the main guns. It’s not like the main guns make much sense in fending off aircraft anyways. Edit; also all BB main guns tended to injure people and suppress AA guns, so that’s a battleship problem in general.
well if japan have develop and used 40mm bofor version it will be way better , too bad it only have the bad 25mm , but the 127 and 100mm was not bad aa gun at all , the only bad thing was the 25mm , the 127mm was mediocre but still effective , the 100mm was great but come online during the war only and so was not equip for the yamato
inoue jerry Yeah the 100mm gun actually was a decent AA weapon. The A-150s would have been fitted with them if they weren’t cancelled. Japan actually managed to reverse-engineer Bofors (and various Allied small arms). But the factory producing them got blown up and they never managed to produce them again.
Bk Jeong -Those overweight Japanese "hotels" cannot hold a candle to either Bismarck or Tirpitz ! I cannot imagine Bismarck fleeing outright from destroyers and destroyer escorts, while just ahead is a massive (and helpless ) transport fleet) awaiting ! Bismarck score - 1 battlecruiser sunk and 1 battleship hammered and forced to withdraw then forcing what was almost the entire British Atlantic fleet to chase her and stop her ( note they did not sink her, the Germans scuttled her ) What was Yamato's (or her sister's ) tally . A big fat ZERO ! Tirpitz took 3 direct hits from 6 ton Tallboy bombs to sink her and it still took 15 minutes before she was gone. Yamato probably would have blown ski high with just one
Thomas Mattuski First, the reason the IJN fled at Samar had mostly to do with American air supremacy (not just from the Taffy 3 escort carriers, but also Taffy 1 and 2) more than anything else. Yes the destroyers and DEs put up a hard fight. But they did go down. But the IJN fled anyway because it’s suicide to put a surface fleet against aircraft: even though Taffy 3 was caught without anti-ship equipment, there was nothing stopping Taffy 1 and 2 from rearming (and indeed they did use aerial torpedoes during the battle). And even if they didn’t rearm in time, the Japanese didn’t know that. Second, how on earth is crew actions relevant to the ship itself? By that logic HMS Glorious is a horrible ship because she was lost due to human stupidity, even though as a carrier she was far superior to literally every battleship of WWII. Third, you really need to look up how much of a glass cannon the Bismarcks were. In terms of speed, targeting, and gun stats they’re quite competitive, but their horribly outdated armour scheme makes them vulnerable compared to other battleships of the era. They’re a case of (relatively) poorly designed ships performing better than expected (a big part of which is due to the British holding the idiot ball), NOT a case of well-designed ships faring well. TLDR: combat records are based heavily on factors other than how well the ships are designed, and therefore it is perfectly possible for a better-designed ship to perform worse than a worse-designed ship. (The Iowas were the best-designed battleships of all but horrifically underperformed, for example, only getting a training cruiser and a destroyer because Spruance called off the carrier attacks that had damaged these ships previously)
I have seen analyses of the Washington Naval Treaty that defended the 5:5:3 ratio as reasonable for Japan, since the US and Great Britain had basically all of the worlds oceans to cover, while Japan could concentrate in the Pacific. Further, the Treaty really acted to hold back the US, rather than limit the Japanese, since events would show that the US had the resources to build an almost unlimited number of capital ships, while Japan, or even Britain, could not.
It was the USA's idea though. And it limited their main rival, as well as breaking the Anglo-Japanese alliance, while allowing the USN to achieve parity with the RN without a costly arms race.
Plus don't forget the US Congress was stingy with money in that period. The Washington Naval Treaty meant the US Navy wouldn't have the money or the need to build more warships.
yet another great vid, can't get enough of these, they are a real treat that I find interesting and entertaining especially after a crappy day at work. Thanks,
Thank you Drach for setting the record straight on the Legend of the Yamato class. I've read so many comments on the fear of their 18.1" guns in WWII, when very little was even known about the ships. In WWII they were just enemy BBs nothing more nothing less. USN pilots could tell they were big but that is all they could really tell. They were not feared anymore than any other IJN BB. Again thanks.
That's not opsec, because they don't know the specs either. They destroyed all of the information, even for their own use, out of sheer spite, not realizing the idiocy of doing so. Battleships were obsolete long before the end of the war--and American battleship design had already surpassed the Yamato-class with the Iowa-class. All they did was to destroy the records of their own accomplishment.
A great video about the Yamato class. I've always been fascinated with those vessels. Could you do a video about the USS Astoria? One of my uncles served on her during WW2 and survived her sinking.
I spend the better half of a minute wondering what the two ships were at 13:02. "Icy"? "Her younger"? Then it struck me.... it was Ise ("e-say") and Hyuga ("hue-ga"), just that its read with english pronoun. Note to self, drink coffee.
Thank you for posting this, most of the times that I have encountered those names have been when I'm reading, and I honestly did not know the correct pronunciation until I read your comment.
@@micfail2 japanese is actually rather simple in terms of pronounciation as each sylable is independent. So I is always (well, almost always) "ee" E "eh" A "ah" U "oo" and so on, regardless of whats around them. If only their spelling was as easy to memorize XD
How about a hand for the IJN. They build and commissions the worlds then-biggest carrier, commissions it and then lose it only ten days later. That has to be a record.
Hubris. The captain "knew" how shit american torpedoes were from early war patrols and reports on captured examples, and so all but ignored the hits (of the fixed, actually working torpedoes with bigger warheads) as not a threat until Shinano was listing quite noticeably, and much of the damage control system was still under construction when they kicked her out of the dock to make room for more construction
Japanese Type 91 AP projectiles were 155 mm (YAMATO secondary guns only after these weapons were replaced in all of their new cruisers), 203 mm (the replacement cruiser guns), 356 mm, 410 mm, and 460 mm. They were special low-drag designs with boattailed (tapered conical) base regions just below their three narrow copper-ally driving bands and long conical noses, most of which were their hollow windscreens. These shells were still based as armor penetrators on British uncapped base-fuzed Common/SAP shells from just after WWI, since their post-WWI naval ammo was mostly copies of the newest British ammo of the 1920s. Instead of improving the test specs to 30-degree impact angles, as almost everyone else did in the 1930s, the Japanese kept the circa-1920 20-degree-max test angles and shell metallurgy. They finally decided to improve this to foreign 30-degree test standards in the YAMATO's 460 mm AP shells (not in any other AP shells that they used), but discovered that changing the shells to handle this more extreme sideways twisting force during penetration was not easily done and they found that their 460 mm Type 91 AP shells could not be reliably put through heavy armor in an intact condition even at 33 degrees, though they did succeed at the new spec 30 degrees. Marginal shell designs. They also introduced a new Type 1 AP shell, which was just a Type 91 with two changes: (1) They reverted back to the original British single wide driving band design (the three-narrow-band design seems to have been adopted from the French of German post-WWI ammo and they decided the extra cost in making that was not worth the results). (2) They slightly lengthened and narrowed the long pointed windscreen shape to reduced drag even more. No changes to anti-armor properties or these unique shell's "diving" design with the break-away windscreen and AP cap tip to created a tapered flat-nosed front end to allow the shells to remain stable for long underwater trajectories to get "below the belt" hits on enemy warships -- this last only worked properly once, to my knowledge, when a 203 mm Type 91 AP shell penetrated into the forward magazine area below the waterline on USS BOISE and the resultant fire destroyed the forward turrets, though the high-pressure water spraying into the magazine through the low hole in the side hull kept the magazine from reaching a critical detonation pressure.
More interestingly... Imagine if someone leaked the Tillman plans to Japan and said the us were making 4 of them... Imagine the Yamato we would have got.. 24" guns, 30 inch armor.. 12500tons haha I'm just speculating. But it would have been interesting
@Bjorn the overly, excessively enslaved singaporean as long as it can keep up with the battle line sounds good 😁 to be honest I've often thought it would be rather interesting for someone to have built a barge that looked like a giant big mean battleship, but just as a decoy of sorts, especially In the Pacific, calmer seas. Essentially park a destroyer in its butt for propulsion and steering, when the battle starts sail ahead and towards the enemy, aim all the 2mm thick dummy turrets at whatever the biggest ship in the enemy fleet is, then disconnect the destroyer send out an ass load of torpedos and leg it, they all concentrate fire on the big scary ship while the destroyer escapes, giving your fleet substantially less counter fire to deal with while actually attacking the enemy. Haha almost an opposite trojan horse 😁😂
That’s more a testament to good armour layout (especially when it came to the deck armour) and the sheer amount of armour, which more than compensated for any reduction in steel quality and meant these ships were still well-protected against bomb or shell hits.
To be fair to Yamato and Musashi, they weren't glass-jawed, which you kinda came across as saying. And while I agree with you about Japanese armor quality and that Yamato gets wanked a bit too much, I disagree that the Yamatos weren't well protected by WW2 battleship standards. Armor quality isn't ultimately as important as the ship's armor scheme (how the armor is used), and the Yamatos had good armor schemes. (Also, sorry for the wall of text and I do love the video. Your work is great as always.) Aside from the poor link between the belts, which was really just a relative weakness considering how many torpedoes they ate before dying, the Yamatos correctly concentrated its armor to give its vital areas maximum protection against pretty much any type of attack. The amount of punishment they took from late-war American aircraft bombs and torpedoes before sinking or even being silenced and taken out of the fight (despite the Americans focusing their torpedoes on one side of the ship to make them capsize faster) was testament to how well protected they were. I can't think of any other WW2 battleship that could take that much punishment before sinking. As a point of contrast, look at her German counterpart, Bismarck: Bismarck had higher-quality armor than Yamato, but her armor scheme was obsolescent and poorly designed. Aside from not covering all her critical machinery and her poor turret armor (which allowed HMS Rodney to silence her guns in an embarrassingly short time), Bismarck's armor scheme was essentially a reused WW1 dreadnought design, meant for close-range gun battles. As such, while her belt could shrug off close-range horizontal fire very well, she had very inadequate protection against high-angle fire and bombs, meaning she would've fared very poorly against airstrikes and especially dive bombers. Furthermore, rather than concentrate Bismarck's armor over her vital areas, the Germans used a lot of it to cover her whole hull and superstructure with light armor. This is bad because the light armor wouldn't stop an AP shell from penetrating into the ship but would set it off, meaning an incoming shell would explode inside the ship instead of going through her and out the other side before detonating. This lighter armor was worse than useless, and it actually killed her entire bridge crew and presumably her commander during her final battle when a British AP shell penetrated her weakly- but not un-armored bridge and exploded instead of passing through. Granted, Bismarck was roughly 20,000 tons lighter than Yamato, but the point remains: Bismarck made very poor use of her armor, so she couldn't take the kind of punishment you'd expect from a ship in her weight class except in very specific circumstances (close-range gun battle, and even then her turrets are still too poorly armored). Yamato made good use of her inferior-quality armor, so she could shrug off damage and keep fighting like a 70,000-ton battleship should be able to. If Bismarck and Tirpitz had faced the kind of combat that Yamato and Musashi did in the Pacific, their superior armor quality wouldn't have meant anything and they'd have been sunk much more easily by the Americans. Japanese armor was definitely inferior, but they knew this and made the best of what they had, and Yamato is a testament to why a ship's armor scheme is generally much more important than the quality of the armor used. (The same can also be said for American ships in general, since their armor was better than Japan's but still markedly inferior to British and German face-hardened armor. You didn't see this stopping US warships from taking a serious beating and staying afloat.)
I agree, I wasn't trying to say they were badly protected, only that the scheme had a few flaws and that it wasn't as impressive as it looks on paper. Conversely, on paper, it's insane well defended, so it 'goes down' to 'merely' very well defended.
Drachinifel I understand. Again, I do love your work, and I'm very glad you didn't indulge in Yamato hype like too many people, books, and even documentaries do. She was a very powerful battleship, but not without her flaws, and your assessment was measured and fair. Please keep up the great work!
while I would agree that bizmark might not have been using its waight as efectivly when it came to armoring the superstructure, the belt armor was only penetrated 3 or 4 times out of over 300 hits by 14 or 16 inch shells. likewise it was never compromised by torpedos, as they were all pre detonated by the auxilery fuel tanks. if you haven't seen it, watch james camerons expedition to the bizmark on youtube. they did a detailed analisys of the entire hull from the belt down, including the torpedo holes.
The reason Bismarck's main belt wasn't penetrated very much was because the British ships were pumping close-range, horizontal gunfire into her, which was the exact situation Bismarck's armor scheme was designed for. And since that armor scheme (turtleback deck + incremental armor) dates back to WW1 dreadnoughts, it would've been hard for even the Kreigsmarine to screw it up. So Bismarck being able to take a lot of short-range fire wasn't as impressive as it sounds. In fact, I'd be shocked if Bismarck didn't tank a bunch of gunfire in those conditions. Not that this meant much since half of Bismarck's main guns were taken out and the other half were crippled, if I remember correctly, within the first 15 minutes of the battle, rendering her what navies call "dead in the water", and she was totally silenced around half an hour later. The rest of the "battle" was a corpse-kicking party as the Brits pumped Bismarck's hulk full of shells until she sank. That's a really awful performance for a ship of Bismarck's size and weight facing two smaller battleships, and it clearly shows how bad Bismarck's armor scheme was. After all, if you're going to optimize your ship for close-range gun battles (which is already an outdated design goal), shouldn't you make sure your main armament and all your ship's vitals are extremely well protected from incoming fire? Close-range gunfire hits a lot harder than long-range fire since the shells haven't lost as much momentum over the course of their flight to the target, and a battleship without its guns is completely helpless. So if anything, the Kriegsmarine should've made sure her guns were as well-protected as possible (AKA what the Japanese did with the Yamatos). That the Kriegsmarine didn't design Bismarck's turrets to withstand the same kind of close-range fire that they designed her belt for was criminally incompetent and completely self-defeating. Once Bismarck's guns were gone, it didn't matter how much fire her belt could take since she couldn't defend herself: The British could safely shoot the crap out of her until she inevitably died, however long that took. Her fate was sealed by her poor armor scheme. (Also, if the British had actually focused their guns on holing her below the waterline instead of smashing her above-water hull and superstructure to pieces, she would've gone down quicker. Like I said, it was a corpse-kicking party, and the British weren't aware of the details of Bismarck's design so they stuck to their doctrine of closing the range with the enemy, meaning most of their shots hit above the waterline.) Finally, while I haven't looked at it, I've heard some very serious criticisms of James Cameron's Bismarck analysis, especially compared to the conclusions of actual experts who've dived the site, which is why I've avoided it. If I wanted a serious analysis of Bismarck's wreck and what it tells us about her final battle, an expedition led by a movie director isn't the first source I'd turn to.
Statistically the medium caliber flak in the 37-40mm range knocked down the lions share of attacking A/C. Japan was the only warring power not to have any medium caliber shipboard flak. Instead they had the weak and next to useless 25mm guns. This was based on a inferior French design that wasn't even capable of sustained fire.
Thanks for the information. I am just starting my build of the 1/200 Yamato Model Ship. And yes...info about the ship is hard to come by...and trying to get the colors right is also a challenge.
( Q & A ) Hey Drachs! I was wondering your thoughts on how the Battle of the Java Sea would have looked had the Prince of Wales and Repulse not been sunk, but instead retreated from Singapore altogether and linked up with ABDACOM? I myself do not know whether they would have been assigned to that particular fleet in our time had they not been sunk, but I suppose this is a "what if" scenario more than anything (PS: keep up your fantastic work!)
The Prince of Wales was doomed from the start. Poor armor over propellor shafts and quad turrets that didnt work. The sailors assigned to her called her Jonah.
Fleet Commander Fletcher was a battleship guy. When the Ten Go task force was spotted he sent 6 USN battleships, Indiana, South Dakota, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Missouri & Wisconsin. With them sailed 7 cruisers (including Guam & Alaska) with 21 destroyers. Marc Mitchner commanded the USN carriers. On his own initiative he ordered nearly 400 planes, in waves, to attack the Ten Go Squadron. He only informed Fletcher as the first wave was in the air. Fletcher allowed the attack to proceed. Most of the IJN squadron was sunk or devastated. Only 10 USN pilots & crew died. Some of the USN planes were destroyed when the Yamato blew up. Mitchner wanted to prove to the Battleship Admirals that AirPower was supreme. I freely admit that a surface action appeals to the video game player side of my personality. In reality the Yamato was a doomed ship once it left its dock. Still, a surface action would have been much more costly to the USN than the aerial avalanche that destroyed the Ten Go squadron....
7:15 Where’d you get that image? I haven’t seen a picture of that anywhere. People either show the ships with the original armament or the armament the Yamato had when it got sunk, and nothing in between. P.S. Was going to go on a rant of it being after the sinking of the ship, but it appears to check out, lol.
I have to say that the Shinano didn't sink due to poor flooding control. The crew did everything they could according to the book by cpt. Joseph Enright, captain of Archer-fish. Shinano sank because of design flaws in the H-beam connecting the belt armour to the upper hull, high command not allowing for testing of the watertight seals and damage control systems and a lot of bad luck. Enright set the depth of the notoriously troublesome Mk. 14 torps higher than usual at a depth of 10ft which was just the right height to punch the H-beam right through the adjacent walls of armour. Despite appropriate counterflooding the ship listed too far over to be saved.
The Japanese actually made and tested a 48cm enlarged gun at their Naval Proving Ground. Its AP shell, when one was located, was of the slightly improved Type 1 AP design, which was a Type 91 (introduced in 1931) with a noticeably longer and more pointed windscreen and a single wide copper driving band at its bottom, as in US and British practice, instead of the several thinner bands used for the Type 91 AP shell; otherwise, the shells are identical, to my knowledge. Some Type 1 shells were introduced to Japanese battleships during WWII, but I do not know who got what. The Type 1 shells had slightly reduced drag and thus a longer range and terminal striking velocity. The only changes needed to turn a Type 91 into a Type 1, to my knowledge, was to re-machine the driving band area and add the new windscreen, which would have had the same threaded ring attaching it to the upper edge of the AP cap and a slightly curved shape over its length to make it slightly more pointed and a littler longer (not much longer or it wouldn't fit in the hoists). The Type 91 and Type 1 AP shells were of the general international "Type 2" ballistic shape with a conical windscreen and a boat-tailed (truncated cone with the bottom of the shell narrower than the middle of the body) base to get the least drag and still fit into the existing hoists of the WWI-era battleships (the new Japanese cruisers used the same shape, though with no AP cap, even though they had new guns and could have been different). Only the French 1930's-designed guns and associated ammo, with their extremely long and streamlined 5-caliber-long AP shells, were better and they could not have been handled by older ships without a major turret and magazine overhaul.
A reverse Kamikaze on Yamato useing a radio controlled B-29 escorted by long-range Fighters would have been Interesting. On a one way trip, stripped of guns and all unnecessary weight, packed with explosive and fuel, it's 350 MPH speed enhanced in a steep dive, one or two of these would have massively damaged these Ship's by crashing into the superstructure. These could carry 2 12 ton Grand slam Bombs, one under each wing, enough to mortality wound even a Yamato. Alternative History.
The 25mm AAA had its faults was by no means the worst anti-aircraft gun of the war. There was a manually loaded 37mm aa gun. Ironic that the ship’s weakness was against torpedos when the Japanese had the most powerful torpedos of the war
Apparently the main deck, the step-down and the aft deck were constructed as a contiguous piece so as to increase its strength. Of course it also increased its weight, which in turn would have increased the ships draught and caused problems with harbour access, so the ship had to have a greater beam. Greater beam meant it needed more power to achieve the required speed, which increased weight... you get the idea.
Loving your series. (human voices) I was very interested on your comments that the Japanese decided it was best to leap frog and build really heavy battleships instead of more smaller ones incrementally. Where is your reference for that, I'd like to read more about it.
Imperial Japanese Army: "What a waste of good steel! Imagine the number and quality of tanks we could have built." Imperial Japanese Navy: "What good are tanks/artillery/soldiers left at bypassed island bases?"
Its almost a shame we had to sink those ships, could you imagine both or all 3 parked next to each other as museum ships. That would be one hell of a sight
Your comment about the Shinano, she was sunk by torpedos but when the water tight doors are on the flight deck, they could not stop the flow of water as the japanese did not have a high regard for damage control.
I have always thought the German E boats of WWII were very successfulships. There isn't a whole lot of information I've seen about them.I would like it if you did a guide to these.
If you are talking about the type XXI electric boats, yes, they were very influential. Every diesel boat constructed after the war was initially based on their principle, for example the Soviet whiskey class.
Possibly, although if they knew the full details they might be better off dusting down the J or K class BC designs, the N3's would have the firepower and armour but be far too slow. A J or K could lose a few knots for a bit more protection and still compete speed-wise, but more likely would be a new design based on those.
@@Drachinifel More probable would be an upscaled Lion class. 18" guns were too slow firing with appalling blast effects [The R.N had some experience of this with an 18" gun on b the Furious early in her career].. An enlarged Lion with 12 of the new 16" guns with slightly thicker armour protection would be the R.N's answer.
There are two us ships right now with working railguns. There is plans to install them now next year on more ships. Both of the zumwalt class ships have railguns.
@@janis317 yea, they finally managed to make the projectiles affordable but now the gun barrel needs to be replaced every 7 shots at full charge. And as you can imagine, railgun barrels aren't cheap.
A small commentary on the quality of Japanese armor: "'New Vickers Non-Cemented" (NVNC) armor, which is the homogeneous form of the face-hardened "Vickers Hardened" (VH) armor used in the IJN YAMATO, was deliberately kept at the level of late-WWI British armor due to the Japanese preoccupation with under-water hits. Just prior to WWII they introduced a new homogeneous armor "Molybdenum Non-Cemented" (MNC) that just met minimum U.S. Navy acceptance test standards and that seems to be similar to German Wh. It was used for most of the YAMATO's heavy homogeneous armor above the waterline while NVNC was used extensively for armor and anti-torpedo bulkheads below the waterline." This is a quote from a much larger study on battleship armor, available here: www.combinedfleet.com/okun_biz.htm
Hey heads up there is a game if you want to call it that on steam called VR Battleship YAMATO it lets you walk around in and on the ijn yamato its made from surviving planes and interviews with surviving crew members.
Unlike the US or British navies the Japanese navy was a one ocean force, so the fact that it was more limited by the Washington Naval Treaty is not a true comparison of actual wartime available strength in a world conflict.
Edwin Mintey do you add up how many enemies Japan ended up with in a world conflict ? And how many of those were sea powers ? Perhaps the Japanese leadership anticipated something like that happening.
I eagerly await your guide on the Space Battleship Yamato. ; ) Cue the theme song: "We're off to outer space / We're leaving mother Earth / To save the human race / Our Star Blazers!"
Q&A The Japanese Built Some Very Large Submarines to Carry Aircraft, Development of the Aircraft delayed the project until it was too late. Instead of useing these to carry Aircraft, What if they had been built as underwater Tankers and Freighters? The major problem Japan had after 1943 was the sinking if their Tankers and Freighters by American Submarines, Yamato wasn't used because of its massive fuel consumption, with a submerged Tanker in formation with it, Yamato could be fueled as needed after hitting Guadalcanal early in the war, having the Tanker submerge and wait to refuel Yamato after it's mission was completed. Yamato could have been more effective in 1942 to 1943 before the American Navy had the Carriers and Aircraft to overwhelm it's defences. Also as Submarine Freighers and Tankers coming into use in 1943 kept fuel and Steel coming to Japan, more larger ones could have been built. The Nautilus Class American Submarines were mainly used as Freighters to supply the Philippines, to the point their Hull's began sagging in the middle late in the War. Despite all the Japanese patrols in the Philippines on land, air and sea, these Submarines were never spotted or even delayed in the supplying of the resistance in the Philippines. The much larger Japanese Submarines would have been able to opperate without risk to American Aircraft and Submarines, as the capacity to carry cargo increased along with their numbers, enough Fuel and Steel kept coming to Japan, might have made a difference in the last year of the war. Mainly just a couple of these Submarines as Tankers would have allowed the use of the fuel thirsty Yamato Class Ship's early in the War when they actually could have been useful. As Aircraft Carriers the Submarines were useless as they were delayed by Development of the Aircraft for them until it was too late for them.
They could probably outmaneuver the Tillmans but, said Tillmans would by that point likely have the same detection, and fire control radars as the Iowa class so the Tillman's would probably get the first shots off.
@@airplanenut89 The targeting advantage radar provided to the Iowas is actually not nearly as significant as often claimed, based on live-fire testing data from 1944; simply put, even an Iowa cannot reliably land hits at 30k yards or more (they would run out of shells before doing enough damage at such ranges), and unless this is a situation with poor visibility both sides would have a similar effective engagement range (25k yards or less).
@@bkjeong4302 It's not about sniping from 30K yds away, it's about being able to dictate the battle. In this hypothetical Tillman vs Yamato fight, the superior USN radar systems would allow the USN to begin forming a plan of attack sooner, thus dictating the beginning of the battle. In addition, while you won't be super accurate at max range, being able to reliably put shots around your target first gives you the chance to land the first strike. Any damage you can cause before the enemy closes to their respective firing range will give you an advantage.
@@airplanenut89 Not sure if radar would provide that much of a planning advantage in good visibility (in poor visibility I would agree radar is a major advantage). The issue is that while an Iowa (which is faster than a Yamato) could theoretically dictate the battle, a Tillman can’t. It’s at a speed disadvantage, unless you’re talking about a Tillman III. A Tillman can’t really force Yamato to engage on its terms because Yamato can just leave or reposition, and a Tillman (aside from a Tillman III) isn’t fast enough to respond to that by repositioning first or chasing the Yamato down.
@@bkjeong4302 The Tillman III (specifically the III-IV if i remember correctly) design was the only one that was actually submitted for design consideration to the USN, and was also dug up once or twice for submission after that as well. As such it is the most likely ship for this scenario. Radar would also absolutely be a major planning advantage as it sees further than optics regardless of visibility. The further away you can detect your enemy, the more time you have to devise your plan.
As the biggest battleships ever built, the Yamato class have acquired the status of legends ... despite having performed underwhelmingly in real life. In shonen anime, of course, the Yamato has become something of a superhero. Still, I can't help but compare the Yamato with its overblown reputation to another hero ship of World War II, rather less ambitious in conception and execution, that nonetheless compiled a service record that entire navies might well envy. She wasn't preserved by her country, but her name was passed on to the world's first atomic supercarrier, and then to the most famous hero ship in science fiction ...
I am firmly convinced that the Yamato class were the inspiration for George Lucas' idea of the Death Star. I mean, he was already taking ideas from Japanese samurai drama films. Not hard to see the comparison of small single-seated bombers taking out Musashi and Yamato with light torpedo and bomb weapons and Luke destroy the Death Star with a single well-placed photon torpedo.
There's also the fact that in the extremely successful anime "Space Battleship Yamato", originally made in 1974, Yamato is armed with a giant laser cannon of mass destruction. Sound Familiar?
If anything the Yamatos were basically the exact opposite of the Tarkin Doctrine. The Tarkin Doctrine is focused on building intimating super weapons and showing them off to threaten enemies into submission. The Yamatos were not shown off, but kept in secrecy (they were never the symbol of the IJN’s power; that fell to the Nagatos), specifically so they would be underestimated by the enemy.
It's like spending a fortune creating a too elaborate halloween costume,
Only to show up too late at the party, wearing something that is too hot, makes it impossible to dance, talk or drink and everyone is already too drunk to appreciate your masterpiece.
It's strange how both Japan and Germany lacked fuel and steel resources and yet built huge steel and fuel guzzling equipment.
@@raygiordano1045 it was only during wartime that they lacked to those resources and with the Japanese at least they had plans to limit that it's just the Americans foiled all of their plans. I cannot however speak on the German plans
@@the_undead The Japanese were dependant on imports before the war. A lot of their iron, steel, and most of their oil were imported from the U.S.
Embargoes before the war and submarine warfare during the war did a good job of cutting Japan's supplies.
Even if Japan had plenty of resources, their meager industry wasn't able to produce enough to replace loses, let alone keep up with the U.S.
The Germans were reliant on Sweden for iron and Romania for oil. There wasn't a lot that could be done about Swedish imports, but refineries are very vulnerable to attack, likewise the means of transportation of fuel.
@@raygiordano1045 I can't speak on the Japanese plans to deal with the iron imports but if I remember correctly the whole reason they invaded the Dutch East Indies was because they could get maybe not enough oil to fully supply themselves but it would be oil production that they could add on top of their existing supply and any supplies they steal from invaded countries Naval basis etc. Again this is assuming that my memory serves in this situation
Also I didn't say they were good plans I just said they were plans
I read an article many years ago about the USS Archerfish stalking Shinano with radar: “Captain, your island is moving!”
Jay Bee ,”captain look”
That's no island... that's a ship
@@JoseJimenez-sh1yi *HIGH SEAS INTENSIFIES*
@@UnfittingCarbon that's no moon
There's an old TV historical series, "The Silent Service" that has an episode on the Archerfish.
YAMATO and MUSASHI had an anti-torpedo system that had no liquid layers (no water and/or fuel oil), as was used in all other modern large WWII warships to help soak up the blast and water-hammer effects. I think that this was done to save weight, allowing thicker armor. The system was designed to use the extremely wide hull to allow such a large space that the spaced internal bulkheads of the anti-torpedo side system did not need water to help support them and soak up energy. Unfortunately, actual wartime damage showed that the system had some Achilles' Heels in that the ship support structure could deform and cause internal I-beams to punch deep holes into the hull, even to the last bulkhead of that protection system, bypassing the need to penetrate all of the spaced plates by water pressure and blast shock, as was expected. Also, the anti-diving-shell thick tapered lower belt was pressed up against the bottom edge of the inclined waterline 15.8-16.1" Vickers Hardened face-hardened belt armor (VH, a successful face-hardened armor -- it only had to pass the same spec as the WWI-era Vickers Cemented (VC) armor that it got in 1912 with the IJN KONGO so its reduced resistance compared to more recent foreign armors was not due to inferior workmanship but over-conservative design and manufacturing processes -- that did not add the thin cemented surface layer as unnecessary, which was completely true against high-quality AP shell by WWII; only the Japanese in WWII successfully used non-cemented face-hardened armor much, with the US having some before WWI, but with mixed results as to their success against large-caliber AP shells and the companies that were using it, Midvale and Bethlehem, stopped doing so after they won a US Supreme Court judgement in 1912 nullifying Krupp's KC armor patents). For some reason, they did not key the two vertically-aligned plates together using nickel-steel keying strips pressed into matching slots in-between them, as most other navies did by WWII (after poor WWI results), so when the torpedo blast pressure hit the wedge-shaped upper portion of that lower belt, it was able to tear it away from the main belt, opening up a huge hole in the anti-torpedo system at the top several feet below the waterline. Not a good idea when real hits showed what REALLY happened due to torpedo hits even on a ship as big as YAMATO.
That was corrected on Yamato after the Skate torpedo when the repairs were done at Kure.
@@frankwalder3608 Indeed but it seems it would have been impossible to comletely correct such defficiencies and you have to add the fact yamato hull was not designed to withstand the kind of torps the US navy used at the end of the war, when yamato had been built, the explosing charges of torpedoes were usually significantly lower. Furthermore having taken almost no parts in the WW1 naval slugfest, the IJN only modern taste of combat that is the war against russia did not allow them to progress as significantly as other nations in the field of structural damage caused by concusion. In fact Yamato and Musashi expected resilience was quite theorical whereas the Royan Navy and the US navy had had time to really think over the matter of structural damages induces by the pressure of blasts.
@@vlad78th @Frank Walder Do you know any online sources about those repairs and the general armor deficiencies of Yamato? I'd like to learn more about this.
Wow, that was a great read. How do you know so much? I assume you're an engineer of some sort
@@frankwalder3608 PART 1.
No, it wasn't. The damage indicated that the thick wedge-shaped tapering lower belt plate (~8" thick of NVNC armor -- the same steel as the VH non-cemented form of very thick YAMATO Class face-hardened side armor but not face-hardened (Japanese engineers were very intelligent and made entirely bottom-line-rational decisions when allowed by their at the time overly-conservative culture) -- at the top where it touches the bottom of the ~16" VH inclined waterline belt), which also formed the upper part of one of the anti-torpedo system's layered spaced bulkheads, was much to rigid to handle torpedo concussion, blast, and shockwave effects properly. The same thing was found out by the US in its SOUTH DAKOTA and IOWA Class anti-diving-projectile lower belt of very similar, but even thicker design, also used as one of the 5-spaced-layer anti-torpedo side system.
Unlike the US lower belt, however, the Japanese anti-torpedo system could not be fixed significantly because:
(1) The Japanese VH waterline belt and the NVNC tapered anti-diving-projectile lower belt met where the bottom of the former and the top of the latter were pressed tightly together with reinforced I-beam internal supports and overlapping external clamping plates plates at the joint of the two. Unlike the meetings between the many vertical joints in the row of thick plates in each belt layer (VH to VH and NVNC to NVNC), which were locked together by heavy interlocking edge grooves with nickel-steel keying stirps pressed into the grooves to firmly hold the joined plates together, the horizontal joints of the VH and NVNC boundary, unlike with the US boundary between the Class "A" waterline belt and the STS tapering lower belt, HAD NO KEYING STRIPS!! The ONLY thing holding the two rows of plates together was this external support system. While adequate in keeping the waterline VH belt and lower NVNC belt rigid against a heavy projectile impact, this same reinforcement system was totally and completely inadequate and counter-productive for supporting the lower belt when hit by the huge blast of the torpedo warhead detonation followed by the collapse of the bubble formed in the ocean by this blast that slammed back as the "water hammer" (essentially the "Fist of God" made up of high-speed water moving horizontally into the hole in the outer hull made by the warhead blast as the ocean comes back to refill with water the blast-expanded gas-filled bubble on the external side, but there is nothing on the ship hull side to slow it down -- air pressure is not even noticeable here). You need for the anti-torpedo layers, flexible, rather thin high-tensile steel plates -- not the much more rigid hardened homogeneous, ductile armor plates actually used in the lower belt layer -- that will bulge inward and stretch as much as possible before they tear open. As a result, when the MUSASHI torpedo hit occurred, the NVNC lower belt and VH armor waterline belt "parted company", with the lower belt upper edge being ripped free of the VH belt (which did not move very much, if at all) and bent backward into the ship . This pushed its internal upper end joint supports backward with it, punching holes through several inner bulkheads behind the lower belt layer and totally sabotaging those inner bulkheads' ability to keep the nearby ship volume from flooding. The repairs to MUSASHI increased the reinforcement behind the upper end the lower belt, but to fix the oversight of not creating the keying system between the waterline and lower belt (which could have been done, as in the US design) would have required tearing the hull apart over its entire amidships length on both sides and shipping all of the plates involved back to the manufacturer -- the shipyard could not possibly handle such a thing -- for redesign, then heavy machining to cut the needed keying grooves, and then manufacturing the many keying strips needed, after which the whole thing has to be shipped back to the shipyard and put back together one pair of plates at a time, and the ship then go through a complete, long, new-build shakedown. Impossible. Thus, additi9nal torpedo hits could not really be protected properly against and a different strategy of trying to handle the massive flooding that would always occur had to be devised. With the US designs strong keying strips joining the waterline and lower belt edges tightly together, it was the bottom edge of this lower belt near the joint at the lower hull's triple bottom, where the bulkhead was only 1.25" STS thick for most of it length behind the lower hull, that had the most tearing, not the top. Thus the damage due to the US Navy's simulated torpedo hits on SOUTH DAKOTA caused some excessive flooding, but much less internal hull bulkhead and deck damage than the MUSASHI suffered from its hit.
(2) The US system, when this over-rigid lower belt problem was discovered in post-building tests of a mock-up of the SOUTH DAKOTA anti-torpedo system against the large submarine-fired torpedoes -- the system was still adequate against the smaller aircraft-dropped torpedoes at the start of WWII, but by the end of WWII even these had become much more powerful by the use of new explosives like the US Navy aluminum/enhanced-RDX mixture called Torpex (40% more powerful than TNT) and were similar to submarine torpedoes at the start of WWII in their effectiveness --.could do the following to mitigate to a large extent the fault: The original side protection had the outermost layer of the 4 spaces between the outer hull of 1" High-Tensile Steel (HTS) -- except directly in front of the Class "A" waterline belt, where the hull was 1.25" (SOUTH DAKOTA) or 1.5" (IOWA) STS armor -- and innermost HTS protective bulkhead (with a thin Mild Steel (MS) leakage-limiting bulkhead with a narrow gap just behind it) as an air gap ("void") about 4' wide at the top, the 3rd deck, which also was the bottom edge of the waterline belt, as mentioned (there was a gap in front of the waterline belt, too, that was 3' wide at the level of the upper edge of the waterline belt, the 2nd Deck, which was the primary 5-6" STS armored deck, too). Due to the slope of the waterline and lower belt being the same 19-degree tilt all of the way down to the ship bottom, this outermost gap got wider and wider as one went downward, which was of course the thing to do since the blast and following water-hammer effects of the torpedo warhead detonation were worse and worse the more compressed the water was deeper down. The 3 more inner HTS system bulkheads also were tilted the same, so they had constant width from top (at the level of the bottom edge of the waterline belt) to bottom, with the ship's triple bottom reinforcing the bottom edges of the bulkheads. The space directly behind the lower belt bulkhead (second space inboard) was water or, if needed, fuel-oil filled and kept filled with one or the other at all times. The next space (third from the outer hull) was separate by a 0.75" HTS bulkhead, more stretchable than the STS and about 80% as strong, and filled by water or fuel-oil, too. And the final space (fourth) was another void, behind which was the final 0.75" HTS 'holding" bulkhead protected the "vitals" of the ship. With all of the layers being like that and no lower belt special bulkhead thickness/steel type change, the system was proof at the start of WWII against most submarine torpedoes (at least circa 500 pounds or more of TNT, the "standard explosive" for such comparisons). With the lower belt change, the existing system could not stop early-WWII submarine torpedoes completely, though it would greatly reduce the internal damage caused by a hit and give the ship a chance to perhaps patch up the flooding and do some repairs to put back flooded spaces into operation again.
CONTINUED
"5 minute guide" You treat this limitation like Japanese treat naval treaties...
😆
And we approve of such behavior!
@@ajlancjc99 well, for the guide anyway, not the Japanese 😆
Seriously, Japan should not ever be allowed to have a military again. The last time Japan had a real military they murdered several times the number of civilians then the Nazis did, and their culture is nearly as xenophobic and racist today as it was back then.
@Don White both China and Russia have incredibly weak economies (China's is a complete paper tiger and Russia doesn't even try to hide how weak their economy is) and both of their militaries are pitiful in comparison to the United States. If you're afraid of either one of those countries or even both together then you need to see a surgeon about those undescended bálls.
You also need to read up on your history. Germany was responsible for about 16 million terminations. Japan was responsible for over 50 million, and that is not even including the people that perished due to the famines that the Japanese caused. If you include those people the number shoots up to well over 100 million. not only that, but Japan to this day is ruled by the same elite families that it was ruled by back then because we never prosecuted the vast majority of the war criminals because so many of them held positions of power, and we were trying to be pragmatic about reconstruction. The Japanese people have enshrined Emperor Hirohito as a god, when he should have been publicly hanged from the neck until he was dêãd for his crimes, and the Japanese Imperial family abolished. If Germans today worshipped Hïtlêr, how do you think the world would view it? to this very day they teach in Japanese schools that their unprovoked attack on Pearl Harbor was an act of self-defense, and most of them are ignorant enough to believe it. That is a serious problem, it shows that they have learned nothing.
No, neither country should ever be allowed to have a military again. Not only is Japan just as rãçïst as it was back then, but literally every single time Germany has been a global military power they have started a World War. so even though Germany has gone too far in the other direction when it comes to bigotry, they have proven at every possible opportunity that they are not to be trusted with any real military power.
it would seem that it is you who needs to wake up, grow a pair, and pick up a history book.
@@micfail2 i am willing to give you the second WW as started by Germany, but the first started on 28 June 1914, when Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian Serb Yugoslav nationalist, assassinated the Austro-Hungarian heir Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, leading to the July Crisis. In response, on 23 July, Austria-Hungary issued an ultimatum to Serbia. Serbia's reply failed to satisfy the Austrians, and the two moved to a war footing. A network of interlocking alliances enlarged the crisis from a bilateral issue in the Balkans to one involving most of Europe. By July 1914, the great powers of Europe were divided into two coalitions: the Triple Entente-consisting of France, Russia, and Britain-and the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy (the Triple Alliance was only defensive in nature, allowing Italy to stay out of the war until April 1915, when it joined the Allied Powers after its relations with Austria-Hungary deteriorated).Russia felt it necessary to back Serbia and, after Austria-Hungary shelled the Serbian capital of Belgrade on the 28 July, approved partial mobilisation. Full Russian mobilisation was announced on the evening of 30 July; on the 31st, Austria-Hungary and Germany did the same, while Germany demanded Russia demobilise within twelve hours. When Russia failed to comply, Germany declared war on Russia on 1 August in support of Austria-Hungary, with Austria-Hungary following suit on 6 August; France ordered full mobilisation in support of Russia on 2 August. --> Russia, Austro-Hungaria and Serbia are the main countries that started the conflict.
Imagine it like a alliance of Mexico and Canada both beeing industrialy near equals to the US and Mexico relying on the buildup off their reservist armies when mobilising before together outmatching the USA in military numbers and both hostile towards the USA. Guatemala as an US allie and Honduras as a mexican allie get into a military conflict. Mexico in support of Honduras mobilises all its troops, building up large forces even on the US-border. How would any given president of the USA react when Mexico after 3 days is not going to back down and is willing to escalete the conflict further?
If you think of taking out the threat with your professional standing army before it is to late your reaction is exactly the same as the german in 1914. The Schlieffen-Plan was just unnessecary and brought the brits into the fight. And in 1914 every single european major power was armed up to its teeth, waiting for the next war to come, the Balkans was just the powder keg to light it all up.
Just because the victors shove the blame up your b-hole doesn't mean you deserv it.
One author pointed at the Yamatos as a prime example of the art of "how to mislead without actually lying". The Japanese gov't assured the world that no, they were not building any 40-50,000 battleships. :P
You are technically correct, the best kind of correct.
You're mistaken- or rather, the author is. Yamato herself was laid down almost a year after Japan had withdrawn from the naval treaties.
@@manilajohn0182 The author noted that Japan had withdrawn from the treaty system and retreated behind a wall of secrecy, but occasionally emitted reassuring noises to put the rest of the world off track about what was going on behind all those armed guards and sisal mats surrounding the building slips. :)
@@mrz80 There's nothing unusual about that at all, my friend. After the Japanese withdrew from the naval treaties, they were under no more obligation than any other nation to state details about what they were constructing. The British mislead the Germans in the exact same way prior to WW1. It's what nations do to other nations whom are viewed in an adversarial light- and they do it still.
Cheers...
"No, we are not building battleships armed with 16 inch guns"-The Japanese government
Fun fact: During the search for the IJN Musashi’s wreck, the crew searching for her found about 200 blueprints of her where she was built. Sadly, I have not been able to find these documents online.
Every time I hear about how the Musashi and Yamato were sunk, I'm reminded of a comedy bit by Ron White. "Now, I don't know how many of them it actually would have taken to kick my ass, but I knew how many they were planning to use."
They sent them to die, that was the theme of all 4 of the axis super battleships. They were all pummeled to death without cover. They were a waste anyway, those would have been far better utilized as other fleet or air assets. the Terpitz would have yielded something like 20 destroyers.
The 18” guns are overrated, Iowas 16’s fired a heavier projectile, faster, further and more accurately. In a cage match of an Iowa and Yamato class, the Yamato would lose every time unless it had surprise within gun range. The Iowa’s could act with impunity by out ranging and out gunning the Yamato class while using their superior speed and maneuverability to always keep Yamato in her range but not the other way.
stayros stamelos either way its mental masturbation, not to say it isn’t interesting. A cage match scenario isn’t how it works as we know.
I maintain my premise that the 4 axis super battleships were objectively a waste. All 4 did nothing of significance that couldn’t have been done better by other assets, better utilized. The Americans building their 4 Iowa’s are a different grading criteria, they had the resources (anyway you cut it) to build their 4 or originally 6 fast-battleships. People mention the enormous cost of the Manhattan project, the B29 project was just as expensive for reference while the anglo American bomber force was already far superior and those are just to name a few. The US did not have to choose Iowas or destroyers etc. like the axis did. That is why I suggest that the 4 axis battleships are a waste while the 4 Iowa’s are whatever, a note in history. They came at a time when they had become obsolete by naval aircraft, whats 20 miles of strike range with what 4% accuracy when you can send planes hundreds of miles with better accuracy. You can build more planes and ships with those resources and they will be a better overall force. I maintain that the main armament for both ships are overrated for ship to ship, they look cool shooting though.
Germany didn’t even have a deep water navy, it was illogical to have 2 large battleships without associated battle group. no matter what, U boats or destroyers would have been better. They had zero carriers, but two big battleships that did nothing.
The Iowa’s are really the only ones that were used for what they were actually good at, a mobile artillery platform for amphibious landings. Ship to ship combat, not so much. I heard that when they used the South Dakota for target practice, Iowa and a couple other ships shot at her, apparently she was eventually torpedoed after being nuked (allegedly lifting her from the water) and shot at ineffectively at range.
stayros stamelos my premise is that they could have engaged with the US like the soviets did during the Cold War with success; little action after little action to achieve their goals. I believe that if they played it in a way that the USN pacific fleet did respond as you say. Then the USN would have been turned back by a stronger force than they were expecting as was largely the theme of the first year of pacific fighting. So you may get the automatic and very likely unsuccessful response but you don’t get the blank check that they got for such a resonating sneak attack on what was viewed as homeland. The blank check and instant approval of war fighting material is what doomed the IJN. The instant go ahead on the whole 2nd generation of fighting tools wouldn’t have happened without an attack like pearl.
@stayros stamelos Yamato's guns might have had longer range, but it was more than offset by the fact that Iowa would be over the horizon at that distance. Attempting to use visual targeting at that range wouldn't work nearly as well as radar. The float planes Yamato carried were supposed to be spotters but Iowa would never be caught in daylight without air cover.
stayros stamelos o;
The economics of losing these kind of warships to submarines have GOT to be brutal.
Submarines? Have u even watched the video ? Only one was sunk by sub that was an aircraft carrier the battleships both got sunk by aircraft carriers lol
Oh wait...ok I miss read it yes it should be
Its a major part of why they did so little. The japanese were obsessed with the idea of an epic all out battle that would decide the outcome of the war and were pretty much terrified of the idea their superships would be in harbor getting patched up when it happened. So they held back, and continued to hold back, until there was nothing left but the hopelessly outnumbered superships and a never give up never surrender mentality.
Battleship: I am the pinnacle of human engineering! Nothing can oppose me on the surface of the seas!
Submarine: Haha, torpedo go brrrrr.
Carrier: Haha, airplanes go brrrr.
@@lordredlead2336 Are you talking about the IJN Taihō which was built on a battleship hull? That was sunk by a sub only by crew incompetence and lack of training.
The Yamato is once my most favorite ships in my life, that is the first thing that came to mind when i think about Warships. so much so that my classmates from primary(elementary) school bullied me for my obsession to warships, let alone the Yamato. This ship is what made me first play World of Warships in the first place, and made me discover History, Anime, and Science Fiction. I appreciate that this ship's existence changed my life as a young teenager 😄
A most interesting series, to which I have come only lately.
I was both XO and Captain in USCGC INGHAM, a member of the USCG Secretary Class of Cutters of 1936. INGHAM is still afloat as a museum ship in Key West, FL. She served in the Battle of the Atlantic, the Pacific, was in commission during the Korean War, and served in USCG Squadron 3 in Viet Nam. I was her XO in VN, and then fleeted up to command her. These are beautiful ships, two examples still afloat, and served for 50 years. I am certain that the loyal followers of this series would enjoy a Coast Guard Cutter, and mine is the most decorated ship in both USCG and , I believe, USN. Not sure of that, and followers of this series are welcome to correct me.
Joseph H. Wubbold CAPT USCG (Ret)- Captain Joe
I also commanded USCGC NORTHWIND, a polar icebreaker built in 1944. She was a member of a class of 7 ships, plus the Canadian LABRADOR, built to the same plans and scantlings. Some of these ships were lend leased to the USSR during WWII, and all of them lived very long lives. My NORTHWIND was reengined once, and she worked in the ice every year of her life except for the year she was reengined. I add this to my comment on INGHAM, because the USCG has a history of taking good care of our ships, and they last for many years beyond what their designers expected. And there are a number of Cutters that would qualify for any standards used by Drachinifel to decide which ships to feature.
In the meantime, thanks and mahalo for the great and extensive research that goes into these "Guides". As one interested in all ships, and having trained in square rigged sail in USCGC EAGLE, ex-HORST WESSEL, -another recommendation for featuring- I find every one of these Guides that I have watched to be not only well researched but presented in a very seamanlike way. Bravo Zulu.
Captain Joe
@@josephwubboldiii9284, Your comments have stimulated my interest in Coast Guard Cutters Captain Joe. Time to get educated, Thank you
@@MW-bi1pi I also commanded USCGC RELIANCE, the lead ship in a class of 210' Cutters all named for desirable human qualities. e.g. CONFIDENCE. There is no PRURIENCE, nor a CHASTITY. Almost all of them are still in commission after more than 50 years, having had a major refit. The first batch had a CODAG plant. By the time I was RELIANCE, the gas turbines had been removed. They all have a flight deck, but no hangar. When a helicopter is strapped down on the flight deck, the stability characteristics change dramatically. These ships will roll, pitch , heave, yaw, all at the same time. Although the Good Captain loves the crew and ship under his or her command, RELIANCE was the hardest ship to love of the six I commanded. I tell you all of this, in case you are looking for a good Cutter with which to start your education on Coast Guard Cutters.
Thank you for a most interesting series.
Captain Joe
you know what ironic , Vietnam coast guard using ex American coast guard ship that used to patrol it coast during Vietnam war the Hamilton 4000t ship + another Hamilton gona be sold to us this year lol , they are great coast guard ship and those 4000t gona made the Chinese coast guard rethink befor raming our coast guard ship lol
@@inouelenhatduy Jerry, thank you for your note. The irony of this does not escape me. Further, retired USCG Patrol boats are used by Sea Shepherd. Regardless of ones opinion of whaling and poaching, the Sea Shepherd approach of fomenting collisions and near collisions to make the point flies in the face of all of my command at sea, the avoidance of collision, and the rescue of the mariner in distress. My first command at sea was one of the sisters to one of the former Patrol boats, of the 95' class.
The HAMILTONs are complex ships, even today, and require good maintenance. Please take good care of them, for they all served us well for many years. The shipyard facilities at the former Subic Bay base, should, if still intact, serve you and them well.
Captain Joe
A spectacularly expensive way to sink a CVE and a DD.
It's worth noting that the Shinano wasn't really finished when she was sunk by only 4 torpedoes. Her "water-tight" doors were not, yet. I've never understood why the IJN sent her out like that or exactly how they were planning on using her. It's almost like they lost their minds after Midway.
Well, part of the reason that birthed for example the ten-go missions was (if I remember the records correctly) that emperor asked something along the lines of "and what will the navy contribute" even tho they knew they had no supplies and no chance in hell at the end of the war... One of the only steady supplies on Yamato seemed to be good food (which a lot of other ships lacked) and lots and lots and lots of liquor, because they all knew they were going on a suicide mission.
Shinano got moved because Yokosuka was being hit routinely by air raids. It was either risk getting her sunk by bombers or risk submarine attack. And since the IJN took submarines a lot less seriously than aircraft...
Moving her got her killed, but they at least had a legitimate reason for doing it.
pudding it not the emperor comment , more like the army which made japan navy to decide a ten-go mission , cause remember japan navy and army hate each other during ww2 lol
They were going to arrive next Tuesday.
The issue was Shinano has been photographed by a recon bomber that the Japanese knew about and Shinano was ordered to move to Kure to complete fitting out. Shinano’s captain requested that the ship not be moved as her watertight doors had not been fitted, many holes in the bulkheads for wires and etc. had not been sealed and bailing and fire fighting systems were inoperable. His request was denied and less than a day after Shinano set sail USS Archerfish sent her to the bottom with 4 torpedo hits
You forgot the part where the Japanese raised the ship after the Aliens attacked and launched her into space. ;)
YaaaaMaaaaToooo
th-cam.com/video/w6LFkMniuTk/w-d-xo.html
They actual wreck is a tad hard to raise to fight in space.....it’s a shattered hulk
@@alexius23 It's a reference to the 70's anime Star Blazers. (it's terrible, avoid at all costs)
@@Frostfly The original version is really bad. The American version is just as bad. The remade version that came out a few years ago is actually pretty good.
@@WannabeWRX I concurr, I highly encourage people to check it out. It's quite the nice Space Opera
The great irony of the Yamato class super dreadnoughts is by the time Yamato was commissioned, the Japanese themselves had already proven how vulnerable capital ships were. They carefully studied the Toranto Raid. Using what they learned, attacked Pearl Harbor and sank multiple American capital ships. They also sank HMS Prince of Wales, and HMS Repulse using air power alone. They knew Bismarck was crippled by a WWI bi-plane before she was shot to pieces.
Japan needed more fleet carriers. By the time Shinano was launched in 1944 most of the Imperial Japanese navy had already been destroyed, and even if she entered service and survived the war there weren't enough experienced pilots left in the air arm to be stationed onboard her. Also there weren't enough advanced carrier born aircraft left to be on her deck.
I think the even greater issue was lack of trained aviators. For much of the war the IJN had more flight decks than air groups.
MakeMeThinkAgain: That is correct. By the time Shinano was commissioned and on her sea trials, there was very little left of the Imperial Japanese army air arm in both planes, and experienced pilots. Also, the Japanese could not match the American R/D on new combat aircraft, and by '44, the Corsairs and Hellcats were making mince meat of the Zero. By '45 they had the KI-61, and KI-100 which which stunned the Americans in durability, maneuverability and both low/high altitude combat ability, but it was far too late.
The Swordfish was a 1930s bi-plane, not a World War I bi-plane.
Then again bi-planes were pretty much relics of World War I, but the Swordfish could still go about 100 km/h faster than any bi-plane from World War I.
Shinano was so flawed that the Japanese intended to use that monster as an "auxiliary" carrier, not a fleet, or front-line carrier. The conversion was probably a half-fast endeavor made necessary by the deteriorating strategic position; IOW they were desperate AF for any available weapon.
It was their pilot training program that was the Japanese fleets downfall. They trained a few hundred pilots per year and were not able to keep the level of training when they realized (too late) that they needed pilots in the tens of thousands per year. The US had a plan in place from 1940 to rapidly upgrade their pilot training programs, some completing before the war broke out. After Pearl the training of US pilots got better over time while the Japanese decreased rapidly. In the Campaign for Saipan and Guam; the Japanese committed more naval power than they had at any other time during the war but achieved little due to the vast difference between the quality of pilots.
The Type 3 shrapnel/incendiary shells were also used for shore bombardment, such as at Guadalcanal, and were pretty good at that for air bursts using the time fuze, when combined with the more conventional Type 0 nose-impact-fuzed HE shells, which worked quite well, too, as a waterline hit on USS SOUTH DAKOTA by a 14" Type 0 shell blew a large hole in the 1.25" (32mm) homogeneous Special Treatment Steel (STS, the Bureau of Ships term for homogeneous armor, to separate it from the virtually identical Bureau of Ordnance Class "B" armor (a "ricebowl" thing)) waterline hull in front of the recessed and inclined 12.1" (308mm) Class "A" (face-hardened) armored belt -- no damage happened to the main belt there, but some light flooding to a region around the impact below the waterline in the gap between the outer hull and the innermost layer of the anti-torpedo side system. A Japanese Type 91 AP shell hit there might have been much more serious. The Japanese ship, KIRISHIMA, had Type 0 and Type 3 shells in its hoists for shore bombardment and it took several salvos of those shells to finally get its AP shells into the guns, which only got one hit with one of those from its final salvo, a rather strange weather deck/barbette of Turret 3 hit on SOUTH DAKOTA that could not penetrate either the 1.5" STS deck (too highly oblique) or the 17.3" Class "A" barbette side armor (WAY too thick) but was caused to ricochet downwards off the barbette by it peeling the deck away from its joint with the barbette like a smiling mouth and inserting its upper body into that hole when it detonated, causing considerable local superficial (as far as ship battle operation was concerned) damage in the space between the weather deck and the 2nd main armor deck, which was itself undamaged.
Damn, are you a naval engineer? If not, you should be
@@micfail2 how is the scope of job in naval engineering?
milord, i have a cunning plan.
A plan was so cunning you could stick a tail on it and call it Naruto?
As cunning as a fox who’s just been appointed Professor of Cunning at Oxford University?
Does it involve a flag?
Is it so cunning that you could put a tail on it and call it a weasel?
Would you recognize a cunning plan if it painted itself purple, danced atop a harpsichord and sang "Clever Plans are Here Again"?
USS Archerfish, which torpedoed the Shinano, was still going in 1966. She visited Auckland for the anniversary of the Battle of the Coral Sea and was open to the public - I went aboard.
She should have been made into a museum ship, instead of being sunk as a target. It's amazing you were able to board a ship that sank a......sort of Yamato class battleship. You are very lucky
@@metaknight115
Well, Intrepid deserves much of the credit for killing Musashi and she’s still around.
Research following discovery of the wreck allows a more accurate estimate of the number of hits before Yamato sank : 35 torpedoes and 19 bombs. Although the ship's doom was cast much earlier in the attack as damage control and defence became non-existent, the damage taken before actual sinking is incredible.
There’s nothing incredible about the Yamato being a target practice. It’s a pathetic end to a much hyped and lauded “super” ship.
If they had put these ships to better usage, both individually and as part of a larger strategic plan, I think they could've made a huge difference. The Japanese instead tried to protect them and lost the bulk of their fleet in piece-meal engagements and poorly implemented plans so by the time they did use them, it was already too late to make any real difference.
@@tyree9055
The real issue was that battleships IN GENERAL were obsolete and wasteful by WWII, the Yamatos are far from unique in this aspect (they simply get singled out for it).
@@bkjeong4302 I disagree quite frankly. Just because a piece of equipment is old, doesn't mean that it has no value. The question is how to use it. Nothing surpassed the battleship in terms of it's shore bombardment capability (except perhaps those rocket launching carriers - which I don't know enough about their range and accuracy to comment upon). But there's no better defense for your carriers than a battleship and its huge AA compliment in a fleet operation. If you blunder into one another at night or are trying to take another fleet out in a surface battle, they were still the kings (unless the waterway was too restricted). Simply put, everything has a value and a purpose!
@@tyree9055
No just no. Battleships are NOT good at defending carriers compared to other, cheaper alternatives.
A battleship’s AA capability is in large part due to its size, and because of square-cube law a ship’s displacement increases much faster than the available deck space for AA; building, say, more CLAAs would get you a similar level of AA protection while using less resources. And then there is the fact AA in general has been overhyped; even as late as July 1945, the most effective and primary air defence of navies was CAP launched off carriers, NOT AA.
And why are you assuming battleships are needed to defend carriers against surface attack, when the only carriers surface ships can reasonably catch are the slow-ass CVEs? If you actually run into an enemy surface fleet while in charge of a fast carrier strike force, you’re too incompetent to be in charge in the first place.
As for shore bombardment; there are PLENTY of cases where battleships proved unnecessary in this role (including a few where destroyers actually did a better job due to being more able and more willing to get up close and directly open up at enemy fortifications), and even if it was true that battleships were needed for shore bombardment, building ANY new battleships leading up to WWII would be still pointless when there are already more than enough older battleships.
My father and I both enjoyed this documentary. We both would like to thank the author and all those who helped him. We both like the author's voice.
Yamato: Boat of steel
Johnston: Balls of steel
Bismarck: 2000 men and 50000 Tons of steel 🤘
@@christophpoll784 So....
Less then the Yamato.
The official objective of the Battle of Samar was to disrupt the US landing, but the TRUE objective was to destroy the American secret weapon: the USS Johnston. Nothing less than a fleet lead by the Yamato itself could match such a weapon.
Yamato: "No battleship can drive me from the field."
Johnson: "I am no battleship."
@@christophpoll784 biplane 👌👌👌👌👌
However, I understand what the Japanese strategy was behind relegating IJN Shinano to being an escort carrier rather then a full fleet carrier. By the time Shinano was commissioned, Japan was racing to commission smaller carrier conversions made from ships ranging from old freighters to passenger liners. The idea was this:
If you had an American task force of three fleet carriers along with assorted escorts, and each carrier had 90 planes... And a Japanese task force of 6 smaller, but faster escort carriers carrying only 40 planes each... Thats 270 planes for the US, and 240 planes for the Japanese. However, For the Japanese there are 6 flight decks to launch from, and The Americans 3. The Japanese can get more planes up in the air and fighting then the Americans can in a given amount of time. A clear advantage under the right circumstances.... Its a version of the concept "Defeat in Detail"
IJN Shinano would have taken up station at the rear of any carrier group and been a "Mother ship" using her sheer size to supply, rearm, and repair planes and other ships....
Only they underestimate the US building power. They can build fleet carriers as fast as IJN convert their converted carriers. And US built escort carriers like pouring rice from the rice box
You give a lot of credit to Japanese planning. however. The Japanese did not start an escort carrier building program until 1944, the U.S. started in 1939/40. The U.S./British concept was for convoy protection and sub hunting in the Atlantic. Re-supply of land bases and fleet carriers and support of fleet carriers evolved quickly from there. It would seem logical that if your Japanese strategic theory is true, escort carrier production would have started before or earlier in the war. It would also seem logical that given the losses of Japanese fleet carriers, and the inability to replace them due to time and material shortages becoming a real issue, escort carriers would seem the only viable solution. Especially after seeing the success of escort carriers in the U.S. and British fleets. Also, by the time the Shinano would become available, there were virtually no more Japanese fleet carriers to re-supply., Kido Butai had been destroyed two years earlier at Midway. By that time Japan was pretty much fighting a defensive war. The Shinano would be used to re-supply the remaining island bases in a last ditch effort to support the rings of defense of the home islands. Of the two scenario's, yours and mine, one should ask, which has the support of documented history behind it? I am not saying your theory is not sound strategy, it obviously worked for the Allies, I am just saying I do not think it actually happened that way in Japan.
If only they had a pilot training program worthy of the name. The Great Mariana’s Turkey shoot showed how impotent Japanese Naval airpower had become by 1944.
@@6handicap604
The Japanese actually put a surprising number of new carriers (and not just conversions) into service in WWII. The real killer was the loss of pilots.
It sounds crazy but the walls they built around these ships to hide them was made of very large bamboo.
One of the officer's who was on the Yamato during the Battle off Samar (part of the Battle of Leyte Gulf), told American interrogators a few months after the end of the war that he didn't know the size of Yamato's main gun battery. He said that information was classified and he wasn't cleared to know the specifics. That man was an Admiral. (I believe he was Admiral Kurita's Chief of Staff, but I'd have to double check, it could have been a different officer.) That tells us how closely the Japanese guarded the Yamato's secrets. Even an Admiral might not be told everything.
Exactly, all the supposed fear of their guns and no one even knew how big they were.
Well Japan likes their secrets...
Just remember not to mention WW2 if you ever visit Japan, there is a chance the person won't even know it happened, let alone their war crimes.
Assuming that the admiral was actually telling the truth to the interrogators, of course ...
Well, they didn't guard their war plans very well... "AF is running low on fresh water" ...and so went 4/6 of their fleet carriers at Midway.
I think it was Kurita himself who was interviewed: he wasn’t told about the actual size of the guns, but he figured it out himself.
This was a fascinating look into a legend.
Yamato is my favourite class of battleship. I know how this battleship has impacted many others, such as Russell Spurr, author of 'A Glorious Way To Die', and Polish author, Janusz Skulski, with his two Anatomy of the Ship, on Yamato, his second published after Musashi was discovered by the late co-founder of Microsoft, Paul G. Allen's team of researchers from the M/Y Octopus, which was an eight year odyssey, in discovering her from three attempts.
Thank you for the interest in her, yourself.
Take care, and all the best.
In my opinion, this is your best one yet. Absolutely awesome. I don't remember the context of the conversation, but a few years ago I was was talking with my pastor about the Yamato and Musashi, the biggest, most powerful battleships ever built, and built to be unsinkable, and he asked me what happened to them. I smiled, and replied, "What happened to them? The United States Navy happened to them. They're both at the bottom of the Pacific!".
Uchuu Senkan YA-MA-TO!
Sorry I had to. Its too epic.
I don't like the British accent and the missed pronounced wording. Please do some research before recording, and get it right!
@@earli3693 *mispronounced*-- Please do upgrade your grammar skills before belittling others.
@@earli3693 you don't like the accent of a guy from Great Britain??? Would you like him to a Japanese accent instead?
@@dsloop3907 😆
@@earli3693 Learn how to spell before you bitch about others.
Interesting story about USS Archerfish. I got to meet Admiral Joseph Enright, Jr., the son of Archerfish's commanding officer. I learned that Captain Enright, Sr. reported the attack to ComSubPac, and they didn't believe his story. They instead gave him credit for another Japanese carrier. Archerfish would eventually be given credit for Shinano after the war when all was revealed.
Typical stupidity and incompetence of the U.S. Navy.
@@JBrandeis1 Or just general fog of war?
When a submarine Commander reports having sunk a specific enemy aircraft carrier by name and is not believed by his superiors, who were not there, that is incompetence and stupidity, not "fog of war."
@@JBrandeis1 Shinano was the most secretive of the japanese superbattleships. There have only ever been 2 photographs of her in existence and it was not until well after the war that the ship was known to have existed. Granted, they should have listened to Enright, but he claimed to have sunk a carrier weighing over 60,000 tons when no such ship was known of. Just to put some perspective in here.
And one of those photos was taken by a civilian as she left port, for the only time. It wasn't till after the war for that photo to come to light. I think they were both after launching. Upon penalty of death, no one involved with Shinano's construction was allowed to talk about it.
Wait, so WG can make Shinano(BB form) a T9 premium with a ton of 100mm duel purpose guns for increased AA while reduce her armor (bow armor below 32mm for overmatch). So, an IJN Alabama with 9 18.1 inch guns...…… Dang...….. I'm actually interested ……..
Recent subscriber, here, because I find this series to be so very interesting. Of course, I'm eccentric, as evidenced by the fact that I play Rule the Waves.
Excellent video
I loved how you pointed out both the strengths and falws of these huge ships.
All too many comment on just how powerful their guns were and how thick their armour was but ignore the lesser quality of that armour. Thick armour is nice, but if it is too brittle it will shatter and cause damage to the ship rather than protecting it.
Another point against these ships is the massive cost of building up the infrastructure required to just construct them.
Building slips had to be strengthened as did the cranes. A special ship built just to transport the huge gun turrets from the builders to the construction dock. The list goes on and should be added to the cost of the class.
Another "weak" point of the class was the massive muzzle blast of those huge guns. The reason all the AA guns had shields was not to protect the crew from strafing aircraft but to protect them from the blast of the main guns, which could easily concuss anyone on the deck. And just imagine the horrific shock and blast damage,20inch guns would do to the ship and crew.
Sometimes bigger isn't better and a British RN saying comes to mind "A lot of good ships are better than a few outstanding one's"
To be fair, even with that low steel quality the armour design was good enough that it took a lot of effort to kill these two. It’s certainly better than that other famous Axis battleship which had vastly superior armour quality but horrific armour design....
The crappiness of most Japanese AA guns is probably a much bigger issue than the blast damage from the main guns. It’s not like the main guns make much sense in fending off aircraft anyways.
Edit; also all BB main guns tended to injure people and suppress AA guns, so that’s a battleship problem in general.
well if japan have develop and used 40mm bofor version it will be way better , too bad it only have the bad 25mm , but the 127 and 100mm was not bad aa gun at all , the only bad thing was the 25mm , the 127mm was mediocre but still effective , the 100mm was great but come online during the war only and so was not equip for the yamato
inoue jerry
Yeah the 100mm gun actually was a decent AA weapon. The A-150s would have been fitted with them if they weren’t cancelled.
Japan actually managed to reverse-engineer Bofors (and various Allied small arms). But the factory producing them got blown up and they never managed to produce them again.
Bk Jeong -Those overweight Japanese "hotels" cannot hold a candle to either Bismarck or Tirpitz ! I cannot imagine Bismarck fleeing outright from destroyers and destroyer escorts, while just ahead is a massive (and helpless ) transport fleet) awaiting ! Bismarck score - 1 battlecruiser sunk and 1 battleship hammered and forced to withdraw then forcing what was almost the entire British Atlantic fleet to chase her and stop her ( note they did not sink her, the Germans scuttled her ) What was Yamato's (or her sister's ) tally . A big fat ZERO ! Tirpitz took 3 direct hits from 6 ton Tallboy bombs to sink her and it still took 15 minutes before she was gone. Yamato probably would have blown ski high with just one
Thomas Mattuski
First, the reason the IJN fled at Samar had mostly to do with American air supremacy (not just from the Taffy 3 escort carriers, but also Taffy 1 and 2) more than anything else. Yes the destroyers and DEs put up a hard fight. But they did go down. But the IJN fled anyway because it’s suicide to put a surface fleet against aircraft: even though Taffy 3 was caught without anti-ship equipment, there was nothing stopping Taffy 1 and 2 from rearming (and indeed they did use aerial torpedoes during the battle). And even if they didn’t rearm in time, the Japanese didn’t know that.
Second, how on earth is crew actions relevant to the ship itself? By that logic HMS Glorious is a horrible ship because she was lost due to human stupidity, even though as a carrier she was far superior to literally every battleship of WWII.
Third, you really need to look up how much of a glass cannon the Bismarcks were. In terms of speed, targeting, and gun stats they’re quite competitive, but their horribly outdated armour scheme makes them vulnerable compared to other battleships of the era. They’re a case of (relatively) poorly designed ships performing better than expected (a big part of which is due to the British holding the idiot ball), NOT a case of well-designed ships faring well.
TLDR: combat records are based heavily on factors other than how well the ships are designed, and therefore it is perfectly possible for a better-designed ship to perform worse than a worse-designed ship. (The Iowas were the best-designed battleships of all but horrifically underperformed, for example, only getting a training cruiser and a destroyer because Spruance called off the carrier attacks that had damaged these ships previously)
I have seen analyses of the Washington Naval Treaty that defended the 5:5:3 ratio as reasonable for Japan, since the US and Great Britain had basically all of the worlds oceans to cover, while Japan could concentrate in the Pacific.
Further, the Treaty really acted to hold back the US, rather than limit the Japanese, since events would show that the US had the resources to build an almost unlimited number of capital ships, while Japan, or even Britain, could not.
It was the USA's idea though. And it limited their main rival, as well as breaking the Anglo-Japanese alliance, while allowing the USN to achieve parity with the RN without a costly arms race.
Plus don't forget the US Congress was stingy with money in that period. The Washington Naval Treaty meant the US Navy wouldn't have the money or the need to build more warships.
This was an extremely good video. Very informative. Thanks for taking the time to post it. I'm subbing, keep em coming mate!
Found your channel through a Rule the Waves 2 thread. Excellent videos, very informative and enjoyable!
USS Texas next please. I live less than 5 miles from her, and I've had a fascination with her since childhood.
Wonderful video.
Bubby theCuck she is on the list. :)
I live in Deer Park, less than 5 miles also. I hope he hurries up with video before the Texas sinks!
The Texas is leaking and could soon sink. Please hurry with the video before the Texas sinks into the mud at her berth.
Frank Abler The water is too shallow.
yet another great vid, can't get enough of these, they are a real treat that I find interesting and entertaining especially after a crappy day at work. Thanks,
Thank you Drach for setting the record straight on the Legend of the Yamato class. I've read so many comments on the fear of their 18.1" guns in WWII, when very little was even known about the ships. In WWII they were just enemy BBs nothing more nothing less. USN pilots could tell they were big but that is all they could really tell. They were not feared anymore than any other IJN BB. Again thanks.
Excellent anti retrospective point. Very well put.
One of the, if not the most beautiful capital ship ever made.
Keeping Yamato/Musashi EXACT specs secret for over 70 years running=Japan - OPSEC Winner!
That's not opsec, because they don't know the specs either. They destroyed all of the information, even for their own use, out of sheer spite, not realizing the idiocy of doing so. Battleships were obsolete long before the end of the war--and American battleship design had already surpassed the Yamato-class with the Iowa-class. All they did was to destroy the records of their own accomplishment.
@Megas Pantelos Japan lost the war. Destroying the records was pure spite.
@Megas Pantelos Maybe in WoW but in real life not so.
A great video about the Yamato class. I've always been fascinated with those vessels. Could you do a video about the USS Astoria? One of my uncles served on her during WW2 and survived her sinking.
Roger Hinman sure I'll add it to the list
Awesome work, as always, looking forward to the next one :)
I spend the better half of a minute wondering what the two ships were at 13:02. "Icy"? "Her younger"?
Then it struck me.... it was Ise ("e-say") and Hyuga ("hue-ga"), just that its read with english pronoun.
Note to self, drink coffee.
Luckily drach's subscribers will know which ships he's referring to
Thank you for posting this, most of the times that I have encountered those names have been when I'm reading, and I honestly did not know the correct pronunciation until I read your comment.
@@micfail2 japanese is actually rather simple in terms of pronounciation as each sylable is independent. So I is always (well, almost always) "ee" E "eh" A "ah" U "oo" and so on, regardless of whats around them. If only their spelling was as easy to memorize XD
How about a hand for the IJN. They build and commissions the worlds then-biggest carrier, commissions it and then lose it only ten days later. That has to be a record.
KMS Blucher: Hold my Bier!
Hubris. The captain "knew" how shit american torpedoes were from early war patrols and reports on captured examples, and so all but ignored the hits (of the fixed, actually working torpedoes with bigger warheads) as not a threat until Shinano was listing quite noticeably, and much of the damage control system was still under construction when they kicked her out of the dock to make room for more construction
Japanese Type 91 AP projectiles were 155 mm (YAMATO secondary guns only after these weapons were replaced in all of their new cruisers), 203 mm (the replacement cruiser guns), 356 mm, 410 mm, and 460 mm. They were special low-drag designs with boattailed (tapered conical) base regions just below their three narrow copper-ally driving bands and long conical noses, most of which were their hollow windscreens. These shells were still based as armor penetrators on British uncapped base-fuzed Common/SAP shells from just after WWI, since their post-WWI naval ammo was mostly copies of the newest British ammo of the 1920s. Instead of improving the test specs to 30-degree impact angles, as almost everyone else did in the 1930s, the Japanese kept the circa-1920 20-degree-max test angles and shell metallurgy. They finally decided to improve this to foreign 30-degree test standards in the YAMATO's 460 mm AP shells (not in any other AP shells that they used), but discovered that changing the shells to handle this more extreme sideways twisting force during penetration was not easily done and they found that their 460 mm Type 91 AP shells could not be reliably put through heavy armor in an intact condition even at 33 degrees, though they did succeed at the new spec 30 degrees. Marginal shell designs. They also introduced a new Type 1 AP shell, which was just a Type 91 with two changes: (1) They reverted back to the original British single wide driving band design (the three-narrow-band design seems to have been adopted from the French of German post-WWI ammo and they decided the extra cost in making that was not worth the results). (2) They slightly lengthened and narrowed the long pointed windscreen shape to reduced drag even more. No changes to anti-armor properties or these unique shell's "diving" design with the break-away windscreen and AP cap tip to created a tapered flat-nosed front end to allow the shells to remain stable for long underwater trajectories to get "below the belt" hits on enemy warships -- this last only worked properly once, to my knowledge, when a 203 mm Type 91 AP shell penetrated into the forward magazine area below the waterline on USS BOISE and the resultant fire destroyed the forward turrets, though the high-pressure water spraying into the magazine through the low hole in the side hull kept the magazine from reaching a critical detonation pressure.
Time traveler: *Leaks true dimensions of the Yamato*
Tillman Battleships: My time is Now!
More interestingly... Imagine if someone leaked the Tillman plans to Japan and said the us were making 4 of them... Imagine the Yamato we would have got.. 24" guns, 30 inch armor.. 12500tons haha I'm just speculating. But it would have been interesting
@Bjorn the overly, excessively enslaved singaporean as long as it can keep up with the battle line sounds good 😁 to be honest I've often thought it would be rather interesting for someone to have built a barge that looked like a giant big mean battleship, but just as a decoy of sorts, especially In the Pacific, calmer seas.
Essentially park a destroyer in its butt for propulsion and steering, when the battle starts sail ahead and towards the enemy, aim all the 2mm thick dummy turrets at whatever the biggest ship in the enemy fleet is, then disconnect the destroyer send out an ass load of torpedos and leg it, they all concentrate fire on the big scary ship while the destroyer escapes, giving your fleet substantially less counter fire to deal with while actually attacking the enemy. Haha almost an opposite trojan horse 😁😂
Oh I forgot to mention, use a barge so that the draught is shallow enough that torpedoes will go straight under it and continue on
@Bjorn the overly, excessively enslaved singaporean yeah that'd be great, a full spread of 1200 long Lance's 😂 enemy fleet go bye bye 😂😂😂
G3s and N3s you what mate?
This video has answered many of the questions I had about the ships, thanks 😁
You may suggest deficient metallurgy, but remember it was torpedoes that did the ships in. Bombs dropped on them essentially bounced.
That’s more a testament to good armour layout (especially when it came to the deck armour) and the sheer amount of armour, which more than compensated for any reduction in steel quality and meant these ships were still well-protected against bomb or shell hits.
Gorgeous battleships.
Also pointless, though that applies to their Allied and other Axis contemporaries too.
Just checking in on April 7, 2020 - 75 years since she was sunk!
5:21 *Senator Tillman has joined the chat*
XD
To be fair to Yamato and Musashi, they weren't glass-jawed, which you kinda came across as saying. And while I agree with you about Japanese armor quality and that Yamato gets wanked a bit too much, I disagree that the Yamatos weren't well protected by WW2 battleship standards. Armor quality isn't ultimately as important as the ship's armor scheme (how the armor is used), and the Yamatos had good armor schemes. (Also, sorry for the wall of text and I do love the video. Your work is great as always.)
Aside from the poor link between the belts, which was really just a relative weakness considering how many torpedoes they ate before dying, the Yamatos correctly concentrated its armor to give its vital areas maximum protection against pretty much any type of attack. The amount of punishment they took from late-war American aircraft bombs and torpedoes before sinking or even being silenced and taken out of the fight (despite the Americans focusing their torpedoes on one side of the ship to make them capsize faster) was testament to how well protected they were. I can't think of any other WW2 battleship that could take that much punishment before sinking.
As a point of contrast, look at her German counterpart, Bismarck: Bismarck had higher-quality armor than Yamato, but her armor scheme was obsolescent and poorly designed. Aside from not covering all her critical machinery and her poor turret armor (which allowed HMS Rodney to silence her guns in an embarrassingly short time), Bismarck's armor scheme was essentially a reused WW1 dreadnought design, meant for close-range gun battles. As such, while her belt could shrug off close-range horizontal fire very well, she had very inadequate protection against high-angle fire and bombs, meaning she would've fared very poorly against airstrikes and especially dive bombers.
Furthermore, rather than concentrate Bismarck's armor over her vital areas, the Germans used a lot of it to cover her whole hull and superstructure with light armor. This is bad because the light armor wouldn't stop an AP shell from penetrating into the ship but would set it off, meaning an incoming shell would explode inside the ship instead of going through her and out the other side before detonating. This lighter armor was worse than useless, and it actually killed her entire bridge crew and presumably her commander during her final battle when a British AP shell penetrated her weakly- but not un-armored bridge and exploded instead of passing through.
Granted, Bismarck was roughly 20,000 tons lighter than Yamato, but the point remains: Bismarck made very poor use of her armor, so she couldn't take the kind of punishment you'd expect from a ship in her weight class except in very specific circumstances (close-range gun battle, and even then her turrets are still too poorly armored). Yamato made good use of her inferior-quality armor, so she could shrug off damage and keep fighting like a 70,000-ton battleship should be able to. If Bismarck and Tirpitz had faced the kind of combat that Yamato and Musashi did in the Pacific, their superior armor quality wouldn't have meant anything and they'd have been sunk much more easily by the Americans.
Japanese armor was definitely inferior, but they knew this and made the best of what they had, and Yamato is a testament to why a ship's armor scheme is generally much more important than the quality of the armor used.
(The same can also be said for American ships in general, since their armor was better than Japan's but still markedly inferior to British and German face-hardened armor. You didn't see this stopping US warships from taking a serious beating and staying afloat.)
I agree, I wasn't trying to say they were badly protected, only that the scheme had a few flaws and that it wasn't as impressive as it looks on paper.
Conversely, on paper, it's insane well defended, so it 'goes down' to 'merely' very well defended.
Drachinifel I understand. Again, I do love your work, and I'm very glad you didn't indulge in Yamato hype like too many people, books, and even documentaries do. She was a very powerful battleship, but not without her flaws, and your assessment was measured and fair. Please keep up the great work!
while I would agree that bizmark might not have been using its waight as efectivly when it came to armoring the superstructure, the belt armor was only penetrated 3 or 4 times out of over 300 hits by 14 or 16 inch shells. likewise it was never compromised by torpedos, as they were all pre detonated by the auxilery fuel tanks. if you haven't seen it, watch james camerons expedition to the bizmark on youtube. they did a detailed analisys of the entire hull from the belt down, including the torpedo holes.
The reason Bismarck's main belt wasn't penetrated very much was because the British ships were pumping close-range, horizontal gunfire into her, which was the exact situation Bismarck's armor scheme was designed for. And since that armor scheme (turtleback deck + incremental armor) dates back to WW1 dreadnoughts, it would've been hard for even the Kreigsmarine to screw it up. So Bismarck being able to take a lot of short-range fire wasn't as impressive as it sounds. In fact, I'd be shocked if Bismarck didn't tank a bunch of gunfire in those conditions.
Not that this meant much since half of Bismarck's main guns were taken out and the other half were crippled, if I remember correctly, within the first 15 minutes of the battle, rendering her what navies call "dead in the water", and she was totally silenced around half an hour later. The rest of the "battle" was a corpse-kicking party as the Brits pumped Bismarck's hulk full of shells until she sank.
That's a really awful performance for a ship of Bismarck's size and weight facing two smaller battleships, and it clearly shows how bad Bismarck's armor scheme was. After all, if you're going to optimize your ship for close-range gun battles (which is already an outdated design goal), shouldn't you make sure your main armament and all your ship's vitals are extremely well protected from incoming fire? Close-range gunfire hits a lot harder than long-range fire since the shells haven't lost as much momentum over the course of their flight to the target, and a battleship without its guns is completely helpless. So if anything, the Kriegsmarine should've made sure her guns were as well-protected as possible (AKA what the Japanese did with the Yamatos).
That the Kriegsmarine didn't design Bismarck's turrets to withstand the same kind of close-range fire that they designed her belt for was criminally incompetent and completely self-defeating. Once Bismarck's guns were gone, it didn't matter how much fire her belt could take since she couldn't defend herself: The British could safely shoot the crap out of her until she inevitably died, however long that took. Her fate was sealed by her poor armor scheme. (Also, if the British had actually focused their guns on holing her below the waterline instead of smashing her above-water hull and superstructure to pieces, she would've gone down quicker. Like I said, it was a corpse-kicking party, and the British weren't aware of the details of Bismarck's design so they stuck to their doctrine of closing the range with the enemy, meaning most of their shots hit above the waterline.)
Finally, while I haven't looked at it, I've heard some very serious criticisms of James Cameron's Bismarck analysis, especially compared to the conclusions of actual experts who've dived the site, which is why I've avoided it. If I wanted a serious analysis of Bismarck's wreck and what it tells us about her final battle, an expedition led by a movie director isn't the first source I'd turn to.
1Korlash
It still sank.
When the Yamato was sunk in the Ten-Go Operation only 10 planes were shot down by the wretched AAA suite
The explosion of yamato was said to
Destroyed a numerous of aircraft
That's true of almost any AA fire. (How many of the attacking planes were damaged? That may be a better metric of AA effectiveness).
@@stewartmillen7708 in the Japanese film on the sinking of the Yamato so many USN planes are shown to being shot down.....
@@alexius23 and in inglorious bastard Hitler dies
I heard it was around 80 planes. Not 10.
Statistically the medium caliber flak in the 37-40mm range knocked down the lions share of attacking A/C. Japan was the only warring power not to have any medium caliber shipboard flak. Instead they had the weak and next to useless 25mm guns. This was based on a inferior French design that wasn't even capable of sustained fire.
They later put 100mm guns, but without VT-1 equivalent fuse.... welll.
Thanks for the information. I am just starting my build of the 1/200 Yamato Model Ship. And yes...info about the ship is hard to come by...and trying to get the colors right is also a challenge.
( Q & A ) Hey Drachs! I was wondering your thoughts on how the Battle of the Java Sea would have looked had the Prince of Wales and Repulse not been sunk, but instead retreated from Singapore altogether and linked up with ABDACOM? I myself do not know whether they would have been assigned to that particular fleet in our time had they not been sunk, but I suppose this is a "what if" scenario more than anything (PS: keep up your fantastic work!)
The Prince of Wales was doomed from the start. Poor armor over propellor shafts and quad turrets that didnt work. The sailors assigned to her called her Jonah.
Fleet Commander Fletcher was a battleship guy. When the Ten Go task force was spotted he sent 6 USN battleships, Indiana, South Dakota, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Missouri & Wisconsin. With them sailed 7 cruisers (including Guam & Alaska) with 21 destroyers.
Marc Mitchner commanded the USN carriers. On his own initiative he ordered nearly 400 planes, in waves, to attack the Ten Go Squadron. He only informed Fletcher as the first wave was in the air. Fletcher allowed the attack to proceed. Most of the IJN squadron was sunk or devastated. Only 10 USN pilots & crew died. Some of the USN planes were destroyed when the Yamato blew up. Mitchner wanted to prove to the Battleship Admirals that AirPower was supreme.
I freely admit that a surface action appeals to the video game player side of my personality. In reality the Yamato was a doomed ship once it left its dock. Still, a surface action would have been much more costly to the USN than the aerial avalanche that destroyed the Ten Go squadron....
was the Alaska actually classed as a cruiser?
@@josephhardwicke6344 there has been a lot of debate on this topic....the USN defined it as a cruiser...
Could you do a history of the IJN battleship Ise, always wondered how effective the half battleship/carrier arrangement worked in reality
KlunkerRider
It went badly.
7:15 Where’d you get that image? I haven’t seen a picture of that anywhere. People either show the ships with the original armament or the armament the Yamato had when it got sunk, and nothing in between.
P.S. Was going to go on a rant of it being after the sinking of the ship, but it appears to check out, lol.
I can link it to you if you want :)
I have to say that the Shinano didn't sink due to poor flooding control. The crew did everything they could according to the book by cpt. Joseph Enright, captain of Archer-fish. Shinano sank because of design flaws in the H-beam connecting the belt armour to the upper hull, high command not allowing for testing of the watertight seals and damage control systems and a lot of bad luck. Enright set the depth of the notoriously troublesome Mk. 14 torps higher than usual at a depth of 10ft which was just the right height to punch the H-beam right through the adjacent walls of armour. Despite appropriate counterflooding the ship listed too far over to be saved.
The Japanese actually made and tested a 48cm enlarged gun at their Naval Proving Ground. Its AP shell, when one was located, was of the slightly improved Type 1 AP design, which was a Type 91 (introduced in 1931) with a noticeably longer and more pointed windscreen and a single wide copper driving band at its bottom, as in US and British practice, instead of the several thinner bands used for the Type 91 AP shell; otherwise, the shells are identical, to my knowledge. Some Type 1 shells were introduced to Japanese battleships during WWII, but I do not know who got what. The Type 1 shells had slightly reduced drag and thus a longer range and terminal striking velocity. The only changes needed to turn a Type 91 into a Type 1, to my knowledge, was to re-machine the driving band area and add the new windscreen, which would have had the same threaded ring attaching it to the upper edge of the AP cap and a slightly curved shape over its length to make it slightly more pointed and a littler longer (not much longer or it wouldn't fit in the hoists). The Type 91 and Type 1 AP shells were of the general international "Type 2" ballistic shape with a conical windscreen and a boat-tailed (truncated cone with the bottom of the shell narrower than the middle of the body) base to get the least drag and still fit into the existing hoists of the WWI-era battleships (the new Japanese cruisers used the same shape, though with no AP cap, even though they had new guns and could have been different). Only the French 1930's-designed guns and associated ammo, with their extremely long and streamlined 5-caliber-long AP shells, were better and they could not have been handled by older ships without a major turret and magazine overhaul.
o7 to the Gambier Bay,
Each salvo of those massive shells were like an unstoppable swarm of Kamikazes.
I really enjoy watching these videos, thanks for all the hard work.
A reverse Kamikaze on Yamato useing a radio controlled B-29 escorted by long-range Fighters would have been Interesting. On a one way trip, stripped of guns and all unnecessary weight, packed with explosive and fuel, it's 350 MPH speed enhanced in a steep dive, one or two of these would have massively damaged these Ship's by crashing into the superstructure. These could carry 2 12 ton Grand slam Bombs, one under each wing, enough to mortality wound even a Yamato. Alternative History.
This is my favorite channel.
Yamato (Yah maa toe) and Musashi always look one of the most powerful battleships every built. Well they were!
technically not "most" I agree as to what you are seeing.
5:24
my answer to that question is someone would have tried to dust off one of the "Tillman Designs"
"At the battle of Samar Yamato sank the carrier Gambia Bay and the destroyer Johnson..."
Oh yes, but the Johnston did NOT go quietly...
The 25mm AAA had its faults was by no means the worst anti-aircraft gun of the war. There was a manually loaded 37mm aa gun.
Ironic that the ship’s weakness was against torpedos when the Japanese had the most powerful torpedos of the war
David Sachs
Who the hell used that gun?
@@kms_scharnhorst Sucks for them.
plz do the USS Maine (BB-10)
Apparently the main deck, the step-down and the aft deck were constructed as a contiguous piece so as to increase its strength. Of course it also increased its weight, which in turn would have increased the ships draught and caused problems with harbour access, so the ship had to have a greater beam. Greater beam meant it needed more power to achieve the required speed, which increased weight... you get the idea.
Loving your series. (human voices)
I was very interested on your comments that the Japanese decided it was best to leap frog and build really heavy battleships instead of more smaller ones incrementally. Where is your reference for that, I'd like to read more about it.
A number of naval histories cover the strategic thinking behind them, 'Kaigun' provides the most detailed explanation of the thinking though.
When will you do a video on its Space Battleship counterpart?
That would probably be fun for either a Halloween or April Fools joke.
Imperial Japanese Army: "What a waste of good steel! Imagine the number and quality of tanks we could have built."
Imperial Japanese Navy: "What good are tanks/artillery/soldiers left at bypassed island bases?"
5:02 nice
Its almost a shame we had to sink those ships, could you imagine both or all 3 parked next to each other as museum ships. That would be one hell of a sight
MrKKUT1984 let’s change the artillery to paint balls for some fun
If any had survived the war, they’d likely have ended up with Nagato and Prinz Eugen at Bikini.
@@mebsrea rather unfortunate but true I suspect
@@MrKKUT1984 They’d have made for epic dive trips, though!
@@mebsrea That was a shame too. The Nagato could've been a good museum ship! 😅
Your comment about the Shinano, she was sunk by torpedos but when the water tight doors are on the flight deck, they could not stop the flow of water as the japanese did not have a high regard for damage control.
Drachinifel mate... "Icy" (Ise) and "Hi-yung-ger" (Hyūga) lmao
Your videos are always top notch otherwise!
Wonderful Video - thank you!
I have always thought the German E boats of WWII were very successfulships. There isn't a whole lot of information I've seen about them.I would like it if you did a guide to these.
If you are talking about the type XXI electric boats, yes, they were very influential. Every diesel boat constructed after the war was initially based on their principle, for example the Soviet whiskey class.
Most interesting and detailed video clip. Thx for upload
Do you think the British would have dusted off the L-N designs if they knew about the Yamatos?
Possibly, although if they knew the full details they might be better off dusting down the J or K class BC designs, the N3's would have the firepower and armour but be far too slow. A J or K could lose a few knots for a bit more protection and still compete speed-wise, but more likely would be a new design based on those.
@@Drachinifel More probable would be an upscaled Lion class. 18" guns were too slow firing with appalling blast effects [The R.N had some experience of this with an 18" gun on b the Furious early in her career].. An enlarged Lion with 12 of the new 16" guns with slightly thicker armour protection would be the R.N's answer.
@@fyorbane I guess you are right, but with benefit of today's knowledge, I'd rather have 4 quadruple 14" turrets on ship to go against Yamato.
5 minute guide huh... Seems to be over just a tad... Which I love
70 years later there will be a video about railgun on this channel
More like 150 years, Railguns are having some serious teething problems.
No, it is likely to see them within 30 years at most and the teething problems are over-inflated.
There are two us ships right now with working railguns. There is plans to install them now next year on more ships. Both of the zumwalt class ships have railguns.
@@janis317 yea, they finally managed to make the projectiles affordable but now the gun barrel needs to be replaced every 7 shots at full charge. And as you can imagine, railgun barrels aren't cheap.
Superb - as always.
A small commentary on the quality of Japanese armor:
"'New Vickers Non-Cemented" (NVNC) armor, which is the homogeneous form of the face-hardened "Vickers Hardened" (VH) armor used in the IJN YAMATO, was deliberately kept at the level of late-WWI British armor due to the Japanese preoccupation with under-water hits. Just prior to WWII they introduced a new homogeneous armor "Molybdenum Non-Cemented" (MNC) that just met minimum U.S. Navy acceptance test standards and that seems to be similar to German Wh. It was used for most of the YAMATO's heavy homogeneous armor above the waterline while NVNC was used extensively for armor and anti-torpedo bulkheads below the waterline."
This is a quote from a much larger study on battleship armor, available here: www.combinedfleet.com/okun_biz.htm
Hey heads up there is a game if you want to call it that on steam called VR Battleship YAMATO it lets you walk around in and on the ijn yamato its made from surviving planes and interviews with surviving crew members.
Unlike the US or British navies the Japanese navy was a one ocean force, so the fact that it was more limited by the Washington Naval Treaty is not a true comparison of actual wartime available strength in a world conflict.
Edwin Mintey do you add up how many enemies Japan ended up with in a world conflict ? And how many of those were sea powers ? Perhaps the Japanese leadership anticipated something like that happening.
I heard about Japanese Torpedo Boats in the North Sea though
Grin.
First time I've seen photos of Shinano. And is that a genuine photo, taken from the sub, of her sinking?
Taken before being sunk. In fact taken by Japanese sailors....strictly against the rules
Basically what the Japanese did was look at the Treaty for battleships, go to a designer and say "I want all of that in one ship"
where did he get that list of turret layouts??
I eagerly await your guide on the Space Battleship Yamato. ; ) Cue the theme song: "We're off to outer space / We're leaving mother Earth / To save the human race / Our Star Blazers!"
5:27 Now that's a scary thought depending on which side your on.
Q&A The Japanese Built Some Very Large Submarines to Carry Aircraft, Development of the Aircraft delayed the project until it was too late. Instead of useing these to carry Aircraft, What if they had been built as underwater Tankers and Freighters? The major problem Japan had after 1943 was the sinking if their Tankers and Freighters by American Submarines, Yamato wasn't used because of its massive fuel consumption, with a submerged Tanker in formation with it, Yamato could be fueled as needed after hitting Guadalcanal early in the war, having the Tanker submerge and wait to refuel Yamato after it's mission was completed. Yamato could have been more effective in 1942 to 1943 before the American Navy had the Carriers and Aircraft to overwhelm it's defences. Also as Submarine Freighers and Tankers coming into use in 1943 kept fuel and Steel coming to Japan, more larger ones could have been built. The Nautilus Class American Submarines were mainly used as Freighters to supply the Philippines, to the point their Hull's began sagging in the middle late in the War. Despite all the Japanese patrols in the Philippines on land, air and sea, these Submarines were never spotted or even delayed in the supplying of the resistance in the Philippines. The much larger Japanese Submarines would have been able to opperate without risk to American Aircraft and Submarines, as the capacity to carry cargo increased along with their numbers, enough Fuel and Steel kept coming to Japan, might have made a difference in the last year of the war. Mainly just a couple of these Submarines as Tankers would have allowed the use of the fuel thirsty Yamato Class Ship's early in the War when they actually could have been useful. As Aircraft Carriers the Submarines were useless as they were delayed by Development of the Aircraft for them until it was too late for them.
please I'd love to see a video on HMS Vanguard
It is on the list :)
A one class Tillman!
How would the Yamato fair against the Tillman Maximum battleships?
They could probably outmaneuver the Tillmans but, said Tillmans would by that point likely have the same detection, and fire control radars as the Iowa class so the Tillman's would probably get the first shots off.
@@airplanenut89
The targeting advantage radar provided to the Iowas is actually not nearly as significant as often claimed, based on live-fire testing data from 1944; simply put, even an Iowa cannot reliably land hits at 30k yards or more (they would run out of shells before doing enough damage at such ranges), and unless this is a situation with poor visibility both sides would have a similar effective engagement range (25k yards or less).
@@bkjeong4302 It's not about sniping from 30K yds away, it's about being able to dictate the battle. In this hypothetical Tillman vs Yamato fight, the superior USN radar systems would allow the USN to begin forming a plan of attack sooner, thus dictating the beginning of the battle. In addition, while you won't be super accurate at max range, being able to reliably put shots around your target first gives you the chance to land the first strike. Any damage you can cause before the enemy closes to their respective firing range will give you an advantage.
@@airplanenut89 Not sure if radar would provide that much of a planning advantage in good visibility (in poor visibility I would agree radar is a major advantage).
The issue is that while an Iowa (which is faster than a Yamato) could theoretically dictate the battle, a Tillman can’t. It’s at a speed disadvantage, unless you’re talking about a Tillman III. A Tillman can’t really force Yamato to engage on its terms because Yamato can just leave or reposition, and a Tillman (aside from a Tillman III) isn’t fast enough to respond to that by repositioning first or chasing the Yamato down.
@@bkjeong4302 The Tillman III (specifically the III-IV if i remember correctly) design was the only one that was actually submitted for design consideration to the USN, and was also dug up once or twice for submission after that as well. As such it is the most likely ship for this scenario. Radar would also absolutely be a major planning advantage as it sees further than optics regardless of visibility. The further away you can detect your enemy, the more time you have to devise your plan.
As the biggest battleships ever built, the Yamato class have acquired the status of legends ... despite having performed underwhelmingly in real life. In shonen anime, of course, the Yamato has become something of a superhero.
Still, I can't help but compare the Yamato with its overblown reputation to another hero ship of World War II, rather less ambitious in conception and execution, that nonetheless compiled a service record that entire navies might well envy. She wasn't preserved by her country, but her name was passed on to the world's first atomic supercarrier, and then to the most famous hero ship in science fiction ...
American ships limited by Panama Canal width. IJN had no such limits to design.
Good thinking but it's draft was limited by the ports where the class would be fitted out.
Limited by dockyard size and port capacity.
I am firmly convinced that the Yamato class were the inspiration for George Lucas' idea of the Death Star. I mean, he was already taking ideas from Japanese samurai drama films. Not hard to see the comparison of small single-seated bombers taking out Musashi and Yamato with light torpedo and bomb weapons and Luke destroy the Death Star with a single well-placed photon torpedo.
There's also the fact that in the extremely successful anime "Space Battleship Yamato", originally made in 1974, Yamato is armed with a giant laser cannon of mass destruction. Sound Familiar?
If anything the Yamatos were basically the exact opposite of the Tarkin Doctrine.
The Tarkin Doctrine is focused on building intimating super weapons and showing them off to threaten enemies into submission.
The Yamatos were not shown off, but kept in secrecy (they were never the symbol of the IJN’s power; that fell to the Nagatos), specifically so they would be underestimated by the enemy.
Where did you find the picture at the 14 minute mark?
Q&A. Witch ship would u want to command the USS Iowa or the HMS Hood?
Bestdestoryminecrafter 2016 Iowa every time. Hood was a magazine explosion waiting to happen.
1:41 wow, nice image