Someone tried to find an answer regarding the question "What was the best battleship of WW2?". It wasn´t the Yamato.
http://www.combinedfleet.com/baddest.htm
http://www.combinedfleet.com/baddest.htm
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No doubt that the IOWA was the best battleship of the war, it was designed and came into service 2-3 years after its contemporaries from other nations. It was designed for the era of Radar following the discoveries in centimetric radar in the 37-40 period and made possible with some of the technologies shared between the UK and USA (cavity magnetron being the important part of the puzzle).
The armour part in particular, which is based on older research by Nathan Okun from '90s. It supposes a decapping ability to Iowa's belt scheme but this is debatable, completely ignores function of the main deck in Bismarck's belt protection (supposedly Okun has since opinioned that the combination would be likely to stop Yamato's 18" @ 0 meters), possibly underrates Bismarck's deck scheme as there has been some primary source evidence indicating it may have been functional spaced armour array, gives Littorio unknown cemented armour quality though since then Okun has rated is as among the best.
Independent of Okun, it pegs down KGV's TDS due to older disproven theory, and apparently considers things like nominal cyclic rate of main battery a relevant and comparable piece of information (e.g. Campbell gives 26 second cyclic rate for Bismarck, 40 second cyclic rate for West Virginia, but the latter actually fired faster at Surigao Strait than former did at Denmark Strait).
I do not think radar really affected design of Iowa. The main design by naval bureaus was in '38, detail design by New York Navy Yard in '39. At this point US was doing experiments with some primitive search sets, and I don't think anyone really anticipated how important naval radar would be. Subsystems went to sea long before the ship, e.g. the secondary battery fire-control system already debuted on Sims class destroyers, first few which were completed before WW2 even began.
I may very well have confused myself ... Possibly with HMS Vanguard which was very much built with the RPC system. While it was often seen as the new ship with the old guns, it was (re)designed with the idea of centimetric radar controlling the gunfire. As it turned out the size of the battleship guns was much less important at the end of the war. The battleship was great at bullying smaller ships, but was easily bullied by submarines and aircraft
HEAT rounds don't actually heat the ship, it's a way of penetrating armor.
No one has brought up the dubious metal quality of Yamato and Musashi. All that steel won't matter much if it's not good armor. Wouldn't be surprised if Iowa could pen it or if it buckled quickly under repeated hits
What it Yamato's armor was folded a thousand times like a katana. Then it might split any round the Americans could fire at it.
They would rather use light sabers for this purpose. Katana armor was to cut USS Iowa in half.
I know. But punching a fist sized hole in a battleship won't cut it. I was addressing his claim that it would start fires onboard as primary way of dealing damage.
There is no reason to believe the Japanese used "inferior steel armor" or "low quality metal". Especially not on a Super Battleship that is a national symbol of pride and power.
Would it help to remind anyone that there are four Iowa class battleships operating as floating museums today, and two Yamato class dive wrecks?
But we are discussin one on one here. Japanese superbattleships were destroyed IRL by the whole task forces...
It's not really a question of "low quality metals". For Yamato class Japanese designed a non-cemented (unlike practically all heavy vertical naval armour since 1890s) face-hardened armour for reasons of production and economy. This is described in the immediately post-war USN technical mission reports, and actual physical examples of the armour were available at the time. This armour granted similar protection as the British-style cemented armour Japanese had used on their older battleships. Meanwhile, other countries, notably Britain which worked from the same starting point, produced new and substantially improved cemented armour for their new ships (the British one improved protection by as much as 30% over the older cemented armour used up to Nelsons, IIRC).
So in short, the face-hardened armour on Yamato was somewhat lackluster since Japanese decided to go for what turned out to be simply budget armour to keep the already high costs of their behemoths down.
So the Iowas chickened out while the Yamatos did their duty ?
Would it help to remind everyone that the Soviet Union is gone while Poland is still there ?
Technically speaking, Kurita pretended to chicken and Halsey bought him.
Hence the prospective deployment of Lee's battleline (including BatDiv 7: Iowa and New Jersey) in path of Center Force (with Yamato and Nagato) did not happen and he instead raced north as the world wondered.
Technically speaking, Kurita pretended to chicken and Halsey bought him.
They did some gunnery tests with armour plates found in Kure. It didnt fare well but it is also assumed these tests did not happen at typical engagement ranges.
The Yamato guns however would have been impervious to all ww2 BB rounds. Bismark could have fired at them at point blank range for no success.
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