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If the rest of the ship sinks, do the turrets float?
Just curious.
IMHO, the Yamatos were the last of a dying breed of ships, designed for a type of warfare that was extinct before they ever floated out to sea. There is a reason US battleships bristle with AAA and their gorgeous 16" naval rifles are secondary armament. The US navy might have hated Billy Mitchell, but the officers watching that day learned early that planes sink ships.
If you read my posts then you will see that I bet my money on nearly any ww2 BB than the Yamatos. Big waste of steel and yardtime. Dosnt change the fact they had a good torpedo belt and turret armor.
No, no, I agree. They were the greatest WWI battleships that ever roamed the ocean sea.
The US fire control system of WW2 was so good that it was not replaced with a digital version during the Vietnam-era refit as the modern computer would be no more accurate than the old analog system. And unlike the Japanese system, it was completely automated: no human inputs or calculations were required. Several steps in the Japanese system required humans to translate or transfer data; this matters because humans make errors under stress, or noise interrupts data being passed. Coupled with radar range-finding, the US fire control system could land more hits on target than any other system in WW2. The truth is, the size of the gun doesn't matter if you can't hit the target... and the US could hit it but the Japanese only sometimes could hit it.
Yamato did not turn in a good shooting performance at Samar; none of the Japanese ships got much return for an enormous expenditure of ordinance. There is little reason to expect her performance would have been any better on another day. US battleship shooting could be pretty good, as Willis Lee showed at Second Guadalcanal.
The US super-heavy 16" shell at 2700 lbs (48,600 lbs per minute) was smaller and slightly lighter than the Japanese 18.1" at 3200 lbs (44550 lbs per minute), but the 16" loaded and fired more quickly and - given better US fire control - could expect to land (ballpark estimate) 1 hit per minute while the Yamato could expect perhaps 1 hit every three minutes (at Samar, far less than that). The US superheavy 16" was fully capable of wrecking critical ship systems and opening the hull to flooding; the example of Bismarck shows that you don't have to penetrate the belt or turrets to defeat the enemy, just mission-kill it while the aircraft and destroyers come up.
The problem with the one-on-one scenario is that it would not and could not work out that way. Yamato would not have been sailing alone; certainly the US would not face her with one ship, especially so since all modern US battleships were either as-fast or faster, and traveled in packs. Yamato was intended to fight the older 21-knot US 'Standard' battleships and would have been more than a match for two or possibly even three of those. But the best the Japanese could put up couldn't match two North Carolinas, four South Dakotas and four Iowas.
Most likely outcome of a one-on-one BB shootout in WW2? Whoever lands a crippling hit first... a deck hit, a turret roof hit, a bridge or a funnel uptake hit... or as with the most likely cause of Hood's loss, a shell exploding in the secondary armament or one that exploits some chink in the armor scheme. It's not likely that Yamato or any other BB would sink an opponent in single combat, but quite likely that once a battleship was crippled, aircraft or light forces would finish it off.
Yamato was the best battleship the minds of the 1930s could envision. Unfortunately, by the 1940s other powers had good battleships, too - and more of them.
Yamato did not turn in a good shooting performance at Samar; none of the Japanese ships got much return for an enormous expenditure of ordinance. There is little reason to expect her performance would have been any better on another day. US battleship shooting could be pretty good, as Willis Lee showed at Second Guadalcanal.
The US super-heavy 16" shell at 2700 lbs (48,600 lbs per minute) was smaller and slightly lighter than the Japanese 18.1" at 3200 lbs (44550 lbs per minute), but the 16" loaded and fired more quickly and - given better US fire control - could expect to land (ballpark estimate) 1 hit per minute while the Yamato could expect perhaps 1 hit every three minutes (at Samar, far less than that). The US superheavy 16" was fully capable of wrecking critical ship systems and opening the hull to flooding; the example of Bismarck shows that you don't have to penetrate the belt or turrets to defeat the enemy, just mission-kill it while the aircraft and destroyers come up.
The problem with the one-on-one scenario is that it would not and could not work out that way. Yamato would not have been sailing alone; certainly the US would not face her with one ship, especially so since all modern US battleships were either as-fast or faster, and traveled in packs. Yamato was intended to fight the older 21-knot US 'Standard' battleships and would have been more than a match for two or possibly even three of those. But the best the Japanese could put up couldn't match two North Carolinas, four South Dakotas and four Iowas.
Most likely outcome of a one-on-one BB shootout in WW2? Whoever lands a crippling hit first... a deck hit, a turret roof hit, a bridge or a funnel uptake hit... or as with the most likely cause of Hood's loss, a shell exploding in the secondary armament or one that exploits some chink in the armor scheme. It's not likely that Yamato or any other BB would sink an opponent in single combat, but quite likely that once a battleship was crippled, aircraft or light forces would finish it off.
Yamato was the best battleship the minds of the 1930s could envision. Unfortunately, by the 1940s other powers had good battleships, too - and more of them.
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That's how it turned out to be in the end, but it's a post-hoc rationalization to say the 5" guns were the primary armament. The design intent of Iowa isn't obscure, it was intended to counter Japanese fast capital ships.
Also, at the time the fast battleships were designed there were apparently many who felt the 5"/38 was too light for surface work. While the ideas of uniform secondary battery and DP capability were maintained, guns up to 6" were constantly being brought to the table (all the way to and including the Montana design process). These would have almost certainly meant a reduction in AAA capability.
The USN computers were not entirely automated, some things did need manual input (e.g. barrel wear). And on the flip side, at least on the earlier Type 92 Shagekiban, it wasn't just several steps, it had no automatic follow ups. I.e. in USN the ship's gyrocompass continuously transmits own ship's course via synchro, which the FC computer then receives via synchro and automatically inputs into the computer (probably via servo that the synchro actuates). In Japanese ship the ship's gyrocompass also continuously transmits own ship's course to the FC computer, but only thing this does is adjust an indicator dial on the computer. An operator then needs to turn one of those previously pictured knobs/wheels that line the sides of the computer until the inputted value matches the indicated value.
Another difference is that the USN synchros used for data transmission were self-synchronising (hence the name). The transmitting and receiving one "knew" what the other indicated. The Japanese system did not have this feature and they instead transmitted values as change in value, which increases risk of being out of sync. This is also why Japanese had to reset the FC system when shifting to new director, this involved training director/turrets/guns to set (centerline) bearing and elevation, and resetting the computer to certain parameters.
At best, battleships tended to get off about 1.5 full salvo equivalents per minute in combat. More usual was 1 or less per minute. I'd agree that Iowa is likely to shoot more quckly, but only because she'll have good solution in short order and start shooting for effect in equally short order (in fact, I have this recollection that late war the procedure was to start shooting for effect right away).
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Yeah, that's what Iowa said
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_cruiser_Katori
Hahaha. Take that IJN, you'll never recover from that devastating blow. 'Murica 1, Japan 0.
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From what can be learned playing the not-terribly-realistic World of Warships:
Eh, it depends on too many elements. Salvo per salvo with 2 ships standing still bow-on or side-on to eachother, the Yamato has a big advantage on everything else, but that's not something that would ever happen. Open water engagement where both BBs surprise each-other and play cat-and-mouse at mid range, I guess the Yamato has a theoretical advantage over everything else as well, but one lucky hit or one unforced mistake can change everything in an instant.
Eh, it depends on too many elements. Salvo per salvo with 2 ships standing still bow-on or side-on to eachother, the Yamato has a big advantage on everything else, but that's not something that would ever happen. Open water engagement where both BBs surprise each-other and play cat-and-mouse at mid range, I guess the Yamato has a theoretical advantage over everything else as well, but one lucky hit or one unforced mistake can change everything in an instant.
Several US Battleships were refitted with solid-state analog fire control systems to replace the vacuum tube and mechanical systems which preceded them. I worked on a few of the circuit boards back in the late 1970s for a factory in NJ (the company was based in NY) as an electronic technician, although I had no idea which ships were being refitted. A few of the design choices were "interesting" to say the least.
World of Warships is the only place this entire conversation makes sense. And it all depends on the programmers whims of nerfs and balances. Not surprisingly, they chose to make a non-US ship the top tier. It is not a fair game, and a very unrealistic portrayal; but this is a game where you just spray torpedoes everywhere and hope one hits while they magically auto-reload. Just let the Russians flip on USS Missouri's fire control system while steaming at full speed and see who has an advantage over whom. Or put a real carrier alpha strike group in the air and see what happens. But, they won't, because reasons.
For what it is worth, there are "top tier" ships for almost every combination of class and nation. Yamato is the only top tier BB that actually existed, but it is (in the game) of the same tier as the Montana, a sorta-kinda H-42 design, and entirely made-up hypotheticals for what the British and French would have built if they were making BBs in the late 1940's.
As for everything else, well, it's a game. The gun caliber and armor and speed and internal layout etc all matter, but ultimately it has to be playable and fun. Wouldn't be too much fun to play torpedo boats against Iowas if the torpedoes launchers could only be used once.
Yes, I have a Montana BB in World of Warships and have been playing off and on since the servers opened in America. Some parts of WoW are very realistic, some unbelievable - like teamwork being non exisent and captains just wandering off doing their thing. Not the Navy way - and I can give you a quick peek into a game we having coming down the pike that will solve that issue. The game is a game at the end of the day and the programmers have final say in what is and is not, I resigned myself to that long ago.
US ships in WW2 had the first ‘real’ fire control radar systems. USS Washington a battleship completed just before WW2 sank the Japanese battleship Kirishima singlehandedly at night without ever catching sight of it in the second battle of Guadalcanal
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Battle_of_Guadalcanal
The first battle also features a situation where a US destroyer utterly ravaged the Japanese battleship Heiei with ‘only’ 5” guns by firing repeatedly at short range hitting areas with insufficient armor to be properly protected.
Compared to the US, British fire control in WW2 was primitive, barely upgraded from WW1. Nevertheless the PoW only closed with the Bismark once the Bismark was sufficiently damaged that it was safe to do so. It wasn’t a necessity, but rather a matter of convenience.
They were. Nikon and a variety of other high quality lens and optical companies were both already around when WWII started, and were making very high quality optical equipment. So good, that the US Navy simply bought their optical rangefinding equipment from Japan pre WWII. This was of course an unpleasant thing to discover when things got tense starting in the late 1930's. There are/were only 2 centers of excellence in the optical industry for the last 150 years or so - Germany and Japan. During the cold war, the eastern block used 'their' German optics producers, and Nato used Japan and west Germany. Post WWII, the US was intending to take apart the Japanese optical industry partly as reparations, and partly to prevent 'remilitarization' but wound up being it's biggest customer instead, because what they made was invaluable to the cold war.
http://www.nipponkogakuklub.com/NKK/Nikon_History.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fujifilm
The USN rangefinders were AFAIK manufactured by Bausch & Lomb of Rochester, NY (as they had been since at very least from around WW1). Perhaps B&L outsourced lenses from Japan pre-war (though there was a lens manufacturer in NY state as well), but I can't find confirmation.
Japanese optics themselves followed American model in instruments, Germany model in lenses, according to the Technical Mission Report on Japanese optics (X-05). The industry was noted as being fairly modern but apparently conventional.
Japanese optics themselves followed American model in instruments, Germany model in lenses, according to the Technical Mission Report on Japanese optics (X-05). The industry was noted as being fairly modern but apparently conventional.
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I have tried to find details on it and failed so far, but I know for a certain fact that at least to a degree it was true that the US was importing optical equipment from Japan, because I have seen it for sale before, and my dad used it on his WWII era navy ship in Vietnam. Maybe not THE rangefinders, but certainly some of the stuff was. I just don't know exactly which items other than high power low light binoculars, which I am certain of.
Well, there's a large catalog of USN optical instruments here: https://archive.hnsa.org/doc/opticalcat/index.htm#toc
It does seem to usually list contractor or designer.
It does seem to usually list contractor or designer.