Battle Ship Yamato

[Codger2]

I'm not sure just where to post this but it's one of the most incredible ships I've ever seen!

https://www.facebook.com/WorldOfWarships/videos/1969586396550830/

 

[Insequent]

Yes, amazing vessel for sure.

 

[AlaskaProf]

Thanks. Well worth the time.

 

[rgano]

The large model would be interesting to see. Read about the Battle of Leyte Gulf to find out how the Yamato was run off by some US Navy escort vessels and the planes of the escort carriers they were protecting. She and her sister Musashi certainly never earned their keep in battle. Then there were to very poorly performing 25 mm AA guns which made up a lot of their AA gunnery.

 

[skyhawk]

instant flashback to my History of WW2 Pacific Theater professor in college. He was an awesome lecturer...would sometimes preach from the pulpit like a Southern Baptist preacher.... talking soft then suddenly shouting loud for dramatic affect...pounding on the podium and all.... very entertaining....

 

[AlaskaProf]

Then there were to very poorly performing 25 mm AA guns which made up a lot of their AA gunnery.

Yes. I was struck by the same thing. The US also entered the war with the woefully inadequate 1.1" AA gun, but quickly upgraded to 40mm. Yamato spent four years swinging to her anchor in the Inland Sea. Did no one think to improve her armament?

And 5" and 6" batteries unsuited to AA use are just dead weight. Shocking malfeasance.

 

[AlaskaProf]

I agree re: the model. Fabulous!

 

[rgano]

instant flashback to my History of WW2 Pacific Theater professor in college. He was an awesome lecturer...would sometimes preach from the pulpit like a Southern Baptist preacher.... talking soft then suddenly shouting loud for dramatic affect...pounding on the podium and all.... very entertaining....

Absolutely best kind of history prof!

 

[Lepke]

Japanese fire control wasn't as accurate as the US. I read a book by a Japanese destroyer captain, that was in most of the battle areas. He said American destroyers usually straddled his ship with their first salvo.
Yamato, her sister and half sister are all on the bottom. None performed exceptionally in battle. At the Battle of Leyte Gulf Yamato with an overwhelming force was driven off by a few destroyers and destroyer escorts. The destroyers attacked so aggressively, the Japanese reported them as cruisers.

 

[AlaskaProf]

Japanese fire control wasn't as accurate as the US. I read a book by a Japanese destroyer captain, that was in most of the battle areas. He said American destroyers usually straddled....

The Japanese benefited from highly trained and specifically assigned lookouts and superb optics, not to mention disastrously bad American organization and leadership. Effective in the horrific battles near Guadalcanal, but no match for evolving radar and analog computing.

 

[tpbrady]

The battles around Guadalcanal were a lesson for the Navy. In Savo Sound, the Navy took a pounding and lost a lot of ships. We owned the day, they owned the night.

 

[rgano]

Had our torpedoes been worth a darn before late '43 when the fix finally went in, a lot of enemy shipping would have been strewn across the bottom from Savo to Japan because numerous Japanese reported being hit by American torpedoes which did not explode. Our guys could definitely shoot them straight at great risk to themselves. We got in trouble for about four or five months around Savo, but once other commanders learned to use radar and we got the SG radar with a PPI put in a place we called CIC (initially done by the destroyers themselves), we owned the day and night; witness the Moosbrugger and Burke in surface-to-surface battles farther up the chain from Vella Lavella and Empress Augusta Bay and onward.

There was a longish time between ship-to-ship fighting after the Solomons before Leyte, and we had ship types in October '44 no Japanese surface officer had ever seen or even knew about. Thus the Japanese admiral's staff mistaking escort carrier for fleet carrier and a the Johnston and Hoel for cruisers.

 

[dannc]

...
And 5" and 6" batteries unsuited to AA use are just dead weight. Shocking malfeasance.

Well, that is not really accurate for 5" guns but is for 6" guns.

5" guns were duel purpose so they were on ships for fighting other ships and shore bombardment, not just shooting at planes.

https://www.history.navy.mil/research/library/online-reading-room/title-list-alphabetically/a/antiaircraft-action-summary.html

5" guns brought down 30 percent of the planes during the war which is hardly useless. Furthermore, with the use of proximity fuses, the 5" gun really increased the effectiveness of the 5" duel purpose cannon.

The 40 mm. developed into the most effective weapon in the fleet. The 20 mm., which was the most important weapon during the first 2 years of the war, was passed by both the 5-inch and 40 mm. in the percentage of planes knocked down during 1944 and 1945.


Five-inch guns destroyed 30 percent of all "sures" during the war. VT-fuzed projectiles, used in only 35 percent of 5-inch rounds, were responsible for 50 percent of 5-inch kills.

The total WWII kills for 5" guns was 688.5 vs 742.5 in the 40mm. That seems pretty effective and especially given how many 40mm cannons were deployed compared to 5" cannons.

Later,
Dan

 

[psneeld]

Whose 5 inch are we discussing?

 

[AlaskaProf]

Well, that is not really accurate for 5" guns but is for 6" guns.

5" guns were duel purpose so they were on ships for fighting other ships and shore bombardment, not just shooting at planes.

https://www.history.navy.mil/research/library/online-reading-room/title-list-alphabetically/a/antiaircraft-action-summary.html

5" guns brought down 30 percent of the planes during the war which is hardly useless. Furthermore, with the use of proximity fuses, the 5" gun really increased the effectiveness of the 5" duel purpose cannon.



The total WWII kills for 5" guns was 688.5 vs 742.5 in the 40mm. That seems pretty effective and especially given how many 40mm cannons were deployed compared to 5" cannons.

Later,
Dan

Jeez, Dan, we are in violent agreement here. In the Yamato movie which is the topic, the narrator makes the point that the installed 5" guns were slow to train and limited in elevation and unsuited to anti aircraft use.

Installing 5" and 6" guns on a vessel designed to engage at as much as 25 miles is a really bad use of manpower and weight, as has been understood since the time of Jacky Fisher.

While I recognize that expertise is not passed genetically, because of the family connection, I have done some reading on the topic.

As I've said elsewhere, my late Father spent the war at Treasure Island and the Naval Gun Factory (now the Navy Museum) teaching the many wonders of the 5"/38, and its fire control systems.

BTW: Pretty impressive disquisition of the kill statistics. I have learned something today.

 

[rgano]

I thought the discussion was about Yamato/Japanese naval AA guns. The vaunted US Navy 5"/38 with the associated MK 37 GFCS with which I have several years up close and personal experience from being weapons Officer in USS Iowa was tremendously more capable than the equivalent Japanese 12.7 mm weapon. This is not to knock overall Japanese AA gunnery which was deadly enough, but if I were to fly against against US or Japanese 5" weapons mounted on a ship, I darned well know which I would pick for best chance of survival. That said, I was tremendously unhappy with the six twin 5"/38 mounts and the MK37 GFCS with MK 25 radar the Navy saddled me with in the 1980s. It was all just so much temperamental, ornamental "stuff" in that newer era of naval warfare. We would have been soooo much better off with a standard missile battery per side. The tonnage of all the 5"/38 gun mounts (way heavier than destroyer twin 5"/38 btw) the four directors and the 14,000 rounds of 5"/38 ammo we packed around probably slowed us up a few knots. But the problem was dollar-driven from the get-go. And to answer the inevitable question, I would rather be in an Iowa than a Yamato in a one-on-one combat.

 

[AlaskaProf]

Rich,

12.7cm, Nan desuka?

 

[Lepke]

The 5"-38 gun on American destroyers, most other US warships and many auxiliaries was the best 5" gun of the war. The Japanese 5" was designed for surface action and could only be used against low flying planes in some situations. Even the British used the gun in a ship repaired in the US.


In the 1960s I served on WWII built destroyers with the 5"-38. (The 38 stands for 38x5" for the barrel length of 190") In practice and in Vietnam against shore targets, usually the first or second shell hit the target. In one action against a group of enemy soldiers attacking an American base, two salvos of 6 shells destroyed the enemy. We were called off while the third and fourth salvos were still in the air. A good gun crew can fire a round every 4 seconds, 15 rounds/minute and could sustain it until the magazines were exhausted. Japanese 5" on destroyers, cruisers and battleships could sustain 8 rounds/minute and had a poor fire control system.

The proximity fuse that came into wide use in 1943 was the reason Japan turned to kamikazes. Few, if any of their aircraft could get thru the anti-aircraft fire on normal torpedo or bombing runs. The proximity fuse sends out a signal and explodes when it senses it's near an object. Older fuses were a major math problem of shell flight time, ballistics, and aircraft course and speed.


Arleigh Burke learned the lessons of the early battles around Guadalcanal and leading Destroyer Squadron 23, decimated the Japanese his ships fought. He was nicknamed 31 Knot Burke, earned when his signals at headquarters were plotted and found to average 31 knots.


In 1980, after Korea and Vietnam, the navy still had 750,000 rounds of 5"-38. The last ship I know of that used the gun in combat were the battleships off Iraq in the first gulf war. But other navies using former USN ships used the 5"-38 until about 2010.

 

[dannc]

Whose 5 inch are we discussing?

Jeez, Dan, we are in violent agreement here. In the Yamato movie which is the topic, the narrator makes the point that the installed 5" guns were slow to train and limited in elevation and unsuited to anti aircraft use.....

Yes, I was playing a bit with the ambiguity of WHOSE 5" gun we were talking about, which I why I put in the smiley face.

I used that ambiguity to talk about the US 5" inch because it was a remarkably able weapon and the AA capability with proximity fuses was a game changer. The proximity fuse usage in artillery fire was also a game changer due to its air bursting. It tore up German formations at the later stages of the war.

The USS Atlanta, which was a light cruiser, had 16 5" guns of which 12 could be fired in a broad side. The Atlanta in shore bombardment at Guadalcanal during the evacuation of a USMC unit that had landed but found too many Japanese. The Atlanta's broadside tore up the jungle, and the Japanese formations hidden within, allowing the Marines to get off the beach.

Later,
Dan

 

[rgano]

Yeah CM not MM, DUH.

 

[psneeld]

Yes, I was playing a bit with the ambiguity of WHOSE 5" gun we were talking about, which I why I put in the smiley face.

I used that ambiguity to talk about the US 5" inch because it was a remarkably able weapon and the AA capability with proximity fuses was a game changer. The proximity fuse usage in artillery fire was also a game changer due to its air bursting. It tore up German formations at the later stages of the war.

The USS Atlanta, which was a light cruiser, had 16 5" guns of which 12 could be fired in a broad side. The Atlanta in shore bombardment at Guadalcanal during the evacuation of a USMC unit that had landed but found too many Japanese. The Atlanta's broadside tore up the jungle, and the Japanese formations hidden within, allowing the Marines to get off the beach.

Later,
Dan

I tried a little research...couldnt find much quickly, was that Chesty Pullers gang being pulled off the beach and when the only medal of honor winner in the USCG, Douglas Munro, killed?

 

[AlaskaProf]

I tried a little research...couldnt find much quickly, was that Chesty Pullers gang being pulled off the beach and when the only medal of honor winner in the USCG, Douglas Munro, killed?

Here's the piece of the Munro story I'd like to know: Where did he train for his eventual deployment as a LCVP coxswain. I have seen the shrine at Pier 36, but it doesn't address the question.

 

[psneeld]

Here's the piece of the Munro story I'd like to know: Where did he train for his eventual deployment as a LCVP coxswain. I have seen the shrine at Pier 36, but it doesn't address the question.

According to Wikipedia, he was inducted in Seattle Washington and trained at USCG Airstation Port Angeles.

 

[walldaja]

That's one heck of a trawler, certainly not a single-hand vessel.

There are pieces of the Yamato in outside display at the Washington Naval Yard. Most people were in awe of the 18.1" main guns of the Yamato--our biggest were 16".

After the war the US Navy did testing on some spare pieces of the Yamato's armor and were surprised their 16" guns had no trouble penetrating it. Looking at the armor which the 16" penetrated shows how much force those rounds had.

Amazing what about 2,500 pounds flying at about 2,300 fps will do to a stationary piece of steel.

The Washington Navy Yard is a great place to visit--nice public museum. If you have a military ID you can get access and wander their outdoor exhibits even when the yard is closed to the public. Lots of cannon from CSA ironclads, naval guns on railcars (used in WWI) outside and stuff from the USS Constitution and the bathyscaphe Trieste inside.

 

[AlaskaProf]

The Washington Navy Yard is a great place to visit--nice public museum. If you have a military ID you can get access and wander their outdoor exhibits even when the yard is closed to the public. Lots of cannon from CSA ironclads, naval guns on railcars (used in WWI) outside and stuff from the USS Constitution and the bathyscaphe Trieste inside.

I don't know if it's still true, but when I visited about 25 years ago, there was a twin-40mm mount which the public could point and train. My 13-y-o son was enthralled.

 

[MVDarlin]

Yes. It and sister ship Musashi were largest battleships ever built with 18+ inch rifles with range of 25 miles. Design was intented to sink other battleships from positions beyond enemy guns. Both were sunk by carrier dive bomber aircraft and torpedoes which had a range of hundreds of miles. By the time they were sent into action Japan did not have enough fuel to fill their tanks. A couple of US submarines aided their demise.

 

[dannc]

I tried a little research...couldnt find much quickly, was that Chesty Pullers gang being pulled off the beach and when the only medal of honor winner in the USCG, Douglas Munro, killed?

Yep, it was when Puller's unit, I think it was a battalion, landed up the coast and found more Japanese than they expected and could handle.

Just did some reading on Wikipedia. I THINK that is the battle where Munro was killed. Wikipedia mentions the confusion of the supporting USN ship and provides two names, Ballard and Monssen.

Found my books. Just had to go look.

Davis's book, "Marine! The Life of Chesty Puller' and "Chesty. The story of Lieutenant General Lewis B. Puller, USMC" by Hoffman each list different ships at the battle. Davis said the ship was the Ballard, which was an AVD, a seaplane tender. However, according to Hoffman, Ballard was not at the battle as was intended but was taking evasive action due to an air raid. Hoffman said the ship was the DD Monssen. Maybe this is why Wikipedia talks about both ships.

I don't know why I thought the ship was the Atlanta. Maybe I read it in another history book. I sure have read enough and have walls full of history books. I have a very distinct memory of the description of the battle from the ship and it's name. This is going to drive me nuts trying to figure this out. I have a biography on Vandengrift but it is an old paper pack that is 50+ years old, yellowing, falling apart, and in storage. My paper back copy of Davis's book is the same age, condition, and storage box but I bought a hard back copy of Davis's book years ago. I can't count the number of time I have read Davis's paper book on Puller. I wore out that book.

But Hoffman and Davis both mention that Munro earned is Medal of Honor at this battle so they agree there.

Later,
Dan

 

[dannc]

That's one heck of a trawler, certainly not a single-hand vessel.

There are pieces of the Yamato in outside display at the Washington Naval Yard. Most people were in awe of the 18.1" main guns of the Yamato--our biggest were 16".

After the war the US Navy did testing on some spare pieces of the Yamato's armor and were surprised their 16" guns had no trouble penetrating it. Looking at the armor which the 16" penetrated shows how much force those rounds had.
...

Glad you brought this up. It was one of the thoughts I had when this discussion got started.

The USS New Jersey has a great You Tube channel that I found, somehow, during the lock down. It has a huge amount of content about the ship but also other ships and quite a bit of technical information, including discussions about the Yamato, Bismark, etc. I have watched quite a bit of their content but no where near it all.

https://www.youtube.com/c/BattleshipNewJersey/featured

I THINK, one of the USS NJ shows went to the Washington Naval Yard, and showed the Yamato armor that was shot by a 16" round. I know I have seen it, but it could have been on another channel.

It might have been on this channel, https://www.youtube.com/user/Drachinifel. This channel is unreal. Many of his shows are 45 minutes or more, and some are an hour or longer. I don't know how the guy does it but he knows his stuff, does good research and produces some really good shows. He could have shown the Yamato armor as well.

It pains me to say it, while the USS North Carolina has it's own YouTube channel, https://www.youtube.com/user/TheBattleshipNC, the USS New Jersey's has more content. I hope the USS NC sees what the USS New Jersey is going with video content and starts producing more.

While not naval specific, The History Guy, https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4sEmXUuWIFlxRIFBRV6VXQ does cover some great history, as he says, that should not be forgotten.

Since we were talking about Munro, here is The History Guy's episode:

If no more history content was added to YouTube, I don't think I could watch all of the history related shows in the next 50 years.

Later,
Dan

 

[RT Firefly]

Greetings,
Mr. d. "...that I found, somehow, during the lock down." Somehow??? Ya. Right. You were surfing just like a lot of us (I'm presuming).


I'm pretty sure it was somewhat similar to looking up a video on...How to adjust your lawn mower, perhaps, and two hours later your watching a 99 year old Jamaican give a lesson on mending fishing nets or the "Origins of Competition Log Rolling in Moldavia." Been there. Done that.

 

[NCheaven]

Savo Island

This discussion thread mentions the Battle Off Savo Island several times. The book, “Last Stand Of The Tin Can Sailors”, an exceptionally good read, details the action hour by hour. A fascinating older book, “The US Navy in World War Two”, a compilation by S.E. Smith, has three chapters on The Battle of Savo Island, one by Adm. Kincaid, one by Adm. Halsey, and one by Adm. Nimitz. Nimitz notes that the crisis of an undiscovered approach by an overpowering Japanese fleet was caused by having two forces under separate commanders in radio silence operating in the same theater, each assuming what the other would do. Halsey chased the feint by the northern Japanese force, Kinkaid and his older, slower battleships chased and mauled the southern Japanese force, and the Japanese Center Force was unopposed in sailing toward the American landing craft, troopships and escort carriers, except for six Fletcher class destroyers and destroyer escorts that stood in the gap. Commander Evans counter attacked without waiting for orders, using torpedoes and 5” guns, and scrambled the Japanese battle line, blowing off the bow of a Japanese cruiser, and raking other Japanese ships, while sometimes being so close to Japanese cruisers that the could not depress their main guns low enough to fire them at Evans on board the Johnston, DD 557. I encourage TF readers to consider those books and other sources, even Wikipedia, about this courageous American victory, especially regarding Medal of Honor recipient Commander Evans, a part Cherokee Native American from Oklahoma.