IJN Yamato - Guide 082 (Extended)

The Yamato class, battleships of the Imperial Japanese Navy, are today's subject.
Next on the list:
-Italia class
-Tsesarevich
-Βασίλισσα Ολγα (Basilissa Olga)
-Nagato class
-Monitor Parnaiba
-G-class destroyer
-HMS Glowworm
-Town class cruisers
-USS Wichita
-Lord Nelson class
-Essex class
-Slava (Pre-dreadnought)
-USS Massachusetts
-Pensacola class
-HIJMS Oyodo
-Riachuelo (NB)
-I-19
-HMS Ark Royal
-ORP Błyskawica
-USS West Virginia
-Amagi Class
-Tosa Class
-Alaska class
-Derfflinger class
-Yorktown class
-Tre Kronor class
-Nelson class
-Gato class
-Admiralen class
-H class (NB)
-Greek 'Monarch' class destroyers
-'Habbakuk' project
-USS Texas
-USS Olympia
-HIJMS Mikasa
-County class
-KMS Tirpitz
-Montana class
-Florida class
-USS Salt Lake City
-Storozhevoy
-Flower class
-USS San Juan
-HMS Sheffield
-USS Johnston
-Dido class
-Hunt class
-HMS Vanguard
-Mogami class
-Almirante Grau
-Surcouf
-Von der Tann
-Massena
-HMCS Magnificent
-HMCS Bonaventure
-HMCS Ontario
-HMCS Quebec
-Lion class BC
-USS Wasp
-HMS Blake
-HMS Romala/Ramola
-South Dakota (1930's)
-SMS Emden
-Väinämöinen and Ilmarinen
-Destroyer Velos
-U.S.S. John R. Craig
-C class
-HMS Caroline
-HMS Hermes
-Iron Duke
-Kronprinz Erzerzorg Rudolph.
-HMS Eagle
-Ise class
-18 inch monitor
-Mogami
-Vanguard
-De Zeven Provinciën
-South American Dreadnoughts
-Fletcher class
-USS Langley
-Kongo class
-Grom class
-St Louis class
-H class special
-All-big-gun designs
-USS Oregon
-Gascogne
-Alsace
-Lyon and Normandie classes
-Leander class
-HMS Ajax
-Project 1047
-O class
-R class
-Battle class
-Daring class
-USS Indianapolis
-Atago/Takao
-Midway class
-Graf Zeppelin
-Bathurst class
-RHS Queen Olga
-HMS Belfast
-Aurora
-Imperator Nikolai I
-USS Helena
-USS Tennesse
-HMNZS New Zealand
-HMS Queen Mary
-USS Marblehead
-New York class
-L-20e
-Abdiel class
-Panserskib (Armoured ship) Rolf Krake
-HMS Victoria
-USS Galena (1862)
-HMS Charybdis
-Eidsvold class
-IJN “Special” DD's
-SMS Emden
-Ships of Battle of Campeche
-USS Texas?
-HMS Tiger
-USS England (DE-635)
-Tashkent
-1934A Class
-HMS Plym (K271)
-Siegfried class
Specials:
-Fire Control Systems
-Protected Cruisers
-Scout Cruisers
-Naval Artillery
-Tirpitz (damage history)
-Treaty Battleship comparison
-Warrior to Pre-dreadnought
-British BC Ammo Handling
-Naval AA Special
-Plan Z
-Drydocks

[@jaybee9269]

I read an article many years ago about the USS Archerfish stalking Shinano with radar: “Captain, your island is moving!”

[@JoseJimenez-sh1yi]

Jay Bee ,”captain look”

[@UnfittingCarbon]

That's no island... that's a ship

[@samuelmatheson9655]

@@JoseJimenez-sh1yi *HIGH SEAS INTENSIFIES*

[@mariebcfhs9491]

@@UnfittingCarbon that's no moon

[@raygiordano1045]

There's an old TV historical series, "The Silent Service" that has an episode on the Archerfish.

[@JH-lo9ut]

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's strange how both Japan and Germany lacked fuel and steel resources and yet built huge steel and fuel guzzling equipment.

[@the_undead]

@@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

[@raygiordano1045]

@@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.

[@the_undead]

@@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

[@the_undead]

Also I didn't say they were good plans I just said they were plans

[@StuieStorm05]

"5 minute guide" You treat this limitation like Japanese treat naval treaties...

[@micfail2]

😆

[@ajlancjc99]

And we approve of such behavior!

[@micfail2]

@@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.

[@micfail2]

@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.

[@TooTallToFly]

@@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.

[@mrz80]

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

[@hokutoulrik7345]

You are technically correct, the best kind of correct.

[@manilajohn0182]

You're mistaken- or rather, the author is. Yamato herself was laid down almost a year after Japan had withdrawn from the naval treaties.

[@mrz80]

@@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. :)

[@manilajohn0182]

@@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...

[@metaknight115]

"No, we are not building battleships armed with 16 inch guns"-The Japanese government

[@ckhawk00]

You forgot the part where the Japanese raised the ship after the Aliens attacked and launched her into space. ;)

[@mbr5742]

YaaaaMaaaaToooo kzbin.info/www/bejne/rWevd56Do86ois0

[@alexius23]

They actual wreck is a tad hard to raise to fight in space.....it’s a shattered hulk

[@Frostfly]

@@alexius23 It's a reference to the 70's anime Star Blazers. (it's terrible, avoid at all costs)

[@WannabeWRX]

@@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.

[@HelyosFR]

@@WannabeWRX I concurr, I highly encourage people to check it out. It's quite the nice Space Opera

[@thebadshave503]

The economics of losing these kind of warships to submarines have GOT to be brutal.

[@lordredlead2336]

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

[@lordredlead2336]

Oh wait...ok I miss read it yes it should be

[@ronaldthompson4989]

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.

[@samiamrg7]

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.

[@stewartmillen7708]

@@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.

[@tnakai1971jp]

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.

[@kabukiwookie]

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....

[@songyani3992]

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

[@6handicap604]

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.

[@hoppish088]

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.

[@bkjeong4302]

@@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.

[@Kwolfx]

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.

[@73Trident]

Exactly, all the supposed fear of their guns and no one even knew how big they were.

[@probablynotabigtoe9407]

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.

[@jemfly1062]

Assuming that the admiral was actually telling the truth to the interrogators, of course ...

[@tyree9055]

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.

[@bkjeong4302]

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.

[@matthewrobinson4323]

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!".

[@1Korlash]

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.)

[@Drachinifel]

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.

[@1Korlash]

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!

[@rodofiron100]

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.

[@1Korlash]

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.

[@daviddalton9214]

1Korlash It still sank.

[@alexius23]

When the Yamato was sunk in the Ten-Go Operation only 10 planes were shot down by the wretched AAA suite

[@Absolut531kmh]

The explosion of yamato was said to Destroyed a numerous of aircraft

[@stewartmillen7708]

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).

[@alexius23]

@@stewartmillen7708 in the Japanese film on the sinking of the Yamato so many USN planes are shown to being shot down.....

[@ln7929]

@@alexius23 and in inglorious bastard Hitler dies

[@jskypercussion]

I heard it was around 80 planes. Not 10.

[@revengefullobster4524]

This was an extremely good video. Very informative. Thanks for taking the time to post it. I'm subbing, keep em coming mate!

[@rogerhinman5427]

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.

[@Drachinifel]

Roger Hinman sure I'll add it to the list

[@barleysixseventwo6665]

Time traveler: *Leaks true dimensions of the Yamato* Tillman Battleships: My time is Now!

[@Colt45hatchback]

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

[@Colt45hatchback]

@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 😁😂

[@Colt45hatchback]

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

[@Colt45hatchback]

@Bjorn the overly, excessively enslaved singaporean yeah that'd be great, a full spread of 1200 long Lance's 😂 enemy fleet go bye bye 😂😂😂

[@aussiejezza]

G3s and N3s you what mate?

[@73Trident]

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.

[@RemoteViewr1]

Excellent anti retrospective point. Very well put.

[@cerviche101]

Awesome work, as always, looking forward to the next one :)

[@MrBothandNether]

o7 to the Gambier Bay, Each salvo of those massive shells were like an unstoppable swarm of Kamikazes.

[@thunderwazp7653]

This video has answered many of the questions I had about the ships, thanks 😁

[@Digmen1]

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.

[@Drachinifel]

A number of naval histories cover the strategic thinking behind them, 'Kaigun' provides the most detailed explanation of the thinking though.

[@alexius23]

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....

[@josephhardwicke6344]

was the Alaska actually classed as a cruiser?

[@alexius23]

@@josephhardwicke6344 there has been a lot of debate on this topic....the USN defined it as a cruiser...

[@Shorjok]

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.

[@davidsachs4883]

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

[@bkjeong4302]

David Sachs Who the hell used that gun?

[@bkjeong4302]

@@kms_scharnhorst Sucks for them.

[@jerrydeanswanson79]

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.

[@Otokichi786]

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?"

[@IntelCorei-KProcessor-go2to]

Drachinifel mate... "Icy" (Ise) and "Hi-yung-ger" (Hyūga) lmao Your videos are always top notch otherwise!

[@seanbigay1042]

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 ...

[@emintey]

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.

[@francesconicoletti2547]

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.

[@Zaluskowsky]

I heard about Japanese Torpedo Boats in the North Sea though Grin.

[@TheRogueLeader]

5:24 my answer to that question is someone would have tried to dust off one of the "Tillman Designs"

[@themythicalfire809]

70 years later there will be a video about railgun on this channel

[@janis317]

More like 150 years, Railguns are having some serious teething problems.

[@TheTrueAdept]

No, it is likely to see them within 30 years at most and the teething problems are over-inflated.

[@IDK_Mr.M]

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.

[@MrBurgerphone1014]

@@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.

[@GreyWolfLeaderTW]

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.

[@metaknight115]

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?

[@bkjeong4302]

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.

[@michaelcuff5780]

Alot is also being learned about these ships when they do documentarys about them with those little subs with cameras and lighting. I saw a coule on u tube about these 2 ships.

[@petman515]

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.

[@davidcritchley3509]

First time I've seen photos of Shinano. And is that a genuine photo, taken from the sub, of her sinking?

[@alexius23]

Taken before being sunk. In fact taken by Japanese sailors....strictly against the rules

[@dcviper985]

The Yamato and JMSDF museums in Kure are super cool. The Yamato Museum even has a small exhibit on Space Battleship Yamato.

[@barrybend7189]

Well duh the Yamato is Japan's Starship Enterprise.

[@tyree9055]

That and Yamato is a Japanese province, prefecture or something like that, which is special to them. They do consider themselves the "Yamato people" supposedly.

[@CaptainSpadaro]

The A-150 sounds like some of the later ideas floated for the H-class in Germany (you know, the monster with 20-inch guns and a displacement of over 100,000 tons).

[@jdranetz]

American ships limited by Panama Canal width. IJN had no such limits to design.

[@markrowland1366]

Good thinking but it's draft was limited by the ports where the class would be fitted out.

[@bkjeong4302]

Limited by dockyard size and port capacity.

[@nathanokun8801]

The US had its 18"/47 Mark "A" gun, the restored 18"/48 Mk 1 built just prior to the Washington Naval Treaty of 1923 that stopped the post-WWI naval arms race in its tracks (the 18" Mk 1 had been relined down to 16" and had a barrel extension screwed onto its end to become the 16"/56 High-Velocity Experimental Gun and eventually was put into storage at the Naval Proving Ground, Dahlgren, Virginia) put back into test status during WWII using 3850-lb Type B-1 AP shells, enlarged 2700-lb 16" Mk 8 AP shells, against armor and 3300-lb Target shells for ballistic ranging tests. (The original 18" projectiles were enlarged 2900-lb versions of the 2110-lb 16" Mk 3 "Midvale Unbreakable" AP shell used by the USS COLORADO and it sisters when commissioned in the mid-1920's.) If the US had found out about the 18.1" (46cm) gun on YAMATO, most of the MONTANA Class design and possibly the last IOWAs would have had 18" guns (as in World of Warships now) with the 16"/56 gun immediately pulled out of storage and becoming an earlier version of the Mk "A" gun and testing would have begun in the late 1930's so that two-gun 18" turrets might replace the three-gun 16". In addition, an enlarged MONTANA would have been designed at once to have three-gun 18" turrets, thicker armor, and perhaps the only restriction being that it fit through the Panama Canal (barely) -- even the last might be dropped as the ships would only have to sail from any East-coast shipyard once to get into and stay in the Pacific to fight Japan (Germany was not a major US problem as far as battleships was concerned). If the Panama Canal restriction was forced, the ship width would be the same as IOWA due to this, but the length and draft could be somewhat greater. Since, as with the 16"/50 on IOWA, new lightweight 18"/45-50 guns could be made, it is not impossible that three-gun 18" turrets could be shoehorned into MONTANA and IOWA with only some relatively minor design changes. This would be examined in great haste! Note that an 80,00-ton battleship with FIFTEEN (15) 18" Mk 1 guns in five 3-gun turrets, with 16" belt armor, 18" turret face armor, 5" deck armor, and the same speed as COLORADO, and that COULD fit through the Panama Canal was designed during the same pre-Washington Treaty time due to the insistence of Congress, who called it "USS SKEERED O'NUTHIN'".

[@jimtalbott9535]

Can you imagine what we'd have built during/after the war, had we in the USA KNOWN about these specs? 80,000 tons displacement, quad-turret 20in guns, TWICE PANAMAX, with 50 DEEP FRYERS! 'MURICA!

[@steventoby3768]

Great video, including photos new to me. Good part about the strategy of much more powerful battleships being triggered by the Washington Treaty, I didn't know that. One neat thing that's missing is that the ship became almost a legend after the war. There is a very large model that requird its own building -- I think it might be at a scale of 1:10? It's a popular tourist attraction to this day, and if my memory of the scale is right, it's about 90 feet long. Anyone going to Japan should visit it as well as the Mikasa. That's the psychology of the "StarCruiser Yamato" anime episodes mentioned in the comments. Possibly a "Neo-militant" movement in Japan resembling the neo-Nazis in Germany? Or maybe just a bunch of naval buffs a little like us?

[@bkjeong4302]

Japan never really stopped being Imperial Japan.

[@janis317]

The Allies knew just by analyzing her length and beam that Yamato's characteristics were B.S. The US Navy estimated her displacement at a minimum of 55.000 long tonnes and this is what the Montana class was planned around. I'd also like to know the source material for the deck armor. The best I have seen is a deck of 6.7" thick. A deck of 8 inches would have put the ship at well over 70,000 tonnes displacement.

[@Drachinifel]

Deck armour estimates vary wildly, between 7 and 9 inches. The source I used (in hard copy) can be seen here: books.google.co.uk/books?id=IJbYDgAAQBAJ&lpg=PA84&dq=yamato%20deck%20armour&pg=PA84#v=onepage&q=yamato%20deck%20armour&f=false This cross section is reproduced in a number of books and appears to show an 8 inch thick main deck with just over 9 inches on the sloped outer edges.

[@ddland45]

Kind of funny how I always hear about how "inferior" the Japanese steel was compared to British, German and American ships, but wait, modern Prince of Wales sunk by four bombs and torpedoes? Bismarck's hull penetrated by a 14inc shell from Prince of Wales that forced her run for Brest for repairs? Iowa class BB's relegated to Essex class carrier escort and not even risked in ship to ship battle? Musashi sunk....17 bombs (not counting the concussion of near misses) and around 20 torpedo hits? Inferior???

[@bkjeong4302]

Steel quality was bad on the Yamatos, but the armour layout was quite good (except for the torpedo defence), and there was enough armour to make them stupidly tough. Basically, good design trumping material weakness. As for the Iowas, they were relegated to carrier escort because carriers rendered all battleships obsolete, not because they would be bad at surface action. The Iowas were obsolete upon launch just like the Yamato’s.

[@manilajohn0182]

@@bkjeong4302 The U.S. Naval Proving Ground regarded Japanese armor as only slightly inferior to that of the U.S. Navy. In the case of the Yamato's, this was more than offset by the thick armor protection of the class. In contrast, Britain's Armour Technical Committee regarded Japanese heavy armor as superior to all foreign types of armor. Just sayin.

[@manilajohn0182]

Japanese armor was only slightly inferior to U.S. armor, according to the U.S. Naval Proving Ground (Britain's Armour Technical Committee regarded Japanese heavy armor as superior to all foreign armors). Analysis of a segment of Shinano's armor (set aside when the ship was converted to a carrier) was the source of their conclusion. It's fairly well known that the piece in question has a large hole where a U.S. 16" .50 cal. shell passed through it. Less well known however, is the fact that the gun which fired the shell was only 400 'feet' away from the armor piece- and that the piece lacked the support of a turret to resist the impact. Additional analysis led the USNPG to conclude that the faceplates of the Yamato class could not be penetrated at any combat range by the 16" .50 cal. gun. The sober truth is that the Yamato's far outclassed the Iowas in terms of armor protection.

[@Gromit801]

Yamato and Musashi we’re both on their way down long before the aircraft finished dropping ordinance. A lot of young fliers just weren’t going to take their loads back. So they had a grand old time having target practice until they were called off when it became a joke to continue. So the claim that it took x-number of bombs and torps to sink them is a fallacy.

[@floydlooney6837]

1:41 wow, nice image

[@Indoor_Carrot]

Fun fact (not watched the vid yet so it may be mentioned) her guns were so powerful they could fire shells beyond the horizon. The capt. could see up to about 20km from the citadel and the shells had an effective firing range of 24km and a maximum firing range of 46km. Her shells had a 4ft calibre. Fucking terrifying

[@bkjeong4302]

Plenty of battleships could shoot behind the horizon. The issue was that none of them (not even the Iowas) could actually hit reliably at such ranges.

[@winlee4884]

One of the major design flaws of the Yamato class was the joint where the upper and lower armored belts met, it would fail under sheering stress since it was stiff and could not absorb as much shock from torpedoes. This weakness was seen when Yamato was attacked by a number of torpedoes from USS Skate on December 25, 1943 and a single hit badly damaged her and allowed over 3,000 tons of water to flood the rear turret’s upper magazine.

[@bkjeong4302]

That was the torpedo protection flaw mentioned in the video…

[@ps2hacker]

The Iowa class was the biggest that the US was ever going to build. The US Navy has a size limit imposed by the width of the locks of the Panama Canal. And the Iowa's were the absolute biggest things they could get through there, by a matter of a few inches. The Japanese had no such constraints.

[@TheBelrick]

Hmmm Montana class which were actually laid down??

[@michalgrochu]

@@TheBelrick Actually not a single keel of the Montana-class BB was ever laid down. There were advanced plans (ilcluding blueprints of various instalations and detailed armor schemes), but they haven't started the actual construction of any Montana-class BBs.

[@TheBelrick]

@@michalgrochu Yep my mistake

[@andresmartinezramos7513]

Today, their largest ships dont even fit into the now enlarged cannal. They would have surely developed and deployed larger ships if they had needed it.

[@davidspurlock3836]

Great video! Can you do a review of the USS Torsk WW II Submarine. Thanks😀

[@winlee4884]

Some sources say that the 4th member of the Yamato class was going to be named “Kii”

[@albertbondoc3931]

Is it me or is someone typing in the background?

[@Drachinifel]

Albert Bondoc damn, that made it in? Someone was typing in the next room during recording. Didn't think it would carry.

[@albertbondoc3931]

Drachinifel nah it’s fine I think it only lasted half the video.

[@FunSingle]

When able, would you review the USS Minneapolis, CA-36? She received 16 or 17 battle stars and was in most major Pacific engagements. Damaged at Tassafaronga November 30,1942, the "Fighting Minnie" was thought sunk by the IJN, but was saved by her crew and back in action less than a year later.

[@Drachinifel]

Sure

[@jotabe1984]

it is quite unfair to call the "design flaws" on Yamato. 1) The lack of more efficient damage control crew its not to blame the ship... for Shure it is the Imperial Japanese Navy, but not the ship itself. Many USA ships with the same level of damage control as the Japanese had would have sink, including several carriers and battleships. The USA advantage gets more overwhelming when taking the far superior shipyard capabilities to restore ships into battle compared with the Japanese 2) No ship on earth could have withstand the damage Musashi (and Yamato) take, there where just too many planes with too many bombs and torps. Hell, i have serious doubt a modern naval force could take such a massive attack of 200+ aircraft attacking all at once

[@Drachinifel]

The design flaws in the ships complicated any damage control efforts made. Sure the IJN was behind in this respect but even so the ships would have survived longer without the issues. Musashi wouldn't survive the torpedo attack, but a better AA battery would have kept it alive longer and/or inflicted more casualties.

[@piotrd.4850]

@@Drachinifel no battleship in a world would handle sustained torpedo attack. NONE. Late Type 91 torpedoes would deal with it easily enough. Organisational and mental failures of IJN don't change fact that Yamato-class were absolute top of the line for their time and formidable opponents, with subtle technical differences inherent to tech level of nation that built it. True, some other ships had - syntetically - some advantages. Also, thinkness is not everything - mass alone and associated inertia. The only things ships REALLY lacked were German crew and American captian. Remember, that any of them - Yamato or Musashi - took actually larger beating than american fleet in Pearl Harbor COMBINED.

[@bobanppvc]

@@piotrd.4850 you are wrong i think.Bismarck took serious pounding for hours and people say was scutlled by crew.Yamato sunk too fast

[@a.m.armstrong8354]

@@bobanppvc Superficially true,in 1941 only battleships engaged each other in open seas.By '42,naval aviation could deliver more ordinance.Also,conditions in the Atlantic differed from the Pacific,quality of torpedoes by 1944 added greater destructiveness&dive bombing was much heavier,therefore I concur with the earlier comments that barring a nuclear strike,no fighting vessels could sustain greater punishment than these Yamato class monsters.This adds to the aura they retain to this day.

[@bkjeong4302]

@@bobanppvc Bismarck actually was taken out of the fight much faster (less than an hour); she just took a long time to sink after being rendered dead in the water, while Yamato was operational for most of her sinking.

[@Ivellios23]

And the sad thing is, in your Battle of Samar video, you left the impression Gambier Bay was sunk by cruisers.

[@bkjeong4302]

We’re still not sure exactly which Japanese ship sank Gambier Bay, besides the fact it wasn’t Kongo as long assumed. The crippling hit to Johnston’s bridge definitely came from Yamato, though.

[@Ivellios23]

@@bkjeong4302 Well, I guess unless she's discovered and analyzed like Choukai and others... we'll never really know.

[@scootergeorge9576]

Is it true that a bomb hit destroyed of disabled the pumps and/or piping to counterflood to compensate for torpedo hits?

[@davidvavra9113]

A one class Tillman!

[@ericamborsky3230]

I hope in an alternate timeline the Musashi does not get rebuilt and used as a training ship for teenagers and then proceed to suffer from a mutiny of a very mysterious nature and go on a rampage, sinking or crippling numerous modern warships before finally being stopped by Hiei, Graf Spee, a modern warship and three Kagero class destroyers before it can attack a city.

[@danr5105]

I wonder why the 18.1 antiaircraft shell was so damaging to the gun barrel?

[@joecurtis3207]

Have you done anything with the WWII Submarine Pollack?

[@bkjeong4302]

The ship that always gets mentioned as an example of fighting the last war....even though all WWII-era battleships qualify for that description. Not saying this monster ever made sense (she shouldn’t have been built), but it’s funny how Japan gets singled out when everyone else was making the exact same mistake.

[@piotrd.4850]

They HAD sense - just needed to be used as intended!

[@bkjeong4302]

@@piotrd.4850 They couldn't be used as intended, though this applies to any WWII battleship class.

[@kebabsvein1]

8:06 you got mail

[@GT-he4jt]

It technically a 15 minute to Dr to the warships

[@TheRealGraylocke]

USS Indiana, USS Indianapolis, and the Julio Cesare if you would, please.

[@vikkimcdonough6153]

9:36 - Ironically, if _Yamato_ and co. had been used more aggressively at Midway, instead of holding them back in fear of the carriers, they could've quite possibly _massacred_ the American carriers.

[@bkjeong4302]

No, they couldn’t have. Please explain how the hell they were even going to get close enough.

[@vikkimcdonough6153]

​@@bkjeong4302 Two possibilities: a night attack (remember, the USN didn't have night-carrier-strike capability at the time of Midway), or just charging the carriers down and taking advantage of the U.S. essentially lacking a useable torpedo bomber at this stage in the war (with the TBD being both hopelessly obsolete by Midway and equipped with torpedoes that rarely worked) and mid-1942 carrier-based dive bombers being almost completely ineffective at disabling fast, maneuvering capital ships (out of all the [relatively-few] instances in WWII of a battleship or battlecruiser being sunk or crippled by aerial attack _without_ the use of torpedoes, _every single one_ involved either a ship that was at anchor _[Marat,_ _Oktyabrskaya Revolutsiya,_ _Arizona,_ _Tirpitz,_ _Haruna,_ _Ise,_ _Hyūga],_ a ship that was already unmaneuverable due to prior battle damage _[Hiei],_ or a ship being hit by a Fritz X guided bomb _[Roma,_ _Warspite],_ and none of these circumstances would've been applicable at Midway).

[@bkjeong4302]

@@vikkimcdonough6153 You're completely ignoring the single biggest problem for the Japanese: the Americans can very easily evade them without even being found again.

[@vikkimcdonough6153]

@@bkjeong4302 If that were the case then no American ship would've ever been lost to Japanese surface attack, which is patently ludicrous.

[@bkjeong4302]

@@vikkimcdonough6153 Then explain how the American aircraft carriers, WHICH HAVE NO NEED TO GO ANYWHERE NEAR THE JAPANESE SHIPS TO FIGHT THE JAPANESE SHIPS, could be found and sunk without the Japanese using aircraft carriers of their own (because those are sunk). Aircraft carriers are not like other ships. They don’t have to go anywhere near the enemy to attack the enemy, so their entire doctrine is focused on just not getting close enough for enemy surface ships ti fire on them or launch torpedoes at them. And unless you’re talking about the small, slow CVEs (like at Samar, in case you try to use that as an example), they’re also fast enough to just get out of the way if Japanese surface ships try to chase them down-not that they can even try, because good luck finding an aircraft carrier from a few hundred miles away without sending up aircraft of your own.

[@tathagatabhattacharya5911]

Hmm! Type 3 anti aircraft shells... Looks like they were tailor made for swordfish torpedo bombers with their fabric body

[@richardmeyeroff7397]

Are you planning to do a review of the proposed USS Montana class?

[@TSODInc]

The image of the shinano, is not a carrier but a Submarine!

[@alexvisser5913]

Best battleship in wows

[@zniloserkrf5790]

I'm wondering about the construction/manufacturing of the 18.1 inch guns. Several times you've mentioned the lead time needed to build early 20th century naval artillery, so it seems likely that 18.1 inch guns would take a fair bit of time. It's also likely that information pertaining to these guns is part of the destroyed information.

[@dragonsthorn3245]

20in guns and larger than the Yamato class? Jesus fucking christ, I kinda wish they had managed to build them. Just to see how absolutely massive they were.

[@bkjeong4302]

Dragons Thorn The Yamatos themselves were supposed to be upgraded to three twin 20” (though in reality this would have made them *less* capable since the the original 3x3 18.1” gun layout could already penetrate all deck and belt armour ever used on a warship, simply by virtue of sheer size and momentum from the shells)

[@thomasconrow5980]

Larger displacement, not bigger displacement.

[@russg1801]

Musashi wasn't 'sank" it was SUNK!

[@jezzaboi2168]

"Sinked"

[@EB_110]

Why do you say it have poor torpedo protection if it was need até least 10 torpedos to sunk her?

[@Drachinifel]

It was hit by 10 torpedoes in the battle where it was sunk, but not all of them were needed to sink the ship. Additionaly, a number of amidships hits had visible effects on her stability, whereas similar hits to ships with better torpedo protection, like Bismarck, did not manifestly affect the ships operation.

[@EB_110]

@@Drachinifel I see your point, but the torpedoes used against Bismarck were very inferior with only 388lb of TNT, while the ones used against Yamato had 432.5lb of Torpex. But if you compare with the Prince of Wales that face a equally powerfull torpedo, it only took 4 torpedoes to sink. So I don't think it was poor, maybe above engeneers spectative.

[@Drachinifel]

@@EB_110 with Prince of Wales, again the amidship hits did relatively little damage, the main blow being the hit on the stern that caused a propeller shaft to open a flood path into the engine rooms.

[@scottw550]

Some people say "Yamato", some people say "Yomahto".

[@richardletaw4068]

Why do so many historians continue to describe the Bismarck as “the largest battleship ever made”?

[@kobeh6185]

Alone she could take any battleship in existence, but it's strange to me that the japanese thought this was ever going to happen or be in a situation where she was particularly useful

[@francesconicoletti2547]

Manilla Ice . A line of battle of 5 Yamato’s was designed to stand against the American or British pacific fleet in a battleship on battleship engagement. By the time the building program was two fifths complete the plan was obsolete. Japan had helped make it so with a Pearl Harbour, but Midway and Coral Sea helped. Technology can change quickly even in the past.

[@bkjeong4302]

That literally applies to every battleship built in WWII. The entire big-gun concept was obsolete at that point. And I would give an Iowa a slightly better than 50% chance at beating one of the two, though it’s still going to be a very risky fight and even the winner will end up damaged. Edit: not that this matters, because Iowa is another BB built after she became obsolete.

[@leftcoaster67]

Most Admirals in the late 30's early 40's were Battleship Admirals. They foresaw a large capital ship battle as the key to victory. Toranto and Pearl Harbour changed all that.

[@tyree9055]

@@bkjeong4302 The thing you're missing though is the Yamato's guns outranged the Iowa's 16" guns, so theoretically the Yamato could hit first. I doubt it though, since American gunnery radar was superior but who knows...

[@bkjeong4302]

@@tyree9055 In reality neither had a notable range advantage over the other. Even Iowa couldn't actually hit things reliably at long range as often claimed; even radar fire control isn't THAT good, as born out by live-fire tests done in 1944 showing hit rates of less than 3% against an Iowa-sized target at 30,000 yards or more (incidentally, this also renders the superheavy shell pointless, because the 16"/50 gun required a range well over 30,000 yards to get the plunging trajectories the superheavy shell was intended for and you're not going to be hitting much at that range). So in a long-range gunnery duel neither of them would actually land enough hits to inflict significant damage. And neither of them have enough armour to defend against the other's guns at close range (or at long range for that matter). So it's going to be a contest of mobility, where Iowa has the advantage, but that's a far less definite advantage than offensive/defensive capability, hence me considering this matchup slightly in favour of Iowa but mostly uncertain. Basically a fight between these two would end up with them missing most of their shots and filling to do meaningful damage to each other at long range, or them brutally eviscerating each other at close quarters without any ability to withstand each other's blows.

[@Tuxon86]

Too bad it was sunk. Her guns would’ve been more effective against Godzilla then the Takao’s gun

[@scottyfox6376]

I'm thinking that World of Warships should create these & other countries advanced Battleship designs that were conceived but never built in WW2.

[@mayuri4184]

Hoteru ja arimasen! Sorry.

[@glorioustigereye]

At least Yamato got its own anime opening theme

[@MrDavePed]

The USS Johnston was the tougher ship. ..

[@musanix1212]

>HIJMS sorry but no Yamato has nothing to see with the royal navy that's an insult to the japanese navy at this point

[@kalebross6033]

We call the ships IJN not HIJMS😂 IJN Yamato

[@kalebross6033]

agree with you 100%

[@musanix1212]

+Kaleb Ross man That's disrespectful for Japan this guy is literally tagging a big «Property of the queen» on Yamato. Insering «HIJMS» as prefix for such a glorious ship is clearly a big middle finger for the japanese

[@kalebross6033]

😂😂😂

[@DeutscheLoLGuides]

just where do you get the queen into that? While I think IJN is "catchier" (for lack of a better term), "His Imperial Japanese Majesty's Ship(s)" is as perfect a prefix as any (that was given by foreigners). I mean, after all it has the same meaning as the royal navies HMS or the imperial german SMS. Difference being only that those are in the actual language of the countries those ships belonged to. And at that point, both are equally insulting, because both prefixes are in english... But I think to properly insult them, you should actually translate those names... like "HIJMS Great Harmony" or something

[@randomguy-tg7ok]

The Mogamis were rearmed with 18in guns?

[@fyorbane]

8" guns.

[@randomguy-tg7ok]

6:51, I think.

[@avragetrinidadian3787]

Will you guys ever do the Crown Colony-class?

[@Drachinifel]

Eventually :)

[@janis317]

What source are you using for deck armor? All the sources I have seen list it as 6.7 inches

[@Drachinifel]

Deck armour estimates vary wildly, between 7 and 9 inches. The source I used (in hard copy) can be seen here: books.google.co.uk/books?id=IJbYDgAAQBAJ&lpg=PA84&dq=yamato%20deck%20armour&pg=PA84#v=onepage&q=yamato%20deck%20armour&f=false This cross section is reproduced in a number of books and appears to show an 8 inch thick main deck with just over 9 inches on the sloped outer edges.

[@fyorbane]

I've got it as 9.1" [on the slopes] and 7.9" on the flat. Ref: All the world's battleships, 1906 the the present by Ian Sturton.

[@kefkaZZZ]

4:12 Hey my Evangelion Nerds! 😃 Did this naming convention influence the Eva being units 01, 02, and 03?

[@FltCaptAlan]

@kefkaZZZ I thought the main units were 00 (Rei's), 01 (Shinji's), and 02 (Auska's). Wasn't 04 the one that was lost in the US and 03 was the one that was taken over by the angles. Talking about the original NGE, not the 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, and 3.0+1.0

[@shingshongshamalama]

All that work and time, all that steel and fuel, and she got bullied by a couple of DDEs and ran away crying.

[@bkjeong4302]

A VERY distorted view of Samar.

[@shenanigansandstuff1114]

milord, i have a cunning plan.

[@shoootme]

A plan was so cunning you could stick a tail on it and call it Naruto?

[@Warhaawk]

As cunning as a fox who’s just been appointed Professor of Cunning at Oxford University?

[@wrayday7149]

Does it involve a flag?

[@jarvisfamily3837]

Is it so cunning that you could put a tail on it and call it a weasel?

[@ancilodon]

Would you recognize a cunning plan if it painted itself purple, danced atop a harpsichord and sang "Clever Plans are Here Again"?

[@nathanokun8801]

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]

That was corrected on Yamato after the Skate torpedo when the repairs were done at Kure.

[@vlad78th]

@@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.

[@canmufu3923]

@@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.

[@jonnyj.]

Wow, that was a great read. How do you know so much? I assume you're an engineer of some sort

[@nathanokun8801]

@@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

[@metaknight115]

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.

[@stanklepoot]

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."

[@danh8302]

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.

[@danh8302]

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.

[@danh8302]

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.

[@tomhath8413]

@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.

[@walterdwyer3785]

stayros stamelos o;

[@alexandercurtis4427]

Yamato: Boat of steel Johnston: Balls of steel

[@christophpoll784]

Bismarck: 2000 men and 50000 Tons of steel 🤘

[@captainseyepatch3879]

@@christophpoll784 So.... Less then the Yamato.

[@samiamrg7]

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.

[@DrThunder88]

Yamato: "No battleship can drive me from the field." Johnson: "I am no battleship."

[@killme7820]

@@christophpoll784 biplane 👌👌👌👌👌

[@MakeMeThinkAgain]

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.

[@DeutscheLoLGuides]

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.

[@bkjeong4302]

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.

[@inouelenhatduy]

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

[@kyle857]

They were going to arrive next Tuesday.

[@trailmixup8843]

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

[@josephwubboldiii9284]

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

[@josephwubboldiii9284]

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]

@@josephwubboldiii9284, Your comments have stimulated my interest in Coast Guard Cutters Captain Joe. Time to get educated, Thank you

[@josephwubboldiii9284]

@@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

[@inouelenhatduy]

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

[@josephwubboldiii9284]

@@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

[@LikeUntoBuddha]

It sounds crazy but the walls they built around these ships to hide them was made of very large bamboo.

[@kabukiwookie]

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]

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.

[@kabukiwookie]

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.

[@shatterfox5198]

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.

[@russg1801]

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.

[@janis317]

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.

[@ethangavrilmoreno8479]

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 😄

[@fernandomarques5166]

Uchuu Senkan YA-MA-TO! Sorry I had to. Its too epic.

[@earli3693]

I don't like the British accent and the missed pronounced wording. Please do some research before recording, and get it right!

[@dsloop3907]

@@earli3693 *mispronounced*-- Please do upgrade your grammar skills before belittling others.

[@danieldunlap4077]

@@earli3693 you don't like the accent of a guy from Great Britain??? Would you like him to a Japanese accent instead?

[@micfail2]

@@dsloop3907 😆

[@apieceofdirt4681]

@@earli3693 Learn how to spell before you bitch about others.

[@jasonc5781]

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.

[@daszveroboy]

Luckily drach's subscribers will know which ships he's referring to

[@micfail2]

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.

[@ronaldthompson4989]

@@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

[@bigbigmurphy]

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 ……..

[@chrisbilham7587]

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.

[@metaknight115]

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

[@bkjeong4302]

@@metaknight115 Well, Intrepid deserves much of the credit for killing Musashi and she’s still around.

[@nathanokun8801]

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.

[@micfail2]

Damn, are you a naval engineer? If not, you should be

[@riturajseal6945]

@@micfail2 how is the scope of job in naval engineering?