Was the Yamato class really shell proof?

[spatzthecat]

Hi

See this American report of test shots against a section of main turret armour from the incomplete third Shinano battleship post war.

See...

http://www.navweaps.com/index_tech/tech-040.htm

What range did they do the two tests at? I think I have missed it.

I think it was almsot point blank, but I am not sure!.

How close would you have to get to do the damage or would you go for long range shooting to penetrate the main eeck armour?

There is a photo of the armour plate used on Flickr.com, just type in Yamato armour.

Yours Spatz

[martinexsquaddie]

battleships were really kinda of pointless way before ww2 .
too valuable to risk losing and against aircraft to vulnerable

[Migs]

Wouldn't the shockwave just take out the people inside the turret?

[deagle]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamato_Class

[Violet Fashion by Mindy]

battleships were really kinda of pointless way before ww2 .
too valuable to risk losing and against aircraft to vulnerable

Only 3 battleships and 1 battlecruiser were sunk outright in WW2 by airpower and in both cases the ships were without adequate support from both destroyer screens and air support.

4 ships sunk. Out of how many that served in WW2?

[Mordoror]

Only 3 battleships and 1 battlecruiser

Hu ???

far from the real number

Pearl Harbor alone is four battleship casualties

Prince of Wales and Repulse were also sunk by airpower (that ad one battleship and one battlecruiser)

And i am not talking about Tarentum operation or what occured on the Atlantic or Mediteranean front ....

[Violet Fashion by Mindy]

3 Battleships and 1 Battlecruiser were sunk by aircraft in the open sea when the battleships were under steam and had a chance to defend themselves.

Yamato, Musashi, Prince of Wales and Repulse.

Yamato and Musashi had inferior damage control, Prince of Wales and Repulse lacked any semblance of air cover and Repulse was an obsolete WW1 Battlecruiser.

The only other battleship sunk due to direct air attack was the Roma which was sunk after the Italian surrender when sailing to an Allied port so the effectivness of any defences is questionable.

[Mordoror]

if we limitate to the sunken ships in open sea then i agree with you

[I can't think of a name]

3 Battleships and 1 Battlecruiser were sunk by aircraft in the open sea when the battleships were under steam and had a chance to defend themselves.

Yamato, Musashi, Prince of Wales and Repulse.

Yamato and Musashi had inferior damage control, Prince of Wales and Repulse lacked any semblance of air cover and Repulse was an obsolete WW1 Battlecruiser.

The only other battleship sunk due to direct air attack was the Roma which was sunk after the Italian surrender when sailing to an Allied port so the effectivness of any defences is questionable.

Bizmark. Gneisanau. Plenty of Japanese ships off Samar.

[Herman the II]

Bizmark. Gneisanau. Plenty of Japanese ships off Samar.

None of the above were sunk by aircrafts... (and its Bismark and Gneisenau)

[Mordoror]

The Tirpitz was sunk by air bombing but it was not in open waters

and the RAF needed 6t bombs "primitive bunker busters style"

[TheKiwi]

The Yamato class BB's suffered from severly defficient quality control with their armour. Post war tests showed that some pieces were indeed proof against almost anything that could be thrown at it. But almost identical pieces that would sit right next to the invulnerable piece could be penetrated by 12" gunfire.

Japanese steel quality was very (excuse the expression) hit and miss.

[Violet Fashion by Mindy]

I read somewhere that due to the poor quality of Japanese steel they simply through more of it on the boat. Apparently they could have saved nearly 20,000 tonnes of weight if their steel quality was on par with the Germans.

[Violet Fashion by Mindy]

The problem with the battleships of WW2 is that nobody really knew how to use them effectively. The Germans had the right idea but they never concentrated them as a single force. The sorties of the Kriegsmarine battleships caused mayhem and forced the Royal Navy to expend huge amounts of resources in hunting them down.

Japanese battleships spent more time in port then anything. Likewise the Italians. Though to to be fair to the Italians the Regia Marina did peform bloody well during the 2nd World War and prevented the Royal Navy from sending assetts to the Pacific.

Sending capital ships out on sortie as single units was kinda stupid. Concentration of force is what should have been the order of the day.

[TheKiwi]

...

Japanese battleships spent more time in port then anything. Likewise the Italians. Though to to be fair to the Italians the Regia Marina did peform bloody well during the 2nd World War and prevented the Royal Navy from sending assetts to the Pacific.



The main thing stopping the RN from sending ships to the Pacific (and in particular after the fall of Singapore) was their inability to supply them with food, fuel and ammunition. Even when the British Pacific Fleet was put together, it could spend less than half the time on station that a US Task Force could before it had to retire for refueling/rearming.

The Japanese BB fleet spent time in port, not because they didn't want to use them, but because they couldn't fuel them. This is why so many of their ships finished the war in places like Singapore and the DEI where at least there was fuel.

The Germans only committed their BB's in dribs and drabs because they only ever had them available in those quantities. Read Mahan's concept of a "Fleet in Being" for ther strategy. If they'd gathered them together in one big fleet and sent it out into the Atlantic, the RN could have put together a fleet at least twice the size and would have sunk it regardless of cost to them. After all, if the entire German BB fleet is at 3000 feet below sea level, it doesn't really matter if you only have 4 or 5 fully functional BB left.

[Violet Fashion by Mindy]

But the key point is would the losses the RN no doubt would have suffered at the hands of Bismark, Tirpitz, Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, Prinze Eugen and Hipper. Add the remaining pocket battleships and the Royal Navy would have suffered some serious losses. Losses that could not have maintained supremacy in Europe.

[TheKiwi]

But the key point is would the losses the RN no doubt would have suffered at the hands of Bismark, Tirpitz, Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, Prinze Eugen and Hipper. Add the remaining pocket battleships and the Royal Navy would have suffered some serious losses. Losses that could not have maintained supremacy in Europe.

Um, if all the KM battleships were at the bottom of the Atlantic, who is challenging for supremacy?

Oh, and the Pocket BB's would never have run in a fleet with the rest, their engines were too slow to keep up.

Finally there's only a very small window of opportunity during which this theoretical German fleet can take to the sea without facing both the RN and the US Atlantic Fleet (The Tirpitz wasn't commissioned until late Feb 1941).

[largewar]

The Tirpitz was sunk by air bombing but it was not in open waters

and the RAF needed 6t bombs "primitive bunker busters style"

Also called Deep Penetration Bombs http://www.bismarck-class.dk/tirpitz/miscellaneous/tallboy/tallboy.html
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tallboy_bomb)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tallboy_bomb


Btw, Bismarck was torpedoed by both aircrafts and destroyers.

[Violet Fashion by Mindy]

Also called Deep Penetration Bombs http://www.bismarck-class.dk/tirpitz/miscellaneous/tallboy/tallboy.html
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tallboy_bomb)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tallboy_bomb


Btw, Bismarck was torpedoed by both aircrafts and destroyers.

And without either doing significant damage to the ship. A lucky torpedo strike on a ship does not equate to a ship being obsolete.

[[WDW]Megaraptor]

3 Battleships and 1 Battlecruiser were sunk by aircraft in the open sea when the battleships were under steam and had a chance to defend themselves.

Yamato, Musashi, Prince of Wales and Repulse.

Yamato and Musashi had inferior damage control, Prince of Wales and Repulse lacked any semblance of air cover and Repulse was an obsolete WW1 Battlecruiser.

The only other battleship sunk due to direct air attack was the Roma which was sunk after the Italian surrender when sailing to an Allied port so the effectivness of any defences is questionable.

Wrong:

Battleships sunk by air attack, in open water:
-HMS Repulse, sunk by Japanese aircraft off Malaya, December 10 1941 with loss of 436 crew.
-HMS Prince of Wales, sunk by Japanese aircraft off Malaya, December 10 1941 with loss of 327 crew.
-Italian battleship Roma, sunk by Luftwaffe Fritz-X glider bombs on September 9, 1943 with loss of 1,353 crew.
-INS Hiei, sunk by US Navy and USAF aircraft off of Guadalcanal, November 13, 1942 with loss of 188 crew.
-INS Musashi, sunk by US Navy aircraft during the Battle of Leyte Gulf on October 24, 1944 with loss of over 1,000 crew.
-INS Yamato, sunk by US air attacks off of Okinawa April 7, 1945 with loss of 2,475 men.
-Greek battleship Kilkis, sunk by Germany Ju-87 bombers in the Salamis Channel on April 23, 1941.
-Greek battleship Limnos, sunk by Germany Ju-87 bombers in the Salamis Channel on April 23, 1941.
-HNLMS De Zeven Provincien was sunk by Japanese bombers off of Surabaya, February 18, 1942. Raised by the Japanese and used as a floating battery, then sunk by allied bombers in 1943.

Sunk by combination of surface and air attack in open water:
-German battleship Bismarck, sunk by combination of RN torpedo bombers, battleships and destroyers on May 27, 1941 with the loss of around 2,200 crew.

24 of 39 battleships sunk in WW2 were sunk by air attack (either in port or in open water).

Compare this to 8 battleships sunk in surface combat and 2 of those were decrepit Norwegian coastal defense battleships sunk at Narvik. Only 3 were sunk by submarine, 2 by mines, and 2 by frogmen.

39 out of 97 battleships were sunk in WW2.

The days of the battleship were over.

[TR1]

But the key point is would the losses the RN no doubt would have suffered at the hands of Bismark, Tirpitz, Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, Prinze Eugen and Hipper. Add the remaining pocket battleships and the Royal Navy would have suffered some serious losses. Losses that could not have maintained supremacy in Europe.
The window of opportunity, between France's surrender, before the attack on the Italians at Tarano, would also have meant the Tirpitz would probably not have been available, and the Queen Elizabeth and Valiant would have been available (no frogmen attacks yet), the Ark Royal as well. If we give them Tirpitz, then Duke of York should be added as well.

The German pocket battleships were not of much use on the battle line, very weakly armored and slow as they were. The heavy cruisers also would have made little impression considering the Brits could have countered with the Renown and Repulse battlecruisers, not to mention their vastly superior numbers of light cruisers.

The Royal navy might have suffered some casualties, but the end result would have been no one left to contest the waters around Europe.

[Violet Fashion by Mindy]

Megaraptor;4247351']Wrong:

Battleships sunk by air attack, in open water:

-HMS Repulse, sunk by Japanese aircraft off Malaya, December 10 1941 with loss of 436 crew.

World War 1 era battlecruiser

-HMS Prince of Wales, sunk by Japanese aircraft off Malaya, December 10 1941 with loss of 327 crew.

Lacked any semblance of air cover. or proper fleet support.

-Italian battleship Roma, sunk by Luftwaffe Fritz-X glider bombs on September 9, 1943 with loss of 1,353 crew.

Occurred after the Italian Surrender. How could was the damage control? Were the crew fully committed to the surrender? How good was maintenance?

-INS Hiei, sunk by US Navy and USAF aircraft off of Guadalcanal, November 13, 1942 with loss of 188 crew.

Was already dead in the water during the night action with surface forces. By day break she was a burning wreck and had no hope of surviving.

-INS Musashi, sunk by US Navy aircraft during the Battle of Leyte Gulf on October 24, 1944 with loss of over 1,000 crew.

Agree. However by the time of the Battle Leyte Gulf th IJN was a shadow of her former self. None of the fleet had suitable air cover.

-INS Yamato, sunk by US air attacks off of Okinawa April 7, 1945 with loss of 2,475 men.

Sent on a suicide mission with half filled fuel tanks. Questionable maintenance routines due to the state of the war situation, lacked air cover.

-Greek battleship Kilkis, sunk by Germany Ju-87 bombers in the Salamis Channel on April 23, 1941.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_Battleship_Kilkis Come on man. A pre dreadnaught could be sunk be paper airplane.

-Greek battleship Limnos, sunk by Germany Ju-87 bombers in the Salamis Channel on April 23, 1941.

See above!

-HNLMS De Zeven Provincien was sunk by Japanese bombers off of Surabaya, February 18, 1942. Raised by the Japanese and used as a floating battery, then sunk by allied bombers in 1943.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HNLMS_De_Zeven_Provinci%C3%ABn_(1908-1943) That's a battleship now? Dam thing was smaller then most Light Cruisers!

Sunk by combination of surface and air attack in open water:
-German battleship Bismarck, sunk by combination of RN torpedo bombers, battleships and destroyers on May 27, 1941 with the loss of around 2,200 crew.

During the air attack the battleship suffered only 2 torpedo hits. 1 hit the torpedo belt doing minimal damage and the other extremely lucky hit hit the steering gear. By this stage the amount of resources poured into the ships destruction proves just how valuable battleships are. She sank the Hood, seriously damaged PoW and caused absolute chaos in the Atlantic. Convoy escorts were ordered to leave convoys, moved British focus away from Crete.

24 of 39 battleships sunk in WW2 were sunk by air attack (either in port or in open water).

Compare this to 8 battleships sunk in surface combat and 2 of those were decrepit Norwegian coastal defense battleships sunk at Narvik. Only 3 were sunk by submarine, 2 by mines, and 2 by frogmen.

39 out of 97 battleships were sunk in WW2.

The days of the battleship were over.

97 battleships? There was not 97 dreadnaughts built up to 1945. Now if you are including coastal defence ships, pre dreadnaught battleships, armoured ships then the number becomes accurate but including these are missing the point.

Battleships served throughout the war and peformed exceptionally well. Every single battleship sunk in WW2 would have been sunk anyway even it was a carrier with a full airwing.

I'd go far as to suggest battleships may once again rule the waves. Submarines are no longer cheap, the cost of a single modern jet is now prohibitivly expensive that not many nations can afford such a vessel.

A modern battleship. Armour advances, air defence advances, fire control advances, anti-ship missile advances and the reduction of manpower through automation may see a return to such monstors due to the sole specific reason they fell out of favour immidietly after WW2. Cost.

[mig3535]

yeah but a modern battleship would still cost a lot, its cheaper to have capable frigates and destroyers and they would still have advance strike capabilities for power projection and you could have more of them.You will never see battleships again.

[TheKiwi]

Ah Min, the only way you could lust after battleships more was if they were covered in black latex.

[Violet Fashion by Mindy]

Mate whether I'm right or wrong. There is no denying that battleships were truly the best dam looking ships ever made.

[TheKiwi]

Personally, I'll take a heavy cruiser (also a totally obsolete concept) over a battleship, but I do agree that some of them were damn fine looking ships.

[Violet Fashion by Mindy]

Apart from the Hipper class and Deutschland Class Heavy Cruisers all the other heavy cruisers looked pretty ordinary IMO

[[WDW]Megaraptor]

97 battleships? There was not 97 dreadnaughts built up to 1945. Now if you are including coastal defence ships, pre dreadnaught battleships, armoured ships then the number becomes accurate but including these are missing the point.

Battleships served throughout the war and peformed exceptionally well. Every single battleship sunk in WW2 would have been sunk anyway even it was a carrier with a full airwing.

I'd go far as to suggest battleships may once again rule the waves. Submarines are no longer cheap, the cost of a single modern jet is now prohibitivly expensive that not many nations can afford such a vessel.

A modern battleship. Armour advances, air defence advances, fire control advances, anti-ship missile advances and the reduction of manpower through automation may see a return to such monstors due to the sole specific reason they fell out of favour immidietly after WW2. Cost.

Most of your reasons for each battleship sinking seem to focus on air cover. I think it's obvious that in WW2 any warship was dead meat without air cover, so I fail to see your point. And attacking a fleet that did have air cover was often suicidal (see US torpedo bomber attacks at Midway). So what is the point? That ships require air cover to keep them from getting sunk by airplanes?

By conceding that battleships require air cover, you are conceding the point that the days of battle lines were obsolete. Hence, the main mission of the battleship was obsolete and shore bombardment was its main mission.

Of course, the only nation to operate battleships for any significant amount of time after WW2 was the US Navy, and the Iowas were used exclusively for shore bombardment in Korea, Vietnam, Lebanon and Kuwait.

The USN retired its battleships because it was expensive to operate and crew a 2,000-man floating gun battery.

I don't see battleships making a comeback anywhere. First of all, cruise missiles are the primary tool of naval shore bombardment today and these can be carried effectively by destroyers and cruisers. For an amphibious landing, air strikes are more effective than shelling for support. Especially since helicopters can be used to launch amphibious assaults hundreds of miles inland (as the USMC did in Afghanistan in 2001).

Also, with regards to the sinking of the Roma, none of your points matter, because the Roma was sunk by guided missiles fired from outside antiaircraft range. The ship was hit twice in 5 minutes, with the first bomb going through the deck and exploding in the bottom of the hull while the second detonated a powder magazine and blew the bridge and one of the forward turrets overboard. The ship exploded, rolled over and sank within 20 minutes.

[JCR]

Some things most people underestimate in regards to Battleships and WW2:
Even the most modern battleships ever build were designed in the mid-late 1930s.
When Yamato was designed, her designers factored in bombs up to 500 (1000 lb) kilograms. This was allready something close to science fiction in 1936, when most bombers were struggling with a 250 KG weapon, and the standard weapon was 30-60 kg. Not to mention aiming. Dive bombers were still in infancy, so the main threat was high level bombing and torpedoes.
No one apparently ever managed to successfully construct a "torpedo-proof" warship, which is quite obvious if you see that nearly all warships that sank during battle (not scuttled afterwards due to damage) were sunk by underwater hits, mines or torpedoes.
If a bomb/shell didn't touch anything off for a secondary explosion, it didn't sink the ship.
And Yamato and Musashi sank due to torpedo hits. Bombs did damage, put systems out of action and killed crew, but the ships were doomed by underwater hits.

As she was mentioned, Roma was an exception. Not because of low morale surrendering or anything. In fact, the italian navy was in a much better condition in 1943 than the italians had led the germans to believe.
She was sunk due to the simple fact that the weapon used was unstoppable.
She was struck by TWO 1400 KG semi armour piercing bombs, which were optically guided. When Roma was designed in the mid 1930s, such a weapon was as unlikely as a laser cannon would be today.
HMS Warspite did survive a similar PC1400X hit, but only because it didn't hit any valuables like magazines, and also Warspite was never properly repaired afterwards. It was uneconomical if not impossible, so she spent the rest of the war in a patched up state with the aftermost turret out of action.

[Clown123]

I think arguing that very few battleships were sunk by air powers on open sea is pointless. Even they are sunk in anchor, if there is no means to raise them and repair them, like in Pearl Harbor, they are out as an effective fighting force. Or, if there is any reason rendering them inoperable like IJN's "Hashirajima Fleet", they are not making much effect on the war efforts.

In the post-WW2 interviews of IJN commands, US naval interrogators asked an IJN admiral how long had IJN estimated that the US Pacific Fleet would have been out of actions after Pearl Harbor. He answered 12-18 months. How long did IJN feel the US fleet's presence? The answer was 60 days. Then the US interrogators asked him why IJN did not try to destroy the repair facilities and fuel dumps in Pearl Harbor, which would make the fleet inoperable for a very long time. The Japanese admiral just turned pale and fell silent.

Also, claiming that those battleships were sunk by air powers because they lacked the air covers is, IMHO, not a very valid argument. What kind of air covers can surface ships expect? Either land based or carrier based. Land based air covers are scarce and limited in range. Only carrier based air covers can accompany the battleline into the actions. However, aircraft carriers are offensive weapons. To make battleline offensive we need to turn the aircraft carriers defensive first? I am sorry but I don't think anyone would agree that's a good use of the aircraft carriers.

The funny thing is, IJN's pre-war doctrine actually foretold the battleships' decline. In 1939's IJN Combined Fleet War Plan, IJN battleline would strike first in the battle using main batteries with superior calibres and ranges. They expected to gain 4000-5000 meters advantage with the new Yamato class battleships. I believed the "carrier gang" in IJN probably had pointed the logical extension of this strategy out to their "battleline" comrades on several occasions -- if 4000-5000 meters would be considered a decisive factor, how about 200-250 km a aircraft carrier could get?