Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Aircraft and Vehicles => Topic started by: SFRT - Frenchy on June 28, 2005, 03:57:58 PM
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Izalotagunz! Can see 30 guys protecting their Cv against suicide B24s.
mucho gunz on the side (http://image1.photohighway.co.jp/se-bin/MyPhoto.dll?Vi?p1=NK098_312&p2=56423201928qz4&p3=0jpg&p4=2177281&p5=)
(http://img104.echo.cx/img104/1460/8593e584766b48f998f43ba52ceafb.jpg)
From the Yamamoto's museum @http://album.nikon-image.com/nk/NAlbumTop.asp?key=555537&un=97313&m=0
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It was a great looking ship.
That "model" is insane.
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that would be great for the CT, specially cuz it had seaplanes that launched from the rear.
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Flack huggers wet dream:aok
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wow very nice :D what scale is that ?
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1/10 Yamato scale model at Kure city Hiroshima prefecture.
Length 86.29 ft
Width 12.76 ft
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Originally posted by gear
Flack huggers wet dream:aok
Don't be mislead, the Yamato class did not have a great anti-air defense. In comparison to the South Dakota and Iowa class battleships, the Yamatos could barely put up 35% of the American ships volume of fire. A Yamato could put 19,700 pounds of anti-aircraft ordnance up per minute. That may sound like a lot, but the Iowas could put 49,000 pounds of ordnance into the sky every 60 seconds. American Baltimore class Heavy Cruisers could put 18 tons of triple-A ordnance up per minute, almost double what a Yamato class could manage.
Both the Musashi and Yamato was sunk with relative ease by US Navy carrier planes and casualties among the aircraft were considered light.
My regards,
Widewing
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Don't be mislead, the Yamato class did not have a great anti-air defense. In comparison to the South Dakota and Iowa class battleships, the Yamatos could barely put up 35% of the American ships volume of fire. A Yamato could put 19,700 pounds of anti-aircraft ordnance up per minute. That may sound like a lot, but the Iowas could put 49,000 pounds of ordnance into the sky every 60 seconds. American Baltimore class Heavy Cruisers could put 18 tons of triple-A ordnance up per minute, almost double what a Yamato class could manage.
This is true, but wasn't the Iowa class and South Dakota class specificly designed to counter the threat of the Yamotos?
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no, the yamato was kept secret untill after the iowas were built. in fact it was the other way around: it was built to blast the filthy americans out of the water with 10 (?) 20" guns. the Iowas only had 18 inchers
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Originally posted by SMIDSY
only had 18 inchers
LoL, only 18"ers??? It's like drivin down the street in a compact saying, "it's ONLY a tank, we can take it". I know what you mean though, just struck me as funny. Compared to the Yamota's nightmare main batteries you're right:)
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Originally posted by SMIDSY
no, the yamato was kept secret untill after the iowas were built. in fact it was the other way around: it was built to blast the filthy americans out of the water with 10 (?) 20" guns. the Iowas only had 18 inchers
Yamato had 18.1" guns. Iowa was armed with 16" guns. However, these were the best 16" guns ever designed. In terms of armor penetration and effectiveness, the 16", 50 caliber gun was the equal of the Japanese 18.1". By the way, in naval guns, caliber does not define the bore. The bore is called out in inches. Caliber refers to the length of the gun barrel from breach to muzzle.
Therefore, the 16", 50 cal guns were 50 times longer than the bore diameter.
For a detailed evaluation of WWII battleships, go here. (http://www.combinedfleet.com/baddest.htm)
My regards,
Widewing
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Originally posted by SMIDSY
no, the yamato was kept secret untill after the iowas were built. in fact it was the other way around: it was built to blast the filthy americans out of the water with 10 (?) 20" guns. the Iowas only had 18 inchers
I must correct you. Respectfully.
THe Yamato had 9 x 18" guns.
The Iowas had 9 x 16" guns.
The Iowas had about a 15% advantage in rate of fire.
The range of the guns was similar, within 1000 yards. It has been noted and acknowledged, however, that the FIRE CONTROL system on an Iowa (refitted to the earlier BBs, too) was the best in the world. Our stabilization systems could lock onto a target at extreme range, and were not affected by maneuvering. Our millmetric fire control radars were able to provide blind fire capability, whereas the Japanese had to depend on radar ASSISTED gunfire, a hybrid system that used radar ranges and visual aiming. Look at the Kirishima-South Dakota fight to see where that leads. South Dakota got mideval on the Japanese battlewagon.
The Yamato was armored with 16 inch guns in mind, and her armor was MUCH thicker than that of an Iowa. The Iowas had inclined armor and a double armor protection scheme on the sides that was designed to strip the penetrator cap off incoming shells, however, and that tended to level the playing field. A Yamato could penetrate the deck armor of an Iowa at all ranges, and an Iowa could penetrate the deck armor of a Yamato at all ranges. There would have been no advantage at long ranges to either side, especially considering that at long ranges the rate of fire advantage is offset by the need to spot shellfire results. In close, Yamato had an advantage until the range closed to 25000 yards or so, when the Iowas were able to penetrate the Yamato's armor belt.
The Yamato had a top speed of 27 knots, the Iowas had a top speed of 33 knots. That 8 knot difference is very telling in a naval battle--the guy with the speed dictates the engagement.
My thoughts on a Yamato-Iowa matchup would be that the outcome would depend on statistics. A smart Iowa skipper would stay at long range, and use his fire control advantage to pound on the Yamato. The guy who gets the hits would win out, and there's a lot of pure luck involved in that. Being a patriot, I would give the advantage to the Iowas, with their "shoot and scoot" maneuverability, over the Yamato with her heavy punch but average fire control.
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I think it was the Washington, BB-56, that hit Kirishima. 75 16 inch rounds out in ~ 3 minutes, 9 hits. Bunch of 5 inch hits too, though.
South Dakota took 42 "large caliber" hits with 38 dead, 60 wounded. South Dakota had suffered a power failure at the beginning of the engagement that knocked out all her electronics.
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Kirishima was a 14" armed battlecruiser though. She couldn't take anything like what a proper battleship could. The only real Japanese battleships were the Yamato, Musashi, Nagato and Mutsu, two Yamato class and two Nagato class ships.
Between the Iowa and Yamato I'd favor the Iowa, but she'd get mauled pretty bad ans likely would be out of action for a very long time. It is also possible that both ships would survive when one chose to withdraw, that is in fact the most likely outcome based on WWI battleship engagements I think.
That said, for sheer presence physical nothing beats a Yamato. It is also a great looking ship. I would like to see a BB task group using Japanese ships in AH.
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Karnak said:
Kirishima was a 14" armed battlecruiser though. She couldn't take anything like what a proper battleship could. The only real Japanese battleships were the Yamato, Musashi, Nagato and Mutsu, two Yamato class and two Nagato class ships.
At the range 2nd Guadalcanal was fought at, it didn't matter how much armor Kirishima had. No plunging fire to worry about and both ships' belts were vulnerable to each other's main guns at the short range. It could easily have gone the other way, and I think South Dakota was quite lucky that none of her 14" hits were in really vital areas. In fact, most of the "heavy shells" that hit her were 8".
As for other IJN BBs, I think the Ise and Fuso classes were somewhat better than their US contemporaries, both when built and as they were all subsequently modified. Think about an Ise vs. Texas engagement at any point in their respective lives, even after Ise got the flightdeck.
Between the Iowa and Yamato I'd favor the Iowa, but she'd get mauled pretty bad ans likely would be out of action for a very long time.
I'm not sure Iowa would have suffered even a scratch. Basically, thanks to way better radar and fire control systems, Iowa could have maintained accurate fire on Yamato from beyond Yamato's ability to even see Iowa. The radar Iowa had was one of the first to have a PPI scope, and shell splashes showed up on it. This enabled the ship to spot fall of shot VERY accurately at any range, even if the splashes weren't visible from the foretop.
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Originally posted by Bullethead
I'm not sure Iowa would have suffered even a scratch. Basically, thanks to way better radar and fire control systems, Iowa could have maintained accurate fire on Yamato from beyond Yamato's ability to even see Iowa. The radar Iowa had was one of the first to have a PPI scope, and shell splashes showed up on it. This enabled the ship to spot fall of shot VERY accurately at any range, even if the splashes weren't visible from the foretop.
Everything I've read about WWII radar would indicate that the theoretical capabilities were never reached due to the difficulty of deciphering the data display. I may be giving the Yamato too much credit, but I think you may be giving Iowa too much as well.
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Karnak said:
Everything I've read about WWII radar would indicate that the theoretical capabilities were never reached due to the difficulty of deciphering the data display. I may be giving the Yamato too much credit, but I think you may be giving Iowa too much as well.
Well, I got the info on Iowa's gear from one of her old WW2 fire controlmen, and I figure he knew what he was talking about.
I mentioned this because I was suprised to learn that radar had that capability. My dad worked radars on a WW2 DD and his stuff was way more primitive. Instead of a PPI scope, if gave you a stylized side view, with the target just being a spike above the baseline. Normally it wouldn't show splashes, and even if it did, it wasn't equipped to get a range correction from it, and there was no way to see how far you were off in deflection. So basically it was just a good rangefinder, but fall of shot spotting and correction still had to be done visually. And if there were a lot of targets in the area, it was very hard to tell which one was on the scope, and closer ships masked others in the general vicinity.
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Still the problem with ww2 naval radar guided gunnery and wished-to-be long range engagements is the dispersion of the guns themselves. You will get a large spread at long ranges, no matter how good your firing solution and range estimation is. And I simply don`t belive that radar of the time was capable of any better accuracy than optical equipment under good visibility conditions. There`s no reason to believe so. Optics don`t distort, the primitive electronics of the 1940s did. Keep in mind that it was used most of the time for close range engagements in darkness, it was that area it good give advantage.
Besides, radar equipment, masts etc. are very exposed on any BB, it doesn`t takes much to render it useless. Bismarck 'succeded' in knocking out it`s own forward radar set when it fired backwards with A and B turrets. Scharhornst lost it`s radar set to cruiser fire, to otherwise meaningless hits... You don`t need direct hits, blast, fragments can do that easily. It doesn`t stand for the conventional optical ranging towers, which were heavily armored.
It would be interesting to see actual bearing and range accuracy for Allied radar at the time though. It`s usually claimed to have with pinpoint/surgical accuracy, but I have never seen figures to underline it.
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Spot on Kurfurst, was just gonna mention that with the Scharhorst.
Now, that was a 6 inch shell if I remember it right.
Anyway, luck and unluck plays with this a lot.
Bismmarck sinks HMS Hood with a single 15" shell.
Now 15" is not small, about 900 kgs, plumming down from what, 30.000 feet? Bismarck takes 3 13" hits from HMS P.O.W. and starts bleeding fuel.
And then the 16" from Rodney, or was it Nelson? renders Bismarcks fire control useless with a single hit. Bismarck took like 700+ hits before being scuttled, - not that it mattered much.
But about the FLAK, aren't you forgetting something?
U.S. PROXIMITY SHELL ;)
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Well proximiity ammo was great, but i though it was a discussion about the firecontrol of the 'big guns'. The 40mm bofors used the very same fine instrument to aim at the incoming craft as centuries before : the human eye. There was no radar control for the medium aa guns, though I am not sure about the 5" ones. Probably they had, I know KM ships better, Tirpitz used the LW`s Wurzburg set for heavy AAA fire control.
Back on radar, range estimation doesn`t seem to be a huge problem. This could be done fairly well with early war, longwave radar sets to about 20k (range largely depends on target size). The problem was getting the bearing data, which they had troubles with due to the poor resulution. But even mid-war German sets, which operated at far longer waves (less precision, but also less noise from sea waves) were capable of 0.5 degree bearing accuaracy, which gives around 50 or 100?meter dispersion at the top edge of practical ww2 naval engagments. Already good enough to hit a 250m long ship, especially with gun dispersion in account...
later war Allied radar with it`s small centimetric wavelenght must have been more precise, but if both sides possess the neccesary precision to hit the enemy, there`s not much difference in actual hit probabilities, assuming Japanese sets were good as the KMs.
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The Graf Spee was already equipped with some sort of radar aiming, that being in 1939 (?) was probably one of the worlds first radar assisted aiming system.
I think also, that in 1939/40 the Germans managed to shoot down an unseen (darkness or cluds) british bomber with radar aid.
Somehow, the technology was not perfected, and then again, there are so many factors involved, such as wind, target altering hdg/alt etc.
About the big guns, I wonder if they had a prox fuse, - that would have been the biggest aid I guess.
BTW, the hit record on a moving target was AFAIK accomplished by HMS Warspite in a scruffle with the italian Navy, - at Matapan?
I am not sure if it was radar assisted. Range was some 26 km.
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Yes, the Graf Spee had the 'Seetakt', the earliest radar set iirc. the british examanined the wreck for the radar installation.
As for german AA radar, the various Wurzburg sets served through the war, constantly improved, and produced in really huge qualities - given the number of flak batteries, each was served by one wurzburg.
I am not sure if the 5" and such guns had proxy fuse, probably so. For the biggest guns, the Yamato was unique as afaik it had a canister like round for those huge 18" naval guns to be used against aircraft... evil. :eek:
AFAIK Warspite (on the Zara?) and Scharnhorst (carrier Glorious) share the credit for the longest ranged hits in ww2, both 26 or km, very close.. But I beleive Scharnhorst wasn`t using radar either.