Calling all Yamato (大和) and Musashi (武蔵) fans

ARH · Post by **ARH** » Thu Apr 30, 2009 4:59 pm

It works fine for me.

bucketfoot-al · Post by **bucketfoot-al** » Thu Apr 30, 2009 5:02 pm

amiers wrote:i have been trying to get to this website http://ultimatebattleshipyamatosite.tri ... e_battles/ but it keeps shutting down my browser?

I would suggest downloading and using Firefox. Its the best, and safest browser out there. If you're using IExplorer, I am not surprised. Its a piece of excrement compared to Mozilla's Firefox.

This is the first time anyone has made this complaint, so I am 100% certain the problem's with your browser. BTW, the link you posted works just fine.

bucketfoot-al · Post by **bucketfoot-al** » Sun May 03, 2009 1:17 pm

chuck · Post by **chuck** » Sun May 03, 2009 5:52 pm

I've came across a close up photo of Yamato's hullside around the hatch to the boat tube on either side of the aft aircraft deck. The photo was probably taken from a boat approaching the Yamato from stern quarter. As I remembered it it showed the boat doors, and welding beads on the surface of the protruding boat tube. At the time I have not developed a interest in Yamato and didn't wright down the site address. Now I can't find it again. Has anyone seen this photo?

bucketfoot-al · Post by **bucketfoot-al** » Sun May 03, 2009 6:34 pm

Hi Chuck. I cannot remember seeing that photo anywhere - but if you come up with it again, do drop me a PM! Sounds like it would be very interesting!

daveseas · Post by **daveseas** » Sun May 03, 2009 8:12 pm

Hello,

As per your usual standard you collected and assemblied a fine site for the Yamato and Musashi with the operations these ships were involved in. Well Done!

Regards
Dave

J. Soca · Post by **J. Soca** » Tue May 05, 2009 10:15 pm

Anyone in here plays Battlefield 1942? i bought this game when it came out and i�ve been playing it ever since, sometimes i get caught up with stuff but when i�m free on the weekends i got to play it. i took this screenshot while i was playing �Midway� the animation is below standards nowdays i�m talking about a game that was released back in 03 but it�s so much fun. i like getting Yamato and slug it out with Prince of Wales, you heard me right i said POW i�m still trying to figure out why the animators decided to add this battleship at Midway

forget the accuracy the game is real fun though.

Jose AKA diehard in the game

bucketfoot-al · Post by **bucketfoot-al** » Wed May 06, 2009 1:55 pm

I have re-arranged the 1944 photos to show the correct order of battle at Leyte, and added tons of never-before-seen information drawn from IJN records that show just how devastating the Yamato's gunfire was at Leyte Gulf, plus other info.

You can start at the page linked below and go about 5 photos forward to get all of the new historical information:

http://ultimatebattleshipyamatosite.tri ... 4?i=70&s=1

chuck · Post by **chuck** » Wed May 06, 2009 2:39 pm

bucketfoot-al wrote:I have re-arranged the 1944 photos to show the correct order of battle at Leyte, and added tons of never-before-seen information drawn from IJN records that show just how devastating the Yamato's gunfire was at Leyte Gulf, plus other info.

You can start at the page linked below and go about 5 photos forward to get all of the new historical information:

http://ultimatebattleshipyamatosite.tri ... 4?i=70&s=1

A comment on the remarks about Yamato's fire - The IJN record which suggests Yamato scored a hit with her first 18" salvo at a distance of 19 miles, and again with her 6" guns at 10 miles, seems too good to be true. The longest range confirmed hit in naval history was scored after many tries at only 15.8 miles. Yamato's fire control would have to be vastly superior to those of any other battleship to stand a reasonable chance of scoring a hole in one at 19 miles. So far everything I've seen says her fire control equipment were good, but had nothing really exceptional. Also, hitting a destroyer with a hole in one at 17000 yards also seems beyond the capability of WWII fire control.

bucketfoot-al · Post by **bucketfoot-al** » Wed May 06, 2009 2:57 pm

Who knows? We'll never know for sure. The IJN records do indicate the report from the Spotter plane, which was right in the middle of the action. Was the 'smoke from the hit' really from a near simultaneous shot from a nearer cruiser? There's lots of possibilities, but the record exists and in fairness to the much-maligned Yamato's capabilities, I chose to include it (and chose to tend to believe it). Unlike the often-ridiculous post-action IJN reports of numbers ships sunk, these reports were confirmed by the spotter plane which was - I presume - half-way between the Yam and the target - the entire point being that the spotter plane was there to greatly improve the accuracy of the optical range finder - a concept that, at least in this one instance - appears to have worked. So you are really talking about a shot measured from where the Spotter Plane was - a much closer distance to the target with a much better 3-D lock on its coordinates from the air. And we know that the Gambier Bay WAS hit at about the same time, and eventually sunk, and that the USS Johnston WAS finally struck by a salvo from what appeared to be 6" shells and sunk by them.

I can't prove it was the Yamato firing those shots with 100% certainty, but the info is out there and has been ignored by American historians (usually not even mentioned, which REALLY pisses me off. I don't buy into conventionally accepted 'wisdom' in general - like the Yamato being a complete 'white elephant' - without looking into it myself). Educated folks can draw their own conclusions as you have. I freely admit to having a bias in the matter, and I may temper the comments on the site somewhat having received this info from you, for which I am grateful, as accurate info is very important to me. But the key to me - as a layman - is the spotter plane. That turned a 20-mile shot into a, perhaps 10-mile shot, and a 10 mile shot into a perhaps 5-mile shot - or am I mistaken about the value of spotter planes?

chuck · Post by **chuck** » Wed May 06, 2009 6:17 pm

Spotter planes observes the fall of the salvo and calls out correction back to the firing ship, and also alert the firing ship to any changes in the target's course before those changes can become clear to observers on the firing ship. So spotter planes would help improve the accuracy of each successive salvo, but will do nothing for the opening salvo.

Sauragnmon · Post by **Sauragnmon** » Wed May 06, 2009 6:23 pm

Much as it might easily be discredited, there are situations where raw, blind chance wins the day. Remember, the longest shot was made by Warspite, a ship that was rather long in the tooth at the time she pulled it off. Sure, the Yamato didn't have the massive uberness of using blindfire control, but she did have the spotting plane, and did have some rather good, if not screaming noteworthy, control equipment. Combine that with the fact she was in essence the Imperial Flagship, and thus likely to have the best crew they could have on board, I would lean as well in favour of the shot being a hit, even if a lucky hit.

I would beg to differ with regards to the spotting plane not having an effect on the first salvo, as they can much more effectively report things such as the target heading and speed, which combined with the element of surprise, lending to the enemy NOT shifting their heading or speed, would provide a much better firing solution on the first barrage, Chuck. If you can get the best reports of windage, heading and speed, then even your first shot is more accurate compared to a relative guess.

bucketfoot-al · Post by **bucketfoot-al** » Wed May 06, 2009 6:52 pm

Wonderful gents - I appreciate both of your inputs on the subject!! Saurgnomon - I have quoted much of your last paragraph above (with full attribution) under the relevant photo on the website. You pretty much confirmed what I had deduced, as an interested layman.

chuck · Post by **chuck** » Thu May 07, 2009 12:34 am

Sauragnmon wrote:Much as it might easily be discredited, there are situations where raw, blind chance wins the day. Remember, the longest shot was made by Warspite, a ship that was rather long in the tooth at the time she pulled it off. Sure, the Yamato didn't have the massive uberness of using blindfire control, but she did have the spotting plane, and did have some rather good, if not screaming noteworthy, control equipment. Combine that with the fact she was in essence the Imperial Flagship, and thus likely to have the best crew they could have on board, I would lean as well in favour of the shot being a hit, even if a lucky hit.

I would beg to differ with regards to the spotting plane not having an effect on the first salvo, as they can much more effectively report things such as the target heading and speed, which combined with the element of surprise, lending to the enemy NOT shifting their heading or speed, would provide a much better firing solution on the first barrage, Chuck. If you can get the best reports of windage, heading and speed, then even your first shot is more accurate compared to a relative guess.

I am not inclined to believe a shot so far superior to all other shots ever documented was likely to have been made, and doubly suspicious of the claim that 2 such hits were made by a single ship in a single engagement. We can go into where Japanese fire control systems falls short, and why as a result Yamato requires very high level of crew training just to perform at par, where as the much more highly automated British Admiralty fire control table used on Warspite can be expected to perform near par regardless of crew training so long as the crew has been minimally trained, so the training and quality of Yamato's crew is unlikely to raise her fire control performance so far above that of Warspite, which despite her age was fully modernized and had the most modern fire control and the famously accurate British 15"/42 gun, not to mention the assistance of radar.

The problem with using spotter to improve the first shot is without radar or a stationary marker like a waterspout from a shell hit, an aerial observer in WWII has no means of accurately determine the speed of a ship, certainly no means to determine it as accurately as could the Yamato herself, even from 19 miles away, with her fire control optics and gunnery plotting system. The aerial observer also has no means of accurately determining the course of the enemy to anything better than "NNE" or "WSW". Again this is much less than what Yamato herself could do through her fire control plots. So no, a spotter plane will not significantly improve Yamato's chances to score a hit at long range with her first salvo. But once the first salvo is fired, a spotter can use any near miss as a reference to clock the speed of the enemy ship, can observe the pattern of the misses and call out corrections back to Yamato, and can use curvature in the wake of the enemy to alert the Yamato to enemy course changes. But keep in mind that even during this battle, the US force, such as it was, still had air superiority, and the spotter did not have the freedom to take up the most ideal position to perform her spotting work.

Sauragnmon · Post by **Sauragnmon** » Thu May 07, 2009 10:05 pm

If I am not mistaken, the Japanese gunnery crews were drilled heavily towards long range training. Forgive me if I am wrong, but I would imagine that they knew full well that ranges of combat was quite planned for long range, and they sought long range with Yamato, part of which was involved in the high positioning of her equipment, to optimize performance at longer ranges - this is also what made her such a target, because she was so tall in the design.

As to the commentary on a spotter plane. You have your own flight compass, so you can match, relatively, Your heading relative to the differential degree of your target. From that data, either you or the ship can then go further towards plotting the velocity of the target - If he's moving at X heading, and we know he is at Y distance, then we can derive his velocity from how far he moves within a specific timeframe. If we can get an idea of the wind velocity and heading, we can take an estimate on how the shot will shift in flight - shorter, longer, directional differential. We can also take our time, relatively, because we have not, and this is the key part - we have not betrayed our position with the first salvo.

Was the USN taskforce watching for the aircraft? did they have anything that would suggest there might be an attack coming? Had Gambier Bay at that point scrambled her aircraft? Was the situation in this exact incident as favourable as it might be seen at first?

bucketfoot-al · Post by **bucketfoot-al** » Thu May 07, 2009 10:44 pm

Here is the chronology of the beginning of the battle from the Tabular Movement Record:

0523: YAMATO's Type 13 radar picks up enemy aircraft.

0544: Enemy carriers sighted on the horizon, hull down, bearing 60 to port, range 23 miles. They are identified as six carriers, escorted by three cruisers and two destroyers.

0545: YAMATO opens fire on enemy planes.

0558: Force A opens fire at escort carriers of "Taffy 3": USS ST. LO (CVE-63), WHITE PLAINS (CVE-66), KALININ BAY (CVE-68), FANSHAW BAY (CVE-70) (F), KITKUN BAY (CVE-71) and GAMBIER BAY (CVE-73). Carriers screened by the destroyers USS HOEL (DD-533), JOHNSTON, (DD-557), HEERMANN (DD-532), destroyer escorts USS SAMUEL B. ROBERTS (DE-413), DENNIS (DE-405), RAYMOND (DE-341) and JOHN C. BUTLER (DE-339).

Both of YAMATO's forward turrets open fire at a distance of 20 miles. Of her six forward rifles only two are initially loaded with AP shells, the remainder with Type 3s. YAMATO's F1M2 "Pete" spotter plane confirms that the first salvo is a hit. The carrier starts to smoke. Three six-gun salvos are fired on the same target, then the fire is shifted to the next carrier. It is concealed immediately by a smoke screen made by the American destroyers.

eraphael · Post by **eraphael** » Fri May 08, 2009 9:20 am

Hi after comparing the movie and actual photos, there seems to be a discrepancy between uniform color.
Which is correct for the April '45 mission? White or kakhi.
Thx.

chuck · Post by **chuck** » Fri May 08, 2009 11:29 am

Sauragnmon wrote:If I am not mistaken, the Japanese gunnery crews were drilled heavily towards long range training. Forgive me if I am wrong, but I would imagine that they knew full well that ranges of combat was quite planned for long range, and they sought long range with Yamato, part of which was involved in the high positioning of her equipment, to optimize performance at longer ranges - this is also what made her such a target, because she was so tall in the design.

All major navies between wars expected and trained for battle beyond 30,000 yards, which is why everyone went through great expense to increase the elevation of their guns to beyond 35 degrees. USN, IJN, and DKM particularly had very high expectation of achieving decisive hits at those ranges. USN had expectations of 30,000 yard battles way before the Japanese, back in 1920. All three trained intensively for it. But the fact remains that those expectations were unrealistic with available technology even out to the middle of WWII. And Japanese surface fire control development effectively stopped by 1941.

By and large, the theoretical capabilities of the Japanese gunnery fire control system was equal to those of American at the beginning of WWII. But to achieve the theoretical capability was much easier with US systems than with Japanese systems. The automation in the state of the art fire control in US, British and German navies in WWII is such they can achieve near maximum performance with just a total crew of 5-6, out of which only two or three highly trained operator is needed, and these only need to do their own jobs well, and do not need to coordinate amongst themselves well. The Japanese fire control system, on the other hand, requires large staff of highly trained operator, and majority of them must coordinate perfectly to achieve maximum performance. 7 men working in perfect coordination is needed to ensure proper operation of just the fire control computer alone. At least 6 more men with great eye hand coordination is needed to manually track the ship's pitch and roll and continuously enter that data into the fire control computer where as the same function is done automatically with higher precision and reliability using gyros in the US system. So long training can only be taken as evidence that Japanese may be able to achieve world class performance when fresh and motivated, not that they could surpass it. I would say hole in one at 19 miles considerably surpasses world class performance in 1944.

BTW, Yamato's tower bridge was not particularly tall. The director on top was roughly the same height above water as those on US, German and French warships.

Sauragnmon wrote:As to the commentary on a spotter plane. You have your own flight compass, so you can match, relatively, Your heading relative to the differential degree of your target. From that data, either you or the ship can then go further towards plotting the velocity of the target - If he's moving at X heading, and we know he is at Y distance, then we can derive his velocity from how far he moves within a specific timeframe. If we can get an idea of the wind velocity and heading, we can take an estimate on how the shot will shift in flight - shorter, longer, directional differential. We can also take our time, relatively, because we have not, and this is the key part - we have not betrayed our position with the first salvo.

Was the USN taskforce watching for the aircraft? did they have anything that would suggest there might be an attack coming? Had Gambier Bay at that point scrambled her aircraft? Was the situation in this exact incident as favourable as it might be seen at first?

You have your compass, but you are not flying directly over the top of the ship you are observing, and when you are flying some distance from and at an angle to the ship you have no instrument to map the observed course of the ship to the face of the compass while accounting for parallax. So you can only estimate the enemy course by eye and experience, and by moving your eye back and forth from a slant view of the ship to a direct view of the compass, achieving a precison no better than "South by South West".

As to speed, you have no fixed reference. Your plane is moving, the ship is moving, the white caps are moving, there is no battleship quality fire control instrument onboard a spotter to integrate own speed and course with a optical instrument aimed at the enemy. So you basically have no better means of estimating the enemy speed then "Damn, that's a big wake, he must be making 30 knots!".

bucketfoot-al · Post by **bucketfoot-al** » Fri May 08, 2009 11:53 am

Hi Gents - this is getting fascinating. I can see that I am gonna have to revise my comments once again. Perhaps just neutrally report the "facts" as related by the USN & IJN, with commentary quoted from far more knowledgeable sources than yours truly.

I got the following comment from a gentleman which supports Chuck's argument:

"Kurt von Bosse has commented on a photo in your The Ultimate Yamato and Musashi Battleship Photo Archive photo album.

Their Comment :
The Yamato couldn't hit the broad side of a barn; or in this case, the broad side of an Escort Carrier. The IJN logs sinking or setting on fire two full size Aircraft Carriers in the first five minutes of the battle. You can read an account of this in "Fading Victory - The Diary of Admiral Ugaki." Admiral Yamamoto's former Chief-of-Staff was on the bridge of the Yamato that day. However, American sources show the Japanese failed to score a single hit in that time frame. The Yamato may have scored some hits that day but during the most critical phase of the battle it was running away from American torpedoes. A rather disappointing performance by the world's largest Battleship."

You guys sure know how to burst a guys' balloon!!

bucketfoot-al · Post by **bucketfoot-al** » Fri May 08, 2009 12:32 pm

Changes made!!!

http://ultimatebattleshipyamatosite.tri ... 4?i=74&s=1

The Ship Model Forum

Calling all Yamato (大和) and Musashi (武蔵) fans

Re: Calling all IJN Yamato & Musashi fans

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Re: Calling all IJN Yamato & Musashi fans

Re: Calling all IJN Yamato & Musashi fans

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Yamato crew' uniform color?

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