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

[chuck]

Whether Yamato can hit the side of a escort is a different question from whether Yamato actually did hit the side of an escort carrier. To say Yamato can't hit a carrier is without justification. But it is much more reasonable to argue that Yamato did not hit an escort carrier with her first salvo in the particular battle in question.

[bucketfoot-al]

Gents - A fellow over on Steelnavy.com just posted the following potentially exciting (well, to us history buffs anyhow ) info:

Posted by Tiornu on May 8, 2009, 15:40:46, in reply to "Fascinating Discussion on Accuracy of Yamato's Guns at Leyte Gulf"
71.30.133.126

The claim of a first-salvo hit at extreme range is simply wrong, as no carriers were hit at that time. However, the claim that Yamato scored no hits at all is also dubious. Rob Lundgren, whose work on Guadalcanal is in the current issue of Warship International, is analyzing Samar with US and Japanese records. His initial work indicates Yamato may have scored multiple hits, but we'll have to wait and see his final analysis. It's important to remember that, regardless of Yamato's design, her crew in October 1944 could not have been in top form. Gunnery practice was a rarity.

[Sauragnmon]

I could have sworn I recall Gambier Bay reporting taking Heavy surface fire prior to her sinking, but then, I'm not sitting here with an armload of references on hand. It would be in the USN's favour to portray the Yamato and Musashi as a white elephant, it would only serve to ice the came even moreso that the Battleship is dead, which in all truth is an argument without any true modern evidence - but I'm not going into that here and now.

[bucketfoot-al]

Well, thanks to Rob Lundgren we may soon have documented confirmation - as authoritative as it can get at this point in time - on the subject. The quality of the Japanese optical fire control systems might just be vindicated. Personally I am quite excited and only wish that the 2005 film Yamato had included, in the Leyte sequence, Yamato firing on Taffy 3 and smoking the Gambier Bay. A couple of years ago I thought that would have been a cool, even though fictional scene (courtesy of all the books I had read on the subject).

Now it appears that the fiction may indeed become reality, and the Yamato may add one or two notches to her 'belt' - whatever the distance, her shots were definitely not point blank yet is seems that those 18.1" and 6" guns may have been worth their salt after all. I think that the IJN reports of Yam striking Gambier Bay and Johnston will be vindicated.

Oh, if only it had been the Hornet and the Enterprise, like in my Battlestations Midway game. The key there is to shift ALL of Yamato's damage control men to torpedo damage control - that will give you enough life - even with sub and air attacks - to get close enough to those two fleet carriers and blow them out of the water. The game is extremely realistic in that no matter how many bombs hit you, its only the torpedoes that will sink you in the end - unless you figure out the solution listed above. Once in a while I manage to actually get to within a half mile of them and you can imagine what happens next as I level those guns and open up. BTW, that game uses the 1941 Yamato - so you have the added benefit of the 2 additional 6" turrets. Its amazingly realistic and I would recommend it to anyone. It takes a little time to reload the main guns and those 12 additional 6" barrels come in quite handy while you're waiting to reload the big rifles.

Stay tuned (fingers crossed).

[bucketfoot-al]

Check out these photos (albeit smaller) of Gambier Bay taking heavy fire and being struck. The photos showing 6 waterspouts are to me a possible giveaway - because we know that Yamato fired her 6 forward rifles at Gambier Bay. Now if the Japanese cruisers had only 2-barrelled turrets, that would clinch it, but I am not sure on that account.

Note the hit below the waterline that finally sinks her - Yamato's AP shells were specifically designed to inflict that sort of damage.

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl= ... n%26sa%3DG

[bucketfoot-al]

SEE POST BELOW

[bucketfoot-al]

Check this one out - note the 6 HUGE spouts and 6 much smaller ones - obviously different caliber shells - are the huge spouts from 18" shells?

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl= ... start%3D21

[chuck]

Well, thanks to Rob Lundgren we may soon have documented confirmation - as authoritative as it can get at this point in time - on the subject. The quality of the Japanese optical fire control systems might just be vindicated.
Stay tuned (fingers crossed).

The main problem is not with the optical quality of Japanese fire control sensors, it's with the design of internal data transmission between parts of the mechanical computers that resolve different parts of the fire control equations. Basically in the Japanese system a man reads the result from one part of the mechanical computer and manually adjust a dial to communicate the result to another part of the computer that does the next part of the computation. If he doesn't read it quite right or doesn't set his dial right continuously, the fire control computation will be in error. In other country's systems this process tends to be automatic. The data is transmitted from one part of the process to another electro-mechanically, with no human intervention and no room for human error.

So if everyone in Yamato's fire control plotting room is perfectly trained and completely fresh, Yamato will match the performance of other country's fire control computer. If not, Yamato's shots might be a bit off since its fire control computer is liable to have human error introduced into its computations.

Otical quality of Yamato's 15m range finders are generally acknowledged to be amongst the best if not the very best, and its base length is the longest. But there are some data to show that the incremental accuracy this affords is actually only fractional. IIRC at 30,000 yards, margin of error in range measure obtained by Yamato's 15 m range finder is only about 20% less than that obtainable on American 12-13 meter sets.

[chuck]

Check out these photos (albeit smaller) of Gambier Bay taking heavy fire and being struck. The photos showing 6 waterspouts are to me a possible giveaway - because we know that Yamato fired her 6 forward rifles at Gambier Bay. Now if the Japanese cruisers had only 2-barrelled turrets, that would clinch it, but I am not sure on that account.

Note the hit below the waterline that finally sinks her - Yamato's AP shells were specifically designed to inflict that sort of damage.

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl= ... n%26sa%3DG

Yes, but many Japanese heavy cruisers also had 6 forward firing guns in 3 twin turrets. Japanese cruiser AP shells are also designed with boat tail and breakaway wind cap for underwater penetration. So I don't think there is convincing reason to believe these splashes came from Yamato. It's possible, but no proof. If there are color originals to some of these photos, then we might pin down the origin of the shells that made the splash by the color of the splash. Japanese shells usually contain a dye pack to color their splashes precisely to allow the firing ship to identify the shell splashes she made.

The smaller splashes, if recorded at their full height, seems too small for 8" shells. They look more like 5" hits or even splashes from debris blown overboard from the carrier.

Perhaps we can find some photos of known 8" shell splashes to see if the relative height of these splashes are right for 8" hits.

[chuck]

Has anyone ever come across a detailed set of illustrations or drawings of the steel firing guards around Yamato's 5" mounts? These are the steel beam frames around the 5"/40 guns that acts to limit the train and elevation of the gun and prevent the guns from firing into each other or into parts of the superstructure. I am interested in the beam frames as they were before the modification that removed the 6" turrets.

[EJFoeth]

By this question I can conclude that they are not in the AOTS or the Super-Illustration? Then I can readily conclude that if they are not in those volumes it is very unlikely that they are anywhere else. If you do not have these volumes, you have asked the wrong question and should have asked where you can buy these volumes

[chuck]

1. They are in those volumes, but they conflict with each other.

2. They are probably not one the the first things that one might focus on in works like ATOS or Super-Illustrated, so I would not expect what is in these books concerning the firing arc limiters to be the result of anything better than a rough sketch

3. Many Japanese hobby oriented sites and publications seems to fixate on details such as these, so it seems reasonable to look for a source where someone might have cobbled together photos of the ship to produce a better illustration of these details than what is available in ATOS and Super-Illustrated.

[Dan K]

There are only 2 photos that show any aspect of this this feature that I can find, both taken aboard Musashi. I'm not sure if these predate the removal of the wing turrets.

I can only post one now. See the two mounts to the right. The guard is unusual as it's stouter and not as angular as I'm used to seeing. Credit: KMM Yamato class volume.

[chuck]

Thanks. This one appears to pre-dates the removal of the 6" mounts. One barrel of the 6" mount is visible on the extreme right hand side of the photo.

[Dan K]

You're right, Chuck, that is a 6" barrel.

Here's the other pic from the opposite direction, credit also KMM Yamato volume

[Sauragnmon]

Another good giveaway that the picture is Pre-Refit, is that you've got the shielded turrets on the upper mounts - they were moved Down for the refit mounts.

[chuck]

Another good giveaway that the picture is Pre-Refit, is that you've got the shielded turrets on the upper mounts - they were moved Down for the refit mounts.

The consensus seems to be that, unlike the Yamato, Musashi's 6 original 5" mounts as well as the 8 original triple 25mm mounts on the superstructure retained their dome shaped shields to the end.

[Sauragnmon]

Musashi's 5" turrets were never moved, because they hadn't gotten the second set of guns. I don't know if the Musashi got her extra 25mm guns - I know her lower deck 5" positions were sandbagged and turned into 25mm nests as a temporary fit.

[chuck]

There are a lot of debate about Musashi's final configuration. Part of the confusion stems from the fact that the USN was unable to get a clear overhead shot of the Musashi similar to those it was able to obtain of the Yamato. The notion that Musashi carried 25mm triples behind sand bags in her lower 5"/40 position is not universally accepted. At least one school of thought argue that Musashi did in fact received much the same armament fit as did the Yamato during their 1944 refit, including 6 additional 5"/40 mounts on a lower tier and numerous new 25mm triples. But unlike with the Yamato, the blast shield that came with Musashi's original armament from before the refit stayed put, while the new armament on the Musashi, including the 5" mounts, did not get dome shaped blast shields.

[EJFoeth]

I've also seen drawings of Musashi fitted with rocket launchers...