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Subject: ww2 Yamato vs Iowa class
capt soap    9/17/2005 12:55:11 PM
How would this fight turn out? the Iowa's 16 inch guns against the Yamato 18 guns? The iowa had radar,which one would sink the other 1 on 1.
 
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bunkerdestroyer    RE:ww2 Yamato vs Iowa class   10/21/2005 7:45:29 PM
yimmy-dont tell that to my wife...if you do, she will give you an earfull...and back it up with books... buddha was the son of a king who created monks to go out and help people. when the king died, buddha carried on the pratice and enhanced it and symbolizes their spiritual freedom...They believe in god and that god created all and also created the king(father of Buddha). Buddha to them is all goodness and thusly why he is reveared....but they do believe in god-in christian terms, buddha could be considered a prophet of sorts sorry to get religious on you guys, but just wanted to mention this
 
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Arbalest    RE:ww2 Yamato vs Iowa class   10/22/2005 12:42:36 AM
BD – The IJN cruiser gunners were, as you say, high quality; their battleship gunners were at least as good. The Japanese put the time and money into making them so. The US battleship gunners were probably closer to the IJN than the US cruiser gunners. I think that by early ’43, most US gunners had caught up to the IJN. Checking the “http ://www. navweaps.com/” link, and the articles and Nathan Okun’s work in particular, will clarify some of my (necessarily abbreviated) points. The rest of this post is essentially a reference of his work (except the 120mm stuff). It looks like about 25,000 yards is the effective maximum “targetable” range of battleships using optical rangefinders. This is not much of an improvement over Jutland (~20,000yds avg.). As a comparison, the M1’s 120mm is normally used out to 3500-4000m. The FCS works out to 8500-10000m. Elevate the barrel to about 45deg, and a KE round can go 70-80km. Part of the problem is seeing the target and the splashes of misses. Spotter planes help, and radar helps even more. Part of the problem is the natural dispersion of the projectiles. This is somewhat random. Barrel wear and powder charge (exact weight, humidity, etc.) play a part. Looking at the US Naval Gunnery articles, there are graphs of shot impact points around a target. All were aimed at the target, 2%-4% hit. This represents an average of 1 hit per 3 on-target broadsides (9 guns, 4%). At longer ranges this could be under 1%. Remember, these are averages. Getting a hit is like rolling a 100-sided die; with enough range, only a 1 or 2 is a hit. Go farther out and if a 1 is rolled, flip a coin to determine if it really is a hit or not. The de-capping armor, as explained in Okun’s article, works by simply being thick enough (~projectile diameter * 0.08, so 1”-1.5” is correct) to knock the AP cap of the AP projectile, preferably without initiating the fuse. The AP projectile (no longer APC) then proceeds on to the main armor and fails (shatters, sticks, etc.). Apparently the Iowa has this sort of armor, although it isn’t shown in “Battleships . . .”. The Yamato does not, but the armor is very thick and very high quality (see Okun). AP caps are crimped on to the projectile body and can come off when striking armor. The projectile is heat-treated, so welding is out and soldering is usually out. The calculated penetrations for the Yamato 18” projectile are (from www. navweaps.com) 21,872 yd (20,000 m): 19.43" (494 mm) belt, 4.30" (109 mm) deck. Without the cap, ????? With the cap, the Iowa is in trouble; without it, the implication is that the Iowa is “safe”, even though the ship has been hit by a 3440lb 18” projectile traveling at around 1600fps. Based on the Bismark action and the South Dakota / Kirishima duel, I think that there’d be a lot of damage anyway. But this is unknown to me. These are some of the reasons for my comments “A Yamato/Iowa gun duel is a tough call.” and “There is a lot of randomness involved.”
 
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Yimmy    RE:ww2 Yamato vs Iowa class   10/22/2005 7:50:10 AM
I think your wife my be looking at the relogion from a different aspect then, looking a bit further back to the Hindu routes. Although in the stories of how Sidhata Gotma (or whatever his name was) became enlightened, there was mention of a God, that was the Hindu God. My local Buddhist temple does not believe in God.
 
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bunkerdestroyer    RE:ww2 Yamato vs Iowa class   10/22/2005 7:29:36 PM
yimmy-well, I'm catholic(a buddist and a catholic walk into a bar...sounds like the making of a joke) so that is her area, besides, it religion and since this is a military site, I guess I will leave it to the monks and priests...
 
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gf0012-aust    RE:ww2 Yamato vs Iowa class   10/22/2005 9:27:58 PM
"I guess I will leave it to the monks and priests..." now there's an opportunity for thread hijacking... templars, shaolin priests and the popes favourite commandos - the jesuits...
 
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AlbanyRifles    RE:ww2 Yamato vs Iowa class-Naval History Magazine Article   10/28/2005 11:39:34 AM
Well, they did the article within a historic perspective, i.e., at the tim eof the Battle of the Phillipines. So with theat, that provided 2 task units to fight it out.....IJN had Yamato with 4 cruisers and about 10 detroyers against USN with 2 Iowa Class BBs, 5 cruisers and 10 DDs. Bottomline was the secondary units would fight it out with the American superiority in radar opening fire first to keep the IJN DDs away from the Iowas because of the threat of torpedo fire. The main battle between the Yamato and the Iowas would go the Americans way but not because of the way you might think. The telling difference in this would not be the 18 inch v the 16 inch but the Yamatos six 6 inch versus the Iowas combined 5 inch. The contention was that most of the damage done by surface fire to IJN battelships (i.e. Kirishima v South Dakota) was due to the amoutn of secondaries that the American ships could fire which drenched the superstructure and deck with multiple salvos. What this would result in would be a loss in electrical power adn centralized fire control leaving direct control on each gun mount causing the fire to less and less accurate. The contention was the Yamato would try concentrate on a single Iowa with 2 forward turrets and enagge other with aft. Final outcome was that the Yamato would end up a burning hulk and slowly finished off by torpedos from US DDs, one Iowa heading to the yard with extensive topside damage, and the IJN secondary untis driven away by fires shifted from second Iowa combined with each side losing a few DDs. Sounds like a reasonable scenario to me....
 
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bunkerdestroyer    RE:ww2 Yamato vs Iowa class-Naval History Magazine Article   10/28/2005 5:19:18 PM
apparently I am the only one who believes in the destructive power of the 18.1' shells. The mag. assumes from 1 battle that they will close within range of the 5/6'guns-probably about 13-18k meters. I always have believed that if detected-and with radar and a dd screen, they probably would site each other beyond 30 miles, and thusly, while accuracy might be minimal, with 9 18.1' barrels, I strongly feel a few of the shells will reach their targets at 45000(-) meters, and just 1 shell would do significant damage, probably knocking out the radar and range finding. I also believe that when they got in range of the 16', the yamato could have loosed 5+ salvos-about 45+rds. Even with poor mathamatical odds, at least 2 shells if not more would hit and I have greater faith in her gunnery-I believe 4-5 could have it. If that was the case, which ever ship was on the receiving end would be in trouble...Now at this point, the 2nd BB would be in range and probably would connect quicker than the Yamato would on her, assuming no japense dd or crusier screen got close and distracted her with tp. runs, or even hit her with 100mm/127mm/150mm/203mm rounds...if so, this might be enough to give the yamato time to turn a couple of turrent on her, and at 32000-25000yrs, it would be much easier to hit..... I think it would come down to the escorts and if they were successful in their runs/smoke screens...If the us dd came in, they could not sink the yamato-even with a clean and unchallenged shot/hit of a full spread of TP. With 1 BB burning, and the yamato with a couple of 16' hits, it would be up to the escorts to tip the balance..... and with equal crews, I would think it might be 50.5% to 49.5% in favor of the japense-due to their long lance torpedos-I think had what, twice the range of us torpedos....Though many TP runs were not successful with a hit, they often distracted the target long enough...and if this happened, it gave the Yamato more time. The question is, who would get the most tp hits in? The us BB was alot more suseptible to LL tp hits than the yamato would have been... I guess, with all things concidered, luck would play the deciding factor.........
 
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AlbanyRifles    RE:ww2 Yamato vs Iowa class-Naval History Magazine Article   11/23/2005 9:19:56 AM
BD, The difference is by that stage of the war the Japanese destroyer force was as hell of its former self. Shortage of fuel had severely restricted training while US crews trained continuously. While the US torpedoes were inferior to the US, the US level of gunnery was superior to the Japanese. In addition, the US cruisers also had the same kind of advantage over their Japanese counterparts.
 
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eu4ea    RE:Yamato vs Iowa   11/23/2005 6:25:48 PM
So far lots on guns and radar... Sure, both of those are good - but if I were to pick i'd say the determining factors even in a yamato-iowa engagement would be 3; leadership quality, torpedos and inteligence. On the first one, it's a toss-up; the japaneese were generaly not as good, but there were some real "rude surprises" there, too. There were many examples of this in the Pacific war. Their engagement doctrine - first torpedos, then guns was better, though their strategy was often silly, particularly re: dividing their forces. Their doctrine was truly awful at some things, sp. the obsesion with the "decisive engagement", and using submarines; they had roughly as many (and better) submarines than the Germans, but sank nowhere near the tonnage (under 1/10th), particularly because they insited on engaging battle groups and destroyers - precisely the thing they should have been avoiding... The second one is an undisputed advantage for the Japaneese - the Long Lance had no equivalent in the US side, by a looong strech. It was an awesome weapon, and even Long-lance equipped destroyers could do *real* damage to US capital ships. The third one is another toss-up. Pearl harbour, of course, was an tremedous inteligence triumph for the Japanese (or a US failure, whichever way you want to look at it...) After that, thou, they didnt do nearly as well, and the US had some spectacular triumphs (such as shooting down yamamoto's plane).
 
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PowerPointRanger    RE:Yamato vs Iowa   12/4/2005 7:54:01 PM
I don't think battleships became obsolete so much as impractical. One battleship could consume a large percentage of the steel produced in a country for a year (even the US). For that same amount of steel, one could have produced numerous carriers, cruisers, destroyers, or other badly needed weapons. Yet in battle, the fate of even the best battleship could be decided by cruel fate. A power outage, rudder damage, or engine damage could leave a ship helpless in the face of an enemy fleet. Or a lone submarine could put a torpedo into the side of an unsuspecting battleship. While a battleship might still be very useful (as they were at Guadalcanal and the Leyte), they were easier to sink than replace (which might take 3 years or more). Cruisers were just a more practical size for a surface ship. As for Yamato vs Iowa, I don't doubt that the Iowa would have scored substantially more hits on the Yamato for 4 reasons: 1) Better radar 2) Computer directed fire control (the Iowa-class ships had the first real computer-controlled fire directors) 3) Faster (and thus harder to hit) 4) Better rate of fire While the Yamato guns would have done more damage to an Iowa than the reverse, it's more likely that the Iowa would disable through an accumulation of damage the Yamato before it had the chance for a kill-shot against an Iowa.
 
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