Duel of the Superbattleships

[DicedT]

Yamato vs. USS Iowa. Nice part was I had to chance to get commentary from Jon Parshall, author of the excellent Shattered Sword book on Midway. https://medium.com/war-is-boring/575dd7671214

Michael

[bob48]

Interesting - a good read.

[besilarius]

For techie geeks, there are rumors that the Fire Control space in the USS Massachusetts (Big Mamie) will be made open.
This would be a real surprise because it has never been available prior to this.  Supposedly, it is in the same shape as at the end of the war.
Now looking at cold CRTs and radar repeaters may not be everyone's orgasm, but this could be interesting.
Even if they don't the open parts of the vessel are still an amazing place to visit in Fall River, Mass.

[GDS_Starfury]

someone forgot to mention the Yamatos wave motion gun.  ::)

[Staggerwing]

.
Even if they don't the open parts of the vessel are still an amazing place to visit in Fall River, Mass.

I concur. I visited there a while back and was amazed at the size of the "Big Mamie". There are whole actual museums inside the ship including one that would cause some of the modelers among you to come down with the modeler's equivalent of Florence syndrome due to the sheer number of aircraft on display.

[Staggerwing]

someone forgot to mention the Yamatos wave motion gun.  ::)

That was retrofitted later after the hull was raised from the sea bottom and so doesn't count.

[GDS_Starfury]

There are whole actual museums inside the ship including one that would cause some of the modelers among you to come down with the modeler's equivalent of Florence syndrome due to the sheer number of aircraft on display.

those areas are always my favorites on every ship Ive visited.

[Gusington]

Great article, thank you.

[Gusington]

This is interesting too:

https://medium.com/war-is-boring/8f08a452ddb5

[SgtRock]

I never understand why the IJN never used the Yamato more early on, if they wanted they could have found the fuel from somewhere. Unlike the USN, the Japanese never used their BB's as AAA platforms to screen their carriers , if they did that at Midway, things may have turned out differently. The IJN always kept their BB's with their invasion TF's, maybe they where afraid they shoot down their own planes?

[Staggerwing]

They made some curious decisions in the IJN, perhaps due to a cultural bias requiring victory over 'worthy foes' to be the mark of one's character. For example, why not send their subs after Allied supply ships way out in the eastern Pacific? A lot of the island hopping strategy the Allies used so successfully would have been severely compromised by a lack of timely supplies. Instead, the IJN went after warships almost exclusively. A few damaged or sunken cruisers more or less could never have brought the same rate of return as strangling the fragile allied beachheads and front-line airfields and buying Japan vital time to start bringing home the oil and other resources from the DEI. Ironically, the US Navy's submarines did concentrate on Japanese transport shipping and pretty much starved the Japanese economy and industry of it's ability to continue on a war footing.

As an aside, Admiral Karl Doenitz of U-Boot fame may have been spared from the gallows at Nuremberg because his legal defense team was able to convincingly argue that the USN Submarine Service followed many of the same practices involving civilian maritime shipping that the Kreigsmarine's U-boot arm did.