Posted on 08/15/2016 6:48:21 AM PDT by C19fan
Can we imagine a scenario in which two titans of World War II, the German battleship Bismarck and the Japanese battleship Yamato, would come into conflict? Difficult, but not impossible. Had the Battle of the Marne gone the other way, Germany might have forced France from the World War I in the early fall of 1914, just as it did in the spring of 1940.
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Yamato had bigger guns and more armor. Would have easily sunk the Bismark.
Well that's a generous statement. Maybe I'm wrong, but I have serious doubts that WW2 Japan would have extended such grace to the enemy.
When was the last time you guys got laid?
LMFAO!
German naval officers were superior, the Japanese ship was far superior.
Based on the Japanese naval performance in World War I, the Japanese would have probably run after they rendered the German ship a wreck.
Typo. Should read - ‘in World War II’.
The value of the Bismarck was that it took the entire British fleet to locate them. A relatively modest number of aircraft cut her speed before surface ships caught up with her.
The location of the Yamato was never in doubt. We had complete air superiority and lost visual contact with the Yamato only at brief intervals from when it left port at Tokuyama.
It was under continuous attack from three carrier groups whereas the Bismarck was merely slown down by attacks from a single carrier, the Ark Royal which allowed surface ships led by the Battleship King George V to finally overtake the Bismarck and finish it off.
+2.
A better use of resources would have been to build 2,054 20.3 ton Mark III tanks instead of the 41,700 ton Bismarck. England may have shifted there resources had Germany done this but the extra tanks would have been more useful to Germany at the start of the war than the Bismarck was.
To be accurate, it wasn’t RADAR that changed the relative night fighting capability...it was the correct EMPLOYMENT and USE of radar that changed that.
We had radar at the Battle of Savo Island in August 1942, and the Japanese had none.
We however, had not the slightest idea on how to employ it and interpret it effectively. Officers either had no idea how to interpret it or were completely uninterested in using it, mistrusting it because they didn’t understand it, which was a more egregious issue. They had developed no effective tactics for its use.
It took Admiral Willis Augustus “Ching” Lee, who came on the scene in the Guadalcanal campaign in the Fall of 1942 to change that, and it was never the same afterwards.
After that, we wouldn’t go to sea without it.
Bismarck had better fire control than the Yamato.
Yamato had bigger guns, heavier armor, and longer ranges.
It would be closer to a ‘fair’ fight than either side would like.
Both of ‘em would have been in deep trouble if they ran into an Iowa.
If Nagumo(sp) and Halsey had traded places we would have lost the war in the Pacific.
Bismarck:
8 - 15” main guns Max effective range 38,880 yds
1.8 rounds per minute per gun on average.
projectile weight 1,764 lb
Armor 12.6” belt and 3.9 to 4.7” deck
Speed 30 knots
9 - 18” main guns Max effective range 40,000 yds
1.5 rounds per minute per gun on average,
Projectile weight 3,306 lb
Armor 16” belt and 8 to 9 “ deck
Speed 27 knots
Bismarck’s guns could penetrate Yamato’s deck and belt armor out to 20,000 yards. While Yamato’s guns could penetrate Bismarck’s deck and belt armor out to 35,000 yards.
In essence Bismarck was built as a commerce raider and not to fight battle ships, on the other hand Yamato was and could conceivably sit at maximum range and beat the Bismark to death.
Dumbest match up ever. One volley from the Yamato would have finished the Bismark.
Biplanes trashed the Bismark. It would not have lasted 20 minutes against what the Yamato got hit by.
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