Aerial image of battleship Yamato discovered

NHK Online ^ | 03 Jul 06 | Unkn

[GATOR NAVY]

A Japanese museum has obtained a rare photo of Japan's World War Two battleship the Yamato shortly before it departed for the East China Sea, where it was sunk by US warplanes.

The aerial photo was taken by a US reconnaissance plane on April 6, 1945, off Tokuyama in Yamaguchi prefecture, western Japan, five hours before the Yamato made its final sortie.

The Yamato Museum in Kure City, Hiroshima Prefecture, recently obtained a digital image of this photo, which is stored in the US National Archives in Washington.

The Yamato, the world's largest-ever battleship, sank on its way to Okinawa after being attacked by US naval aircraft on April 7, 1945.

The image shows the Yamato preparing for departure, and six other escort vessels, including the light cruiser Yahagi, which were anchored around the Yamato.

The Yamato was remodeled several times to counter US air attacks. A researcher says the picture is the first photo that clearly shows anti-aircraft guns installed near the Yamato's stern.

The Yamato Museum Director, Kazushige Todaka, says the photo is important since there is a lack of data on the battleship shortly before it sank.

[yawningotter]

One thing to remember about Kurita's force is that it turned around for several hours after withstanding numerous attacks from Halsey's carrier aircraft. Halsey thought that he didn't need to worry about Kurita and Nishimura any more because they were out of the battle. That is why he went after Ozawa when his scouts spotted the carrier force. He didn't realize that Kurita had turned back again and was closing in on the beaches and transports. That said, Halsey still should have stayed closer to the landing fleet and let the typically complex Japanese plan play itself out, then pound them in detail. He especially didn't need the battleships against a force that lacked similar firepower.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

It looks like ATRAGON!

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057215/



It is so secret no photo is available!

[GATOR NAVY]

Maybe Halsey himself didn't know Kurita had turned around, but his staff definitely received reports suggesting he had, and they refused to wake Halsey up and inform him. Would he have acted on the information? I think that is one of the more interesting "what ifs" at Leyte Gulf.

Somewhere I read that Halsey didn't form TF 34 because it included his flagship New Jersey, and he would have either had to shift flagships, a time consuming process, or miss the destruction of the Japanese carriers.

[nuke rocketeer]

Yeah, there was some discussion about making the Illinois a missile ship before it was scrapped.

[rmlew]

So, battleship-battleship? Didn't happen often, other than Leyte Gulf where US firepower slaughtered the Japanese by crossing the tee. (Aided by side-shooting torpedoes from smaller ambusher from the side.)

December 26, 1943-The Scharnhorst is sighted by the British battleship Duke of York, and is sunk by the British ship at roughly 7:45 p.m., after several hours of fighting. Of the entire crew, only 36 of the Scharnhorst’s crew would survive.

Of course, I would add the following engagements:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Port_Arthur Battle of Port Arthur at the start of the Russo-Japanese War. Although tactically inconclusive, the Russian Pacific fleet was bottled in the harbor, where it later succumbed to Japanese naval and land artillary attack.
In the Battle of Tsushima, the Russian Baltic fleet was all but destroyed. The Russians lost 7 Battleships, with only one surviving!

And then there was that little incident of Denmark during World War I, called the Battle of Jutland.

The British Battlecruiser HMS Lion was hit thrice by 11-inch shells and survived. The SMS Seydlitz likewise survived a number of hits, including 15 inch shells. The SMS Derfflinger was hit 21 times at Jutland .Fortunately, for her crew, the Germans armored their ships better than the Brits, and the British shells were poor penetrators.

[rmlew]

The DD-21 Zumwalts with their 6-inch guns, which may eventually be replaced by mass drivers, seem analogous.

[Robert A Cook PE]

Thank you! Had forgotten Scharnhorst-Duke of York: my error.

Russo-Japanese War is hard to compare with even WWI tactics and fire power because that era's fire-control and "mix" of pre-dreadnought/early dreadnought/post-dreadnought ships was so screwed up.

I considered Jutland w/r battleship-battlecruiser: as you pointed out, with the exception of the HMS Lion, the BC's lost in a stand-up fight. So many were lost catastrophically after so few hits that the entire concept of a "battlecruiser" should have been discarded: instead the idea lived on. And the battlecruiser of WWII proved just as disastrous in WWII.

[Robert A Cook PE]

Battlecruiser damage report on Seydlitz: Damage even in Dogger Banks combat was extensive: According to

http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/sh-fornv/germany/gersh-s/seydlitz.htm

SMS Seydlitz (Battle Cruiser, 1913-1919)

Seydlitz, a 24,988-ton battle cruiser built at Hamburg, Germany, was commissioned in May 1913. She served in the North Sea and Baltic areas prior to the outbreak of World War I in early August 1914. During that conflict she took part in two important battles with the British Navy, receiving serious damage in each. On 24 January 1915 Seydlitz was flagship of the German battle cruiser force in the battle of the Dogger Bank, losing two gun turrets and nearly 160 crewmen in a major ammunition fire. In the battle of Jutland, on 1 June 1916, she was struck by a destroyer's torpedo and some two-dozen large shells. Four of her five twin 28cm gun turrets were hit, with two suffering massive fires. Seydlitz's forward hull was largely filled with water, reducing her freeboard at the bow to almost nothing, and she made port with great difficulty. After repairs lasting through the summer, the ship returned to the fleet and remained active until the 11 November 1918 Armistice ended the fighting. Ten days later she steamed to Scapa Flow to be interned and was scuttled there by her crew on 21 June 1919. Her wreck was raised in 1928 and scrapped in 1930.

[Robert A Cook PE]

Battlecruiser damage: Granted the SMS Derfflinger survived Jutland after extensive hits, but should we "score" simply making it back to port (after the battle) as a ship worth constructing? Were her shells valuable enough in the battle to be worth the tradeoff with her loss due to damage, even though she survived the battle? Would a more heavily amored (but probably slower) battleship have been more effective in her place? Or would her replacement (the theorectically slower battleship) not been able to get in position to fire to fire at all?

World War 1 Service:
Derfflinger
Part of I Scouting Group
16 December 1914 bombarded Hartlepool.
24 January 1915 took part in the Battle of Dogger Bank.
February 1915 repairs.
28 June 1915 turbine breakdown.
24 April 1916 took part in bombardment of Yarmouth and Lowestoft.
1916 took part in the Battle of Jutland. Hit by 10 15 inch, 1 13.5 inch, 10 12 inch, 2 6 inch and 7 4 inch shells with 157 killed and 26 injured. Took part in sinking of HMS Invincible and HMS Queen Mary firing 385 12 inch rounds.
October 1916 Repaired at Kiel.
Post WW1 interned and scuttled at Scapa Flow.

[Lee'sGhost]

Gee, you'd think that the "Show Boat" would be included.

[Gator101]

Wasn't that a Grumman Hellcat?

It may have been. I knew it was one of the 2 'cats but I couldn't remember which so had to guess.

[Gator101]

I am wondering if that explosion might have been the SS Robert Rowan - A liberty ship carrying ammo that was bombed by German aircraft off the coast of Italy. She burned for a while before the explosion and the crew was able to evacuate. It also allowed the explosion to be filmed since everybody knew what was coming.

[Robert A Cook PE]

Port Chicago, Mount Hood, Robert Rowans, and Black Tom pier (all massive ship explosions) I did not realize that the Port Chicago ammo ship blast was used by the Manhatten Project to estimate their nuke warhead blast dynamics.

Rowans is the only one in the Med: it's the most likely culprit since the others were after dark (US-based Black Tom Pier and Port Chicago), at sea (SS Luckenback) or sudden - no warning - events unlikely to have been photo'ed.

Reference:

http://www.portchicago.org/lastwave/chapters/LastWave_Ch8.pdf

[patton]

You would be surprised what events we use to validate models (ie, Mt. Saint Helens)

[Robert A Cook PE]

This was the Liberty ship Harvey disaster in Bari that I was thinking of: it's defeinitely different from the Rowan explosion.

Note that this reference confirms that the Arabs tried to use poison gas warfare AGAISNT the jews in Isreal BEFORE the British gave them the Palestinian mandate after the war!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poison_gas#Chemical_warfare_in_World_War_II

On the night of December 2, 1943, German JU-88 bombers attacked the port of Bari in Southern Italy, sinking several American ships - among them John Harvey, which was carrying mustard gas intended for use in retaliation by the Allies if German forces initiated gas warfare. The presence of the gas was highly classified, and authorities ashore had no knowledge of it - which increased the number of fatalities, since physicians, who had no idea that they were dealing with the effects of mustard gas, prescribed treatment proper for those suffering from exposure and immersion.

The whole affair was kept secret at the time and for many years after the war (in the opinion of some, there was a deliberate and systematic cover-up). According to the U.S. military account, "Sixty-nine deaths were attributed in whole or in part to the mustard gas, most of them American merchant seamen" [3] out of 628 mustard gas military casualties[4]. Civilian casualties were not recorded. Part of the confusion and controversy derives from the fact that the German attack was highly destructive and lethal in itself, also apart from the accidental additional effects of the gas (it was nicknamed "The Little Pearl Harbor"), and attribution of the causes of death between the gas and other causes is far from easy. The affair is the subject of two books: Disaster at Bari by Glenn B. Infield and Nightmare in Bari: The World War II Liberty Ship Poison Gas Disaster and Coverup by Gerald Reminick.

Although chemical weapons were not intentionally deployed on a large scale during World War II, there were some recorded uses of them by the Axis Powers, when retaliation was not feared:

The Japanese used mustard gas and the recently-developed blister agent Lewisite against Chinese troops. During these attacks, the Japanese also employed biological warfare by intentionally spreading cholera, dysentery, typhoid, bubonic plague, and anthrax. As of 2005, 60 years after the end of the war, canisters that were abandoned by Japan in their hasty retreat are still being dug up in construction sites, causing many injuries and deaths.
In 1944, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husayni, the senior Islamic religious authority of the Palestinian Arabs and close ally of Adolf Hitler, sponsored an unsuccessful chemical warfare assault on the Jewish community in Palestine. Five parachutists were supplied with maps of Tel Aviv, canisters of a German–manufactured "fine white powder," and instructions from the Mufti to dump chemicals into the Tel Aviv water system. District police commander Fayiz Bey Idrissi later recalled, "The laboratory report stated that each container held enough poison to kill 25,000 people, and there were at least ten containers." [5]
The Nazis used the insecticide Zyklon B, which contains hydrogen cyanide, to kill large numbers of Jews and other victims in concentration camps such as Auschwitz and Majdanek during the Holocaust.

[Betis70]

When I was in the Boy Scouts, we got to spend a night on the USS Massachusetts. As a kid it was great fun to run around such a huge ship.

[Redleg Duke]

That was the Shinano, the third ship in the Yamato class that was redesigned and built as an aircraft carrier.

The Yamato and the Musashi both were operational for more than a year and had significant water underthem before they were sunk.

[edzo4]

they still have camping there

http://www.battleshipcove.org/camping.htm

[Betis70]

Wow, thanks for the info.

[oyez]

I believe that all our battleships are of WWII vintage.

That is a fact. They are now is special storage, as museums. Go see one. Its the experience of a life time. If you can't find a battleship, see your nearest vintage WWII ship.