Week 12 [21-27.01.19] Yamato and Musashi - Biggest battleships in history

Yamato and Mushashi were the biggest battleships ever created. There were once symbols of the military might of the Japanese Empire and I would like to present you these amazing ships.

As it was said at the beginning, Yamato and Mushashi were battleships. For these people, who are unfamiliar with the types of warships, I will try to explain this briefly. Battleships were descendants of sailing ships of the line from XIX century. It was  the strongest and biggest class of ships, designed to provide devastating fire power.  One of the first “modern” battleships was British Dreadnought from  1906 which set pattern for all later constructions.

The main conception was to replace a huge amount of guns with a few cannons, but with outstanding fire power and range and to cover everything with thick steel arm or.

No other warships had so much armour as battleships. However, steel is relatively a heavy material (the weight of a square metre of steel of thickness about 10cm is more than a  metric ton), therefore only the most important parts of the ship could be protected with the toughest armour. All the others, vital parts were normally locked in a steel “chest”, called an armoured citadel. In the photo below you can see an armour protecting command centre on the U.S.S. New Jersey, an American battleship. The thickness  of the walls is 430 mm.

Battleships from World War I were usually armed with 203-305 mm calibre cannons (calibre of cannon is the diameter of a barrel). As the result of the arms race before World War II, guns were significantly improved, so that they could destroy stronger armoured targets from the greatest distance. In the photography below you can see apogee of cannons development, the main artillery on a battleship Yamato. Certainly, the effectiveness of an artillery system is influenced by many factors like barrel parameters, rate of fire, accuracy and range.

Yamato and Mushashi were the greatest battleships in almost all categories (size, mass, armour and cannons calibre). One could think that they were results of some sick tendency to build enormous war machines (the bigger – the better), but in fact they were created as an outcome of detailed planning. Before World War II, battleships dominated the oceans and the role of planes and aircraft carriers was secondary. What is more, the most important Japanese rival, and later its enemy,  was the United States. This country had far more developed industry and economy than Japan, however, the size of American ships was limited by the width of the Panama Canal. Taking this into account, Japanese decided that they should build less, but more powerful battleships to handle the U.S. Navy.

Yamato class battleships were enormous, in length over 263 metres (Yamato placed vertically would be taller than the Palace of Culture and Science which height is only 237 metres) and width over 40 meters, they displacement was about 70 000 metric tons. They were powered by 4 steam turbines which combined power was about 150 000 shaft horsepower. Steam was produced by 12 boilers. Ships had four propellers, each 6 metres in diameter and they had a range over 7200 nautical miles (13 334 km – enough to cross entire the Pacific Ocean).

At the end of war, Yamato and Musashi were moving fortresses ridden with cannons - they had about 200 guns and 162 of them were 25 mm anti-aircraft guns. However, the most important was the main artillery. It was consisted of nine 460 mm cannons, the greatest calibre ever installed on the warship. 
In the picture below you can see one of the main turrets. Each of them had the mass over 2774 metric tons.

For comparison, below you can see a Polish destroyer ORP Błyskawica which displacement is 2144 metric tons. Yes, the whole ship weighs about 600 tons less than a single Yamato turret.

The following an impressive fact about these 460 mm cannons was their range. Everything in the 42 km radius could be annihilated. Each shell had the mass over 1 460 kg, in total it was 13 140 kg of steel and explosives hitting the target with the velocity of 475 m/s. In the next picture you can see what would be in a range of these cannons if we had Yamato in our school.

Yamato class battleships armour was impressive as well. About 33% of their mass, which means 23 000 tons, was face-hardened steel armour. The main belt was 410 mm thick (one of the most famous tanks of World War II, German Tiger I had 100 mm the front armour) and turrets were protected by 650 mm steel plating. As it was said before, these battleship were supposed to fight battles one versus many, therefore they had be almost indestructible.

Yamato and Musashi never had chance to prove their effectiveness. During World War II planes turned out to be highly efficient at sinking these steel behemoths.

Musashi sank on 24th October 1944 during a battle of Leyte Gulf. It was attacked by many waves of US airplanes and it was hit by 19 torpedoes and 20 bombs before sinking. For comparison, a British battleship Renown was hit by 5 torpedoes which sank it.

Yamato sank on 7th April 1945 during an operation Ten-go (which was literally a suicidal mission). It was attacked by 280 airplanes which caused an explosion of the main ammunition magazines for 460 mm bow turrets. Blast was so powerful that Yamato was literally torn apart. Battle took place over 160 km from Kyūshū, which residents could observe 6 km high cloud of smoke and ashes, presented on the picture below.

1. Have you ever heard about Yamato or Musashi?

2. Are you keen on World War II or on history in general?  

3. Yamato and Musashi are one of my favourite battleships. Do you have any favourite vehicles (ships, planes, tanks, cars or anything – they don't  have to be connected to World War II)?

Sources:
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamato-class_battleship
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_battleship_Yamato
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_battleship_Musashi
4. http://www.muzeummw.pl/files/D85B1036.JPG
5. http://i.imgur.com/j4g0k0I.jpg