Sinking the Supership

[fred8615]

The program Nova on PBS is showing a new episode that recounts the last mission, and sinking of, the Japanese battleship Yamato tonight. For those who have it, it's also going to be in high-definition. There's a web page about the episode here:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/supership/

[Overkill]

Awsome! Thanks for letting us know.

[jason10mm]

It was a pretty good documentary. Gotta feel the pain of those sailors heading out alone towards certain doom.

One thing I found odd was the comment that the ship had no (or at least few) surviving plans and almost no photographs. How then did anyone manage to make an "Anatomy of the Ship" about it? From just the single one I have (VII u-boats) the level of detail is fanatical and would require lots of blueprints, photos, etc. Guess I'll have to buy the book and fnd out :P

Edit-Oh, never mind. A quick check of amazon reveals that the book IS sketchy about interior details and most of it is reverse engineered drawing of exterior structures from photographs. Also costs $100 since it is OOP!

[fred8615]

Originally Posted by jason10mm

It was a pretty good documentary.

I was beginning to wonder if anyone here had watched it, since no one said anything.

Frankly, I was extremely disappointed in it. They seemed to want you to believe the Yamato was the *only* ship in her class, as absolutely no mention was made of her sisters, Musashi and Shinano, or their sinkings which predated Yamato's. The theme of the program seemed to be not only why she sank so fast (which was a legitmate question, since it took Musashi hours to sink), but why she sank at all!

Although they did mention her participation in the Midway operation, no mention was made of any other sorties, including Leyte Gulf, which was the only time she fired her guns at anything except aircraft. How could they not mention that?!?

There were other problems I had with the show, but these were the biggest. Overall, it was not only uninformative, but downright misleading! I expected much better from Nova.

[Subnuts]

Originally Posted by jason10mm

Edit-Oh, never mind. A quick check of amazon reveals that the book IS sketchy about interior details and most of it is reverse engineered drawing of exterior structures from photographs. Also costs $100 since it is OOP!

There's about 20 used and new copies of the book available here, starting at $30:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...glance&s=books

[TLAM Strike]

Originally Posted by fred8615

I was beginning to wonder if anyone here had watched it, since no one said anything.

<snip>

I agree with you fred8615, it had a few good points but it needed to have its facts straitened out. It’s worth watching but it’s not the best documentary to come out of NOVA.