Yamato
 

Yesterday, Feb. 4th 1942, i was in the south west of Luzon. The radio told me that a enemy task force was heading south towards my postion, so i moved in. The sonar picked em up heading directly for me. Soon the lookouts called the sightings. A contact report to ComSubPac generated the answer to go and get em. A last sharp look reavelled some really high command structures but i dived to persicopedepth before the ships came near enough for classification. When they were near enough i nearly swallowed my tongue: the center column was led by a Yamato followed by an early Ise and another Yamato bringing up the rear. The western column consisted of two CAs and one CL, the eastern of one CA and two CLs, the usual escorts were snooping around, too. I decided to go for the leading Yamato. The four bow tubes fired, all ahead flank, make new heading 80° (by then the first torp hit just below the command structure, the other 3 hit between the cs and the funnel) and out with the aft tubes. Those four hit in the area around the funnel. Now the escorts were steaming in. The last look i had on the Yamato showed a slight list to bord and the ship was happily ziczacing away.
Great, 8 torps wasted for no gain. Maneovering my boat in the seafloor to evade the escorts couldn't make my mood any worse.

When I had been "test-sinking" a Yamato, after hitting with 8 torps it stayed on the surface for half an hour. Then some explosions and went under.

Waved with screws for goodbye.

It took all the 10 torpedoes I had to sink the Yamato I found in the Truk lagoon in April 1943, and even then it was just because of a lucky hit in the forward magazines with the last torp. By that point her bow was touching the bottom because I flooded the forward ballast tanks with one torpedo, and she was listing probably 5 degrees, but she wasn't definitely looking like she'd go down in the near future. Tough sob :up:

Yamato
 

Interesting link here which helps explain why the Yamato (assuming its modelled correctly) is a tough nut to crack.
http://www.pacificwrecks.com/ships/ijn/yamato.html

I draw your attention to the section entitled "Yamato's Torpedo Defense"

:hmm:

In real life it took about 10 torpedoes and around a dozen 1,000 lb bombs to bring her down.

Even then she remained afloat for a period of time it was only when her power magazine lit off did she explode, split up, and sink.

So it sounds like yall are witnessing pretty realistic behaviour.

Yamato wasn't deemed operational until the end of May, and never left the Inland Sea until she sortied with the Midway forces, so you shouldn't even have seen her.

Might want to add that when she first saw action she turned tail and avoided the very confrontation she was designed for.

They had no real choice since Yamamoto separated the "Main Body" from the real main body (the carriers) by so much they were not possibly mutually supporting. As a result, even at flank, there was no way the BB group could have engaged the USN without a day of getting bombed.

The failure was in putting them so far behind the CVs. Had they been mixed, perhaps some would have drawn bombs instead of a CV, at the very least their AAA might have helped.

Well, she was turning tail to avoid getting whacked by torpedoes from a DE

I once sunk five Yamoto Battleships with the AA Gun :cool:

No you're thinking of the Battle off Samar when tater meant Midway. She turned tail both times.