Why the Submarine is the unsung hero at Midway -- true story.

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by nikimcbee

If i recall, the Yamato was brand new. She would have eaten our fleet for lunch (and want seconds).

The only battleships in the Pearl Harbor strike force were Hiei and Kirishima. Yamato wasn't even in service, being commissioned into service on the 16 of December.

It wouldn't have mattered, because almost all the US battleships were powered down and couldn't have used their main batteries.

[Torplexed]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

The only battleships in the Pearl Harbor strike force were Hiei and Kirishima. Yamato wasn't even in service, being commissioned into service on the 16 of December.

Even worse she wasn't deemed operational until May 27th, 1942 due to delays and setbacks in training her crew, particularly on the new 18.1 inch guns.

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Torplexed

Even worse she wasn't deemed operational until May 27th, 1942 due to delays and setbacks in training her crew, particularly on the new 18.1 inch guns.

I think this is a good time to mention that the super-ship has always been a myth. Yamato would almost certainly have had no trouble at all with any of the battleships present at Pearl, but seven of them, even though most dated to World War One, would probably have not boded well even for a ship that new and powerful.

[Torplexed]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

I think this is a good time to mention that the super-ship has always been a myth.

Yamato was always an eye-catcher but her reputation never lived up to the myth. In many respects her size worked against her. In late 1942, the IJN toyed with idea of sending her down to the Solomons to bombard Henderson Field on Guadalcanal but couldn't make it work due to fuel and ammo constraints. You could have Yamato parked in a developed base like Truk, but if you send her out on one Tokyo Express run to Henderson field staging out of Simpson Harbor in Rabaul, she with her consorts would burn as much bunker grade fuel as the Combined Fleet would be allocated in a month and it took multiple runs to get anything done. Given the logistical strains on Japan's merchant fleet on just keeping the four old Kongo class battleships at Rabaul fully replenished in what had been a colonial backwater port before the war was proving a headache. Plus, there were probably not proper facilities for reloading Yamato's massive 18.1 inch guns, each round weighing 3,200 pounds. The Japanese were not adept at setting at up new logistical staging areas to support the consolidation of new territories. In terms of base construction and improvement it took them years to do what Allied forces could do in a month. The result was that in the primitive South Pacific a "super-ship" like Yamato was often constrained in where she could go and what she could do.