USS IOWA VS Japan's Yamato battleship

[puma guy]

Found this while surfing the net. Thought it was interesting. BTW What is MOA extrapolated to 25,0000 yards or how about 36,0000 yards on a 200 X 200 yard target?

If the USS Iowa went toe-to-toe with the Yamato, who would have the advantage and why?

This is the front turret face of the Yamato class battleship. The armor is 26″ thick:

You will notice a nice, even, 16″ hole in it.

Here is the back side:

So, Yamato’s thickest armor cannot defend against the 16″ 2700# armor piecing shell fired by the North Carolina, South Dakota, and Iowa battleship classes. Yamato’s belt armor = 16″ and deck armor = 8–9″

This is the dispersion table of USS Iowa. Target is 200 x 200 yards:

At 25,000 yards, due to the curvature of the Earth, Iowa would be hull-down on the horizon to Yamato. At 36,000 yards, Yamato wouldn’t even see Iowa’s gun flashes.

[Ruark]

I think you've been watching those videos by "Battleship New Jersey." I love that guy's YouTubes, they're absolutely fascinating.

[srothstein]

Just for grins, it appears that the guns on the Iowa were accurate to about 2 secs of angle. MOA is one inch per 100 yards. That works out to about 250 inches at 25,000 yards. I used a rough estimate from the graph of about 700 yards spread at 25,000 yards range. That is about 25,200 inches. Since one MOA is 250 inches, that works out to about 100 MOA or just shy of 2 seconds.

And given the potential for an attack on the Pentagon by the Iowa (the Navy does hate those guys in charge), 2 seconds seems from the graph as being close enough.

[glazer1972]

Nothing beats the fire control system on the Iowa Class.

[powerboatr]

Found this while surfing the net. Thought it was interesting. BTW What is MOA extrapolated to 25,0000 yards or how about 36,0000 yards on a 200 X 200 yard target?

If the USS Iowa went toe-to-toe with the Yamato, who would have the advantage and why?

This is the front turret face of the Yamato class battleship. The armor is 26″ thick:

You will notice a nice, even, 16″ hole in it.

Here is the back side:

So, Yamato’s thickest armor cannot defend against the 16″ 2700# armor piecing shell fired by the North Carolina, South Dakota, and Iowa battleship classes. Yamato’s belt armor = 16″ and deck armor = 8–9″

This is the dispersion table of USS Iowa. Target is 200 x 200 yards:

At 25,000 yards, due to the curvature of the Earth, Iowa would be hull-down on the horizon to Yamato. At 36,000 yards, Yamato wouldn’t even see Iowa’s gun flashes.

thanks
that is impressive hole in the 26" armor.

[der Teufel]

An interesting book: The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_ ... an_Sailors

It describes a naval battle off the Philippines in which the Japanese attacked a US group of escort carriers (Taffy 3) defended only by a few DDs and DEs. One interesting part is the description of the fire control on the American ships. By that time, even the little DDs and DEs had fire control radar, and were able to close and score hits on Japanese cruisers & other ships. Eventually the US ships got pretty much blown away, but they managed to stall the Japanese until most of the CVEs were able to flee.

If I recall correctly, the fire control radar was built by Ford. It was all analog (no digital stuff back then) and even compensated for the curvature of the earth between shooter and target.

SO, I'd say the Iowa class battleships would have a very distinct advantage…
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[wil]

Found this while surfing the net. Thought it was interesting. BTW What is MOA extrapolated to 25,0000 yards or how about 36,0000 yards on a 200 X 200 yard target?

If the USS Iowa went toe-to-toe with the Yamato, who would have the advantage and why?

This is the front turret face of the Yamato class battleship. The armor is 26″ thick:

You will notice a nice, even, 16″ hole in it.

Here is the back side:

So, Yamato’s thickest armor cannot defend against the 16″ 2700# armor piecing shell fired by the North Carolina, South Dakota, and Iowa battleship classes. Yamato’s belt armor = 16″ and deck armor = 8–9″

This is the dispersion table of USS Iowa. Target is 200 x 200 yards:

At 25,000 yards, due to the curvature of the Earth, Iowa would be hull-down on the horizon to Yamato. At 36,000 yards, Yamato wouldn’t even see Iowa’s gun flashes.

first thing. Those two pictures are the results of firing at that armor from essentially point blank range. When they backed the range up 16" rounds didn't penetrate.

At the distance which would probably be the range of engagement, Iowa class would not be able to penetrate the yamato class boats.

Yamato vrs Iowa class? Yamato was built to win that fight as that was the dominant thinking during that era. Everyone though it would be battleship vrs battleship, owing to the 1920's naval treaty Japan was limited to far less capital ships than the US & Britain. Hence the Japanese figured they'd build something bigger than everything else which could out range and out penetrate everything in sight. Hence the Yamato class boats.

At the time nobody understood what an aircraft carrier could to do a battleship despite Billy Mitchells tests of the 1920's.
Japan built aircraft carriers as a way around the restrictions of the 1920's treaty and unknowingly built themselves a combat advantage, then understood what they had after the results of the taranto air raid.

[oohrah]

An interesting book: The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_ ... an_Sailors

It describes a naval battle off the Philippines in which the Japanese attacked a US group of escort carriers (Taffy 3) defended only by a few DDs and DEs. One interesting part is the description of the fire control on the American ships. By that time, even the little DDs and DEs had fire control radar, and were able to close and score hits on Japanese cruisers & other ships. Eventually the US ships got pretty much blown away, but they managed to stall the Japanese until most of the CVEs were able to flee.

If I recall correctly, the fire control radar was built by Ford. It was all analog (no digital stuff back then) and even compensated for the curvature of the earth between shooter and target.

SO, I'd say the Iowa class battleships would have a very distinct advantage…
--

An interesting footnote to that battle regarding the USS Johnston, commanded by LCdr Ernest Evans, who got the fight diverted from the carriers. "Not waiting for orders, Commander Evans broke formation and went on the offensive by ordering Johnston to speed directly toward the enemy". Evans was the first Native American to attend the Naval Academy, Class of '31, and the first Native American to command a ship. He was awarded the MOH posthumously, and there was a destroyer named after him.

[wil]

An interesting book: The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_ ... an_Sailors

It describes a naval battle off the Philippines in which the Japanese attacked a US group of escort carriers (Taffy 3) defended only by a few DDs and DEs. One interesting part is the description of the fire control on the American ships. By that time, even the little DDs and DEs had fire control radar, and were able to close and score hits on Japanese cruisers & other ships. Eventually the US ships got pretty much blown away, but they managed to stall the Japanese until most of the CVEs were able to flee.

If I recall correctly, the fire control radar was built by Ford. It was all analog (no digital stuff back then) and even compensated for the curvature of the earth between shooter and target.

SO, I'd say the Iowa class battleships would have a very distinct advantage…
--

those boats didn't make that fight owing to fire control, moreso they used their speed advantage to run underneath the main guns on the battleships they were facing.
Secondly the Japanese initially used AP rounds which went right through the tin cans owing to those boats not being armored enough to detonate the AP rounds. The same for the CVE's, they took AP hits from the Japanese BB's and the AP rounds went right through them without going bang, hulls and flight decks were too thin to detonate the rounds.

Japanese switched to HE rounds and those tin cans got tore apart. The Japanese cruisers were the boats that really did the tin cans in with HE rounds as they could adjust fast enough to target the tin cans and depress low enough to score hits.

Until that, the tin cans used the Japanese dye marker rounds to know where the fire was aimed and basically played dodge-ball with the incoming fire from the big boats.

Also I think it was admiral Kurita who was in command and screwed up his battle formation from the get-go, which really helped the tin cans survive as long as they did.

Also air attacks from the CVE's made Kurita think he was actually facing task force 58 carriers and he knew what air attacks could do, time for him to leave.