Designing the Yamato - What do you mean almost yet another Nelson type?

foreign [Music] welcome everybody to this video kindly sponsored by World of Warships sadly all of the completed Yamato class were sent to the bottom during World War II so he can't have them around as Museum ships but if you want to explore a digital copy you can of course do so in the floating digital Museum that is World of Warships and both in the game now and coming up in the near future are also some of the preliminary designs which we're going to be discussing later today in game terms we've also got the 12.8 update coming along soon which will be the World of Warships eighth anniversary and of course every update comes with new ships and this one also comes with some more Graphics as well so if you enjoy warming up your home with the output of your GPU you can play World of Warships and do that and of course you can try and change history if you manage to get to Yamato which is a tier 10 Battleship you can try and keep from happening to your ship what's happening to this one on screen so if you want to start playing you can use the link in the description below along with the code warships to receive a starter pack containing 500 doubloons 2 million credit minutes seven days premium account time and after you've played 15 battles you also get a free ship of the ones that you can take I personally would go for Dante algeri but that's because I have a weakness for Italian battleships so thanks again once more to World of Warships for sponsoring this video and now on to how the Yamato was designed the Yamato class remained the largest battleships ever constructed at least by displacement the iOS are longer fair enough but like many battleships of the 1930s quite how they got to their final form is something of a convoluted story the Imperial Japanese Navy prepared its Battleship designs in numbered project series projects that started with a were battleships B were battle Cruisers C were Cruisers D was an obsolete letter they used for small cruises in the late 19th century e was used for small non-frontline warships like suit sloops and F was four destroyers carriers got stuck with the letter G and so it went on each number appended to the letter designated a design series that was supposed to adhere to a basic set of performance statistics so for example the torsa class it started out with a115 a design of thirty four thousand seven hundred tons carrying eight 16-inch guns and ended with the a127 series of designs which were nearly 40 000 tons and armed with 10 16-inch guns following this various designs were proposed rattling away through the numbers until you get to a140 the number that will be assigned to the design series that would become the Yamato class the projects during the interval period included a number of 35 000 tonne replacement designs for the Congo and Fuso classes in the event that the capital ship construction that had been paused in with the Washington Naval treaty began again in the early 1930s as per that treaty which had put a 10-year limit on it however the signing of the first London Naval treaty put paid to that particular window and then the rise to power of the highly militaristic elements of the Japanese government in the early 1930s meant that instead of looking to replace their Congo and Fuso classes with 35 000 ton designs the Imperial Japanese Navy began to look to solutions that would allow them to win a war with their main rival the USA whilst retaining their older ships and simply supplementing them with newer ones now when it came to this the Japanese Navy's Admirals could run the Lanchester equations as well as anyone else briefly this is a set of equations whereby the outcome of a ranged combat engagement whether that be on land on sea or in the air can be theoretically calculated based on the number of units on each side along with their Firepower a more detailed discussion of these laws is probably a video in and of itself but essentially if all else was equal the chance of Victory or defeat was dependent on numbers which in and of itself is not a remarkable concept but with these equations the difference in numbers increase the chances of Victory or defeat by a square Factor rather than linearly so whilst a six versus five battle still at least had a side with five ships having a decent shot at winning eight versus five engagement was so massively weighted against the smaller side that they might as well not bother far more than just the 60 basic margin of superiority would suggest on a linear scale but the Japanese Navy the Lanchester equation said that a theoretical 15 Vs 10 capital ship battle assuming that both sides got all of their battleships Into The Fray was a lost cause battle Doctrine in theory would work to close this gap down to a margin which was a little bit more acceptable but that assumed that the US Navy either wouldn't get lucky and or destroy one or more Japanese ships early in the final battle and given that four of the Japanese ships were battle Cruisers with relatively little protection whereas all the U.S ships were battleships and thus these battle Cruisers The Congos had relatively little way of standing up against Battleship shells the idea of the entire Japanese battle line remaining intact for the good part of the engagement was not exactly a winning bet once you've acted in the fact that Congos was supposed to run in with the cruises and destroy it the previous night to attack the American Lions this got even worse additionally this was all assuming the Japanese Navy could actually bring all of its capital ships to the party although to be fair this also applied to the Americans but if the Americans couldn't bring one ship to the party it was far less of a loss for them than if the Japanese couldn't bring one of their ships to the battle but the Lanchester equations do allow for differences in the toughness and Firepower of individual units as well in theory the Japanese calculated if they could get two additional Capital ships but ones that had a significant superiority in both durability and Firepower this could according to the equations tip the balance in the Japanese Navy's favor even if the raw numbers would still assuming everyone showed up B15 versus 12. this was to be fair after an awful lot of internal argumentation about whether to pursue a larger Fleet of more regular-sized battleships roughly speaking within the treaty limits as much as Japan ever hit adhered to those or if this should be a fleet that contained a few much larger new vessels but the Japanese also anticipated that once news of these super ships got out enemy nations would start building similar ships of their own so whilst two ships would be enough to tip the current balance Japan would need a continuous program of construction to First stay ahead of the super Battleship race in terms of absolute numbers and then they would need to escalate to newer and even more powerful ships once the first ship's built in response by the other navies were laid down from a design standpoint you have two primary officers to hand at least at the beginning Admiral heraga and Captain later Admiral Fujimoto of the two hiraga was the more senior in his career by this stage and was somewhat more conservative in his design approaches Fujimoto was much more ambitious and willing to push things to the absolute limit both men had had elements of their earlier designs overruled by the naval general staff when it came to other ships like destroyers and cruisers as the naval general staff kept asking for more in terms of speed protection and Firepower but especially Firepower to be fitted into less quite often over the designers objections albeit that the more conservative haraga was far more vocal in his complaints in this than Fujimoto who would usually just try and find some new trick whether that be welding or lightweight superstructures or spacing up the framing a bit more in order to make the demands work by the early 1930s hiraga was semi-retired and so the first response to the new Battleship concept would come from Fujimoto he proposed a ship of 50 000 tons stand displacement with a combined turbine and Diesel drive system capable of 30 knots and carrying no less than a dozen 20-inch guns in four triple turrets protected by a 16-inch belt an 11 inch deck and carrying a dozen aircraft whilst everybody else was trying to work out just exactly how Fujimoto planned to fit such a behemoth onto 50 000 tons the tomazuru incident occurred Fujimoto had been responsible for the ship's design and its stability failures and overall two-like construction voted somewhat ill for any battleship design he might draw up indeed in October 1934 just half a year after the incident and three months after the preliminary inquiry Fujimoto was blamed for the loss in reality the responsibility was only partially his the Navy general staff had as usual massively overburdened the original design but without too many protests on record it was relatively easy for them to initially shovel all the blame over to Fujimoto this would see him temporarily relieved of his post and would stymie the careers of those who followed his ideas by the time further investigation started to pin a lot more of the blame on the Navy general staff and Fujimoto was recalled it was a bit too late as he died at the start of 1935 just as his recall order had been issued Admiral fukuda took over his position and fagoda was a follower of Admiral hiraga's more conservative design ideals he veered away from fujimoto's designs which essentially resembled a gigantic pagami in Hull form 950 foot long and 125 foot wide far larger Dimensions than what would eventually be arrived at indeed the admiralty staff themselves walked back on their requirements and by October 1934 their Baseline specification for a ship was for it to be armed with a minimum of 8 18 inch guns sub minimum a secondary battery of a dozen 6.1 inch or 155 millimeter guns or eight Heavy Cruiser grade eight inch guns speed should be 30 knots and it should have protection against heavy shells between 20 kilometers and 35 kilometers this had a few minor changes such as eventually settling on the 460 millimeter or 18.1 inch caliber there was also a statute for bidding the discussion of the main guns as anything other than a special new version of the 16-inch guns found on nagato and much later there would be any assistance that all main battery turrets carried the same number of guns you'll see why in a little bit but that was only right towards the very end of things notable was a lack of Target displacement the new ship was so radical that the admiralty essentially gave up trying to guess on how big a ship would have to be to fit all these necessary specifications but before this specification came down from on high a few more preliminary designs were suggested and I'm just going to use this moment to thank solely I think that's how it's pronounced for allowing me permission to use his many wonderful drawings of all these different proposed specifications without which this would be a rather boring video visually speaking anyway each of these preliminary suggested designs had nine 18-inch guns in three triple turrets there was a 55 000 Tonner with a 26 knot diesel only Power Plant and carrying a mere 4 aircraft but it had 19 inches of belt armor and 12 inches of deck armor and they were a couple by Captain izaki the career-paused main Protege of Admiral Fujimoto one of which called for no less than 33 knots using a six shaft diesel engine design that was 990 feet long and 67 000 tons in weight and another 28 knot design with a more normal four shafts that was only 950 foot long and displaced 50 000 tons also to be recalled is Admiral hiraga's design for an 18-inch ship that actually predated all of this hustle and bustle in the mid-1930s back in 1929 he'd sketched out a ship that was roughly nelson-like in its main gun layout with three triples for wood B turret super firing and this was 62 000 tons 950 foot long with a mixed Diesel steam power plant that aimed to reach no less than 32 knots and had a rather unusual secondary Armament consisting of nine eight inch guns in three triple turrets that repeated the main battery layout I.E they were all on the center line with the central turret super firing except of course these were all aft of the superstructure a rather fetching swept-back funnel made this particular design unmistakably Japanese other specifications were also laid down the new 18.1 inch shells had to be able to penetrate all known armor on All American battleships as well as any future armor layouts that the Japanese Navy designers could imagine the US might be able to fit on 35 000 tons they would also need to take into account the tests that had been conducted against the whole of the incomplete Battleship tossa which had highlighted the opportunities and risks that surrounded diving shells the secondary battery Believe It or Not despite these Leviathan vessels was an economy measure the 155 millimeter turrets was specified to be the ones from the Megami class once they'd been converted to heavy Cruisers although there was a backup plan to potentially have newly mounted guns as well but primarily if this conversion had not occurred by the time the new Battleship centered service then the crews are grade 8-inch twin turrets were to be used instead as they were completely interchangeable and then if needed this new heavy Battleship class could swap out its 8-inch guns or six inch Guns by swapping directly over with the magamies later on the speed of the new specified Battleship was supposed to be 30 knots which would allow the ships to keep up with carriers Cruisers and the modernized Congo class whose latest upgrades were at that stage getting underway now with all this in mind design number a140 was codified and no less than 23 separate design options were drawn up some compared the possibilities of different propulsion setups if you looked at pure diesel one or two looked at pure steam but most looked at combined Diesel and steam in different proportions the layout of the guns though varied considerably designs a140 a b c and d all worked from a baseline that used a main battery layout that was exactly the same as the Nelson's all guns forward beat her at Super firing with C also facing forward positioned behind B the secondary battery was to beat 12 155 millimeter guns in four triple turrets clustered together aft with two turrets on the center line in a super firing pair and the other two positioned either side of them except for design a140d where the wing secondaries were moved forward abreast the superstructure a140a had a combined Machinery plant of 200 000 shaft horsepower 68 000 shaft horsepower from diesels and 132 000 shaft horsepower from turbines for a top speed of 30 knots on 68 000 tons a140b used 140 000 shaft horsepower pure diesel to get to 28 knots on 60 000 tons designs a140c and a140d were attempts to see if it was possible to reduce the size of the ships and both had all Diesel power plants a140c dropped to 105 000 shaft horsepower and 26 knots which saved 2000 tons displacement drop into a total of 58 000 tons which wasn't huge a140d had the most radical changes of this quartet the main belt was two foot shorter in height compared with the standard 17.5 foot and the guns dropped from 18.1 inches to just 16 inches this combined with 140 000 shaft horsepower of diesels to get back up to 29 knots on 55 000 tonne displacement then there was a140 A1 A2 B1 and B2 in these cases the one designs used triple turrets and the two designs used twin turrets so they had nine or eight guns respectively A1 and A2 displaced 68 000 tons whilst B1 and B2 displaced 60 000 tons the A's used 68 000 shaft horsepower of diesels and 132 000 shaft horsepower of turbines whilst the bees used 140 000 shaft horsepower of diesels only as a result the A's could hit 30 knots whilst the B's could only hit 28 knots these designs all used a more traditional layout where the main guns were distributed for and aft but with some truly weird secondary layouts albeit they were in some ways taking advantage of the huge lengths of these ships which in all designs mentioned thus far were either 810 or 909 feet long and this meant that Centerline mounts for the secondaries were at least partially possible A1 which you've been seeing thus far had two four and one aft triple turrets for its main battery but the secondary guns clustered were a super firing off turret might otherwise have been with the aftmost triple 155 millimeter super firing over the AFT main turret and the next Triple 155 millimeter was also on the center line a little lower but was itself super firing over the next two secondary turrets which were positioned on either Wing just after the superstructure A2 used for twins two forward and two aft in super firing pairs this of course took up a little more of the Centerline space and so the wind turrets were moved to a position abreast the gap between the AFT two main battery turrets for some reason whilst the super firing Centerline 155 millimeter turrets were each lowered by approximately a level and retained between the AFT main battery and the superstructure now tucking in under the rotation of the super firing main turret and as you just saw from the transition the entire superstructure moved forward because it's it possible to put a twin turret further forward on the narrowing Hull of a ship than it is a triple at least if you want to retain a decent torpedo defense system between you know the magazines and torpedoes with their smaller power plants and lower top speed B1 and B2 repeated these respective gun layouts just on smaller holes so we can see here B1 with the two triples forward and one triple aft transitioning over into B2 with two twins forward and two twins aft you'll notice obviously being diesel powered they also have a much reduced funnel structure and as you can see throughout this entire design series aircraft handling facilities are all positioned aft then there's a series of designs which have various labels depending on your source which would derived from the Nelson style a140a but slightly smaller than a140a 68 000 tons and 910 foot length a140 G or GA was revised down from a sketch design of almost 70 000 tons that had 50 caliber main guns and was capable of 31 knots to a 65 800 ton design with 45 caliber guns capable of 28 knots using a 50 50 split Diesel and Steam Plant for 150 000 shaft horsepower in total then you have a140 g1a which dropped to 61 000 tons and 26 knots powered by 115 000 shaft horsepower which came from 60 000 shaft horsepower worth of turbines and 55 000 shaft horsepower worth of diesels it also had less armor and a much shorter Hull with the main battery squashed up as close as possible with sea turret now being reversed and facing backwards so that all the barbets and magazines of the main Armament were together this was partially to save length and partially because during the initial design period there was some thought about having maximum protection over the magazines and slightly thinner belt armor over the machinery and so with the hyper-concentrated magazines of this design would help with that now it gets a bit tricky the a140g line continued to be developed but there were also f i j and k lines being worked on and not all in sequential order this was all happening at the same time so whilst it might seem easier to just go through each line in alphabetical order the dates of the designs show that the concepts were as we just said all being worked on in parallel and so a140k was the second smallest design sketched out at just over 50 000 tons and it sacrificed the super firing aft secondary on the center line to reduce length down to just 725 feet and because the hull now narrowed up front from pretty much C turret forward and the gun layer was back to the Nelson style layout the forward triple turret had to become a twin otherwise there'd be no room left for torpedo defense systems this left the ship with eight guns instead of nine sources disagree on what the top speed of this ship would have been but 80 000 shaft horsepower for 24 knots seems to be the most likely this was considered far too small and spawned three sketches which took the basic Armament statistics and then gradually lengthened the design whilst upping the power plant with the final one eventually reaching 807 foot long and using a hundred and thirty thousand shaft horsepower split equally between diesels and turbines was capable of 28 knots the a140j series also sought weight reductions but this time they did so by dropping it to 16-inch guns this also used the Reversed sea turret layout of the g1a but at 794 foot thanks to the reduction in size of the main turrets due to the smaller guns at 52 000 tons with 120 000 shaft horsepower from a split power plant it could hit 27 and a half knots and a subvariant with another 10 000 shaft horsepower pushed this up to 28 knots at 53 000 tons these vessels were protected against 16-inch gunfire and don't seem to have been taken especially seriously by the Japanese Navy this design series continued but more as a check on what other nations might conceivably be able to do using 16-inch guns with a140j2 which was 837 foot long displaced 54 000 tons and using 145 000 shaft horsepower could hit 29 knots and then a140 j3 could perhaps be seen as a Japanese Montana quite a few years earlier as this went more conventional in the turret layout as well as another turret for 12 16-inch guns in four triple turrets a pair super firing forward and a pair super firing aft at 827 foot long and 58 500 tons it could have made 28 knots using the same 145 000 shaft horsepower power plant as J2 then we're back to a140g series with a140 Goa or possibly a140 g0a this was developed from g1a but was larger at 65 500 tons and as a result it was back up to 28 knots using 145 000 shaft horsepower power plant still split between Steam and Diesel like design K this also spawned a trio of sketches which were actually very similar to design K in that it went back to the Nelson style layout but with a forward turret downgraded to a twin with the holes between 800 and 820 feet and length and speeds of 26 to 27 knots finishing off quite convergent to the last of the K sketches this led to a140 g2a or GZA depending on your source which was about 59 000 tons with 143 000 shaft horsepower and capable of 28 knots for reference some of the designs with 18-inch guns at this stage were looking at a maximum belt thickness of 18 inches with around 9 inches of deck armor give or take a bit with the thickest belt designs coming in at almost 19 inches but it must also be noted that many designs used various degrees of sloped belt armor and obviously could make do with thinner belts 16 inches and 17.3 inches being the most common figures in most of the designs at least the ones that featured sloped armor and then there was design a140i Admiral hiraga's submission into the mess this was quite unusual but it showed some design elements that would eventually feature in the final design he proposed a main gun layout that was somewhat like the pensacolas with triple turrets super firing over twins giving a 10 gun main battery the largest gun battery in the a140 series secondaries were reduced to just two triple 155 millimeter turrets but these were also on the center line super firing over the super firing main battery turrets at 60 500 ton standard displacement this monster was somehow also supposed to have had protection against 18-inch guns whilst being capable of 28 knots courtesy of 143 000 shaft horsepower a version of this a140f would start the final design series which would eventually become Yamato this was essentially a140i but with the AFT twin turret removed which took it back to eight guns but it added back in the third and 455 millimeter turrets on the wings oppressed the funnel and the aft superstructure as for what became of the a140e and a140h design series which logically should be there I have no idea and neither do any of the sources that I consulted in any case a140f was 810 foot long thanks to the loss of the half turret with 130 000 shaft horsepower giving it 27 knots now there is some dispute as some sources claim there is no surviving information for a140 F1 or a140 F2 whilst others claim an F1 design which took 143 000 shaft horsepower to go at 29 knots on an 851 foot long Hull and which restored a turret to being a triple but whatever the case there by the time of a140 F3 the three triples were definitely back with 135 000 shaft horsepower for 27 knots but with the balance of power now heading more to steam rather than being an even split with 75 000 shaft horsepower expected to come from the turbines and just 60 000 from the Diesels an acknowledgment that Diesel power was beginning to fall a bit short of the Japanese Navy's hopes but F3 was short-ranged and so a140 F4 was devised this was just a little longer at 814 feet to increase range from 4 900 nautical miles to 7200 nautical miles largely thanks to most of the additional volume being put into Fuel and the slightly better performance you get from a slightly longer Hull at some point between F and F3 the whole form had also become somewhat Fuller which also helped fuel storage if not necessarily hydrodynamics it was thus that like with the North Carolina class the nelson-style all Ford Arrangement only went away towards the very end of the design process compared to the original specifications that had been issued at the start of the a140 series it had been accepted by the Japanese General Naval general staff that a speed of 30 knots which needed 200 000 shaft horsepower or more made the ships excessively large even for the huge size of these battleships and so a slightly slower speed was taken into account the combined Diesel and steam power plant still persisted up to this point for three main reasons the fuel economy of diesels the fact that diesel engines didn't tend to explode when you hit them which meant that in all the designs that used a combined plant the Diesels were positioned to power the outboard shafts which were more likely to take hits and the necessity of steam to power the gun turret Machinery meant that the all diesel designs had needed to have on auxiliary Steam Plant or two installed somewhere in the ship as well as the main power plant just to ensure that the main battery could turn which was not particularly efficient now to give some idea of the potential advantages of a split power plant in terms of fuel economy the a140 g1a design for example had had two iterations prepared both using 115 000 shaft horsepower but one used just turbines the other used 45 000 shaft horsepower worth of turbines and 70 000 shaft horsepower worth of diesels the all turbine option was 245 tons lighter in terms of machinery and this Machinery took up just under 1400 square foot less space which made it somewhat more efficient in terms of horsepower per square foot but to go 8 000 nautical miles the turbines needed 8 400 tons of fuel whilst the combined plant only needed 5700 tons of fuel which is 68 as much this would obviously make for significant savings either a combined plant ship could go a lot further or it could weigh considerably less since the 245 tons of additional Machinery was more than made up for by the 2700 tons less fuel that it would need to carry to go the same distance but unfortunately the Diesels being tested in the fleet were continuously underperforming well below the output and reliability which had been assumed in the a140 design series and which was a special problem for this particular design series because that massive thick armored deck was structural and thus you really couldn't afford to cut it open every year or so when your diesels broke down all of this was coming to light just as a140 F5 was being drawn up compared to F1 this was longer still at 830 foot displacing 62 300 tons standard but Midway through drawing it it was decided you know what forget the Diesels we're gonna go with steam turbine only and 150 000 shaft horsepower steam turbine plant was installed instead this pushed the ship up to 840 foot and 64 000 ton standard displacement or 68 200 tons trial displacement and became a 140 F 6 F5 had actually already been authorized for construction and so the revised F6 design simply took its place and this at last would be the ship that would become Yamato now as with many ships especially groundbreaking ones minor changes would continue to be made during the build process and once she was finally in the water Yamato had grown to 65 000 tons standard displacement 69 100 tons on trials and 72 800 tons when fully loaded now of course there were some issues with the design and it would go on to be modified for the follow-up pair of ships of which shenano would be the only one completed and of course not as a battleship and for subsequent designs for even more powerful vessels the design was revised still further and became even larger but that will be a subject for another time once again thanks very much to zarly for letting me use all these drawings uh Link in the video description below if you want to see these and many others which he has done over the course of his ship drawing career which hopefully will go strong for quite all the time to come that's it for this video thanks for watching if you have a comment or suggestion for a ship to review let us know in the comments below don't forget to comment on the pinned post for dry dock questions

Channel: Drachinifel

Views: 357,132

Keywords: wows, world of warships, Yamato, Musashi, Hiraga, Fukuda, Fujimoto, super battleship, IJn, USN, WW2, Pacific Campaign

Id: jCgMwmrUsmM

Length: 36min 23sec (2183 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 27 2023