Silly, Super Yamato

[sagallacci]

With the new Tamiya 1/350 Yamato coming out, I've got one of the old kits half-converted to the 1941 configuration and find the kit and the data behind the conversion badly out of date/inaccurate. So what to do?

Well, obviously, I need to go and do the unbuilt very big gun version of the type. Having heard about the German 80cm monster RR guns being built, the IJN felt they needed to do one better and make a naval version of the concept. Using the Yamato hull design, they scaled up the 46cm main guns to 80cm and were able to fit two in each of the three main turret positions, though in much enlarged turrets. Because of the expected slow firing rate of the main guns, the secondary armament of 15cm twin turrets was doubled (per original configuration, adding two more turrets on each side fore and aft of the existing  midship turret, which was raised to give extra clearance) and a few more fully covered AA gun positions added on the stern and bow areas. Consideration was given to an up-gunned secondary armament of 21cm or larger guns with increased range to engage the same target as the main weapons, but escalating weight and volume demands made that impractical.

Before commiting to a full ship program, a test barrel was attempted, with only mixed results in the manufacture, and was never actually fired. The really big gun ship program was allowed to lapse, though a small team continued to tinker with the idea of improved really big guns throughout the rest of the war.

[sequoiaranger]

I did a "Hull 798" one in 1/1200 scale--the unbuilt one with twin 20" guns (c. 50 cm) in place of the triple 18". One in 1/350 would be AWESOME! Go for it!


Whoa! Did you say "80cm guns"? 36"? Really? Maybe we ARE approaching "silly". Would there even be ROOM for two such guns in a typical Yamato turret? A "Paris Gun" on a ship would make it VERY HARD to hit any moving target at range. The large "railroad guns" were aimed at fixed land positions that weren't going anywhere! They even had to account for the earth's rotation while the shell was in the air for such a long time!

[rickshaw]

Naval engagements would occur typically shorter than the maximum range of the guns involved.  What was being sought wasn't super-extended range but massive penetration.  As you should note from the picture, the barrels are considerably shorter than the "Paris Gun".  BTW, 80cm is the calibre of the "Dora" gun, not the "Paris Guns".

[sagallacci]

The German 80cm gun only had somewhat more range than the IJN 46cm and that was only for a "light" weight HE shell, the AP projectile was a bit less than the 46cm AP. I'd expect the IJN 80cm would be shorter and have lesser muzzle velocity, but they would not need a super AP round and a merely "hardened" HE projectile with lesser weight would both do the deed well enough and still have a useful range.

[Joe C-P]

Large calibre guns take forever to load and are inaccurate, so they'd never be of any real use at sea. If you managed to get lucky with a shot you might heavily damage your enemy, but by the time you managed to do that you'd have been hit several to many times by an enemy carrying a more typical battleship weapon.
And as I've mentioned on this board before, the 18" guns of the Yamatos damaged the ships themselves, as could the 16" of the Nelsons. 20" would be even worse, so they'd require design changes, and would prevent anyone from being on deck during combat, so that most of the anti-aircraft weapons would be useless.
And post-war the USN determined that their 16" guns had nearly the same penetrating power as the IJN 18", so bigger isn't always better. At this level, more guns would be more useful than bigger guns. Another 18" triple would be far more useful than reducing the number of guns to the bare minimum of six just to add a couple inches of caliber.

But, as always, it's your model, so do exactly what you want! 

[ChrisF]

As with all things on this site... "Does it look cool??"

Yes.. therefore i like it ! 

[scooter]

I did a "Hull 798" one in 1/1200 scale--the unbuilt one with twin 20" guns (c. 50 cm) in place of the triple 18". One in 1/350 would be AWESOME! Go for it!

Now, if it were, say Space Battleship Yamato, with a 20" main battery then it'd be super effin cool.

[sagallacci]

Large calibre guns take forever to load and are inaccurate, so they'd never be of any real use at sea. If you managed to get lucky with a shot you might heavily damage your enemy, but by the time you managed to do that you'd have been hit several to many times by an enemy carrying a more typical battleship weapon.
And as I've mentioned on this board before, the 18" guns of the Yamatos damaged the ships themselves, as could the 16" of the Nelsons. 20" would be even worse, so they'd require design changes, and would prevent anyone from being on deck during combat, so that most of the anti-aircraft weapons would be useless.
And post-war the USN determined that their 16" guns had nearly the same penetrating power as the IJN 18", so bigger isn't always better. At this level, more guns would be more useful than bigger guns. Another 18" triple would be far more useful than reducing the number of guns to the bare minimum of six just to add a couple inches of caliber.

But, as always, it's your model, so do exactly what you want! 

Well, the idea would have been for merely a design (the model representing the paper work) and without any hindsight to clarify the folly of the effort. RL hints that very big guns were nevertheless still being considered, largely to fit the megalomaniac notions of the powers that be, rather than for any practical application. This one is just an example of the idea taken to entirely absurd extremes. Even then, the back story states the 80cm guns were not successfully developed and the actual article never proceeded with. One change on the design from the previous back story would be the addition of four 21cm turrets in broadside instead of the eight 15cm turrets.

[Zombolt]

We Dont need Logic where we are going! Keep on it, it looks cool!

[ChrisF]

We Dont need Logic where we are going! Keep on it, it looks cool!

Exactly !!   

[sagallacci]

Now that I'm actually chopping plastic, I've refined the back story and added more madness.

As the Yamato was too far along in construction when the IJN began to consider the ultimate gun configuration, they looked to the Musashi for a possible reconfigure for the 80cm weapon. At the same time, there was debate as to the weapon itself. Issues of length and load influenced possible mounting schemes. To make a long story short, three twin turrets were eventually settled on, though a single gun Nr. two turret was kept in consideration if weight or recoil issues cropped up. Secondary weapons were much more contentious, with arrangements of 15 or 20 cm turrets in four or six broadside positions being debated and never fully settled. Of course, the 80cm program was never committed to hardware, beyond the proof of concept attempts to build and fire a gun of that size.
The model will portray the heavier weapon configuration with the three twin turret 80cms, six twin turret 20cm secondaries, and six twin 12cm DP guns. Interestingly, it will also have some details that suggest the model was originally patterned along the 1939-41 as-designed Yamato class, but has a large number of supplemental triple 25mm flak mounts more in line with 1943-45 combat experiance.

Another cryptic bit of concept would the the Shinano alternative, a battleship/carrier, with a large rear flight ops deck and twin launch decks flanking the superstructure with the intent of carrying it's own escort fighter wing and retain the 48cm forward batteries.

I'll have photos shortly.

[sagallacci]

Here we go, photographic evidence, or maybe not. How do you post images here again??

[scooter]

open bracket img closed bracket Photo open bracket /img closed bracket

[NARSES2]

Here we go, photographic evidence, or maybe not. How do you post images here again??

Here we go

http://www.whatifmodelers.com/index.php/topic,32096.0.html

[sagallacci]

Okay, let's try it. The first is the new Tamiya kit being back-dated to the 1941 config., the second one will be the super Musashi, and the third the alternate Shinano.