Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere Fun Hour
- Thread starter Kurayami
- Start date
Yamato was sunk en route to Okinawa. It was going to beach itself on one of the islands to function as a giant coastal fortress until it was destroyed.FuFu said:
It had two sister ships:
Musashi was sunk in 1944.
Shinano was converted into an aircraft carrier. It was sunk by a single US submarine (USS Archerfish, if I recall) en route to another shipyard. It hadn't been fully armored yet.
Bismark and Tirpitz were gigantic ships, but they were not as big as the Yamato. One of the strikes on the Tirpitz on the Norwegian coast was one of the few (if not only) documented times that US carrier-based planes (specifically F6Fs and F4Us) came up against the Luftwaffe mainstays (Me-109, FW-190.)
And what?MADness said:
Yamato was sunk by American naval planes (like pretty much every other major Japanese warship.)
Tirpitz got the shit kicked out of it numerous times by mostly British aircraft and spent most of its life either hiding or being repaired in port. It was eventually sunk by specially designed armor-piercing bombs. It weathered strikes from well over a thousand aircraft throughout its life, if I recall.
Bismark was sunk at sea by British warships in one of the few interesting naval engagements of the war (Leyte Gulf beats it hands down, though. Not only was it the largest naval battle in history, but it had the Yamato chasing down a fleet of unescorted destroyers and escort carriers.
The carriers actually had to turn towards the Japanese fleet to launch their planes. The destroyers made almost suicidal torpedo runs to cover them.)there werent enough troops because hitlerbush sent them all to iraqMADness said:
nap time :]
FireStorm! said:
Hilarious troll attempt.
Seriously though, it wasn't about troops, it was about pilots. And there were too many pilots, not enough.
My grandfather was never able to ship out because they had more pilots than planes so they made him stay in the states and be a flight instructor. Never thought to ask him why there was a mismatch between personnel and equipment.
Because the US had a large population and an incredible production capacity. Remember, the US had fielded around fifty aircraft carriers by the end of the war. The Japanese didn't even manage 20 (I believe the number was 16, but I may be wrong.) Couple that with a huge population that could be trained very carefully and without any threat of attack and the capacity to produce tens of thousands of aircraft...MADness said:
Another reason was that American pilots tended to survive much longer than Japanese pilots. Japanese pilots didn't get leave or transfers to rear areas for rest (for the most part.) They flew until they died. As time went on, the vast majority of the great Japanese pilots were killed and replaced with rookies who could barely fly let alone fight. The Japanese never recovered from the loss of their pilots at Midway. As such, experience on the US side continually increased while attrition decreased.
That said, the Imperial Japanese Navy undoubtably had the best pilots in the world in 1941. The problem was that they were all dead by 1945.
I don't think there was any one reason. I'd attribute it to the fact that attrition was not that high by the end of the war and that the US was gearing up for an amphibious invasion of Japan throughout the second half of the war. That was expected to cost at least 1,000,000 American lives, so it would make sense to ensure that you have a surplus of trained people in advance. Grunts are easy to replace. Pilots aren't.MADness said: