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Ranger-75 -> (7/11/2002 6:55:00 AM)
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[QUOTE]Originally posted by mdiehl
[B]They'd have ripped Yamatos to shreds. The USN 16/50 and 16"/45 were the best naval rifles in the world for penetration, owing in no small part to the ultra-high-quality alloy cap on the warhead. Yamato achieved in armor thickness what the Iowas achieved in armor quality, and the 16/50 standard shell was known to be able to penetrate (with an intact round with an intact explosive charge) a good deal more armor than covered the Iowas. [/B][/QUOTE]
Amen, Not only the guns were superior, the radar controlled gunnery would have made the encounter something like the M1 tanks vs the Iraqui armour in 1991. The Iraqui tanks were being hit and the Iraquis couldn't even detect the attackers. The Yamatos would not even know what was hitting them. Also remember the faulty armour construction that was exposed when the Yamato took a torpedo in 43. It would have needed 5000 additional tons of armour to remedy the defects identified, so the IJN just patched up the ship and pretended that there was no problem.
The US was years ahead of Japan in metallurgy, not only with guns and ammunition (too bad they didn't apply this attention to detail to the pre-war Mark 14 torpedo), but also in aircraft engine development. It was the higher and higher powered engines that the US was capable of designing AND producing in large numbers that made the mid to late war planes so superior to anything that the Japanese could produce.
In fact, when the B-29 first appeared over Japan, the Japanese Army & Navy did not have a fighter that was capable of reaching the high altitude that the "B-sans" initially preferred to operate from. They literally couldn't reach the bombers to engage them. This is one of the reasons that all this talk of Japanese "super planes" that would have been available in late 45 - 46 amuse me to no end. It's all so much fantasy talk.
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