gunnergoz -> RE: The Lurking Yamato Fantasy (6/30/2004 10:15:32 PM)
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Playing against the computer AI - It won't care a whit if I scrap the Yamato/Mushashi...but a human opponent probably would. In the "real" world, the ships are a very powerful force in being to be reckoned with, just the same as the Bismarck and Tirpitz. The poster noting that the time to scrap the ships would have been before they were complete on the ways is correct. Once built, there was little practical benefit to scrapping them. As to the Shinano and it's potential at say, Midway...my guess is that it would have fared equally badly insofar as that most of the damage to the Japanese CV's came from exploding a/c and ordnance on the flight and hangar decks. Given that the Shinano still had a very heavily armored main deck (hangar deck), they probably couldn't have penetrated much past that, but once you get strong fires going, especially avgas, stopping them is a real challenge...one the Japanese could seldom do as effectively as US ships could. US shipboard damage control practice and effectiveness was then, and remains, some of the best in the world. Were I the Japanese in '36, I'd not have built the super BB's and would have spent more on pilot training infastructure, CV's, effective AA, radar, ASW and long-range subs. Once the things were built, however, they should have been used more aggressivley, I agree.
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