Was Yamato the most powerful warship in the world at that time?

-Yamato

Ship history:

From the early 1930s, Japan, one of the world's naval powers, began to challenge the United States and Britain in the Pacific region. 1934 65438+ 10, when Japan revised its imperial defense policy, it officially listed the United States as an imaginary enemy. 1June, 936, when the national defense policy was revised again, the interception strategy against the United States was clearly put forward. The Japanese navy's judgment is that the US navy still adheres to the principle of "big ships and huge guns" and still depends on battleships to win the war against the United States. In order to ensure the opportunity to fight the United States in the Pacific Ocean, it is necessary to destroy the main force of the United States in the Far East at the beginning of the war, destroy or seize the base on which the American navy depends, and then destroy the fleet that came from the United States to reinforce. Therefore, the Japanese navy chose the sea west of the Ogasawara Islands as the battlefield for the scheduled decisive battle at sea, set up a maritime strike force with giant battleships as the core, and intercepted the formation of American ships at sea to ensure that the front line of the Ogasawara Islands became an insurmountable maritime barrier. Under this operational guiding ideology, the Japanese navy used the period of no arms restriction from 65438 to 0936 to enter the naval arms race. The Japanese navy believes that there is no way to compete with the US navy in the number of combat vessels, so it is determined to concentrate on building giant battleships to offset the US navy's superior position in number with the strength advantage of a single battleship. So in 1937, when the shipbuilding plan was supplemented for the third time, it was decided to build two "Yamato" battleships first, namely "Yamato" and "Musashi".

Yamato is the largest and most powerful warship in the world. With a standard displacement of 64,000 tons, a full-load displacement of 73,000 tons, more than 20 large-caliber main and auxiliary guns, a speed of 27 knots, thick armor and strong protective ability, hitting two torpedoes or several heavy bombs at the same time will not affect the battle, so it is known as the world's first warship.

Now, let's take a look at its specific situation.

Bow and foredeck

The biggest feature of the "Yamato" bow is spherical. This spherical bow is about 3 meters below the waterline. For such a bow, there was no ready-made theory to follow at that time, and there was no sufficient argument. It was decided by the Japanese naval technology research institute through the ship model test data of the test pool. The completed flight test also proved that this bow has obvious advantages. The spherical bow is equipped with an underwater listening device, which is quite similar to today's bow sonar. Due to the adoption of this new type of bow, the length of the waterline is reduced by about 3 meters, and the displacement is saved by about 30 tons. At that time, in addition to the Japanese Navy's "Shoukaku" aircraft carrier and "he ye" light cruiser, the German Navy's "Bismarck" and the US Navy's "Iowa" class battleships also adopted this bow.

The bow of the "Yamato" is deep and vertical at the waterline, with the upper part leaning forward obviously and the left and right sides opening like morning glory. The front end of the bow is approximately semicircular. This is a form that Japanese naval battleships have never had.

The front deck of the Yamato is also different, and the inner waist is curved. Its shape is similar to the Iowa class ship of the US Navy. However, the high-speed American ship (33 knots) looks slender, while the giant "Yamato" is much fatter. There are left and right anchor chain barrels before the bow reaches the flagpole, and there are a pair of small mooring piles on the inside. When the anchor chain needs to be recovered, the anchor chain reaches the anchor chain wheel at the back through the guide plate and is fixed by a chain with two spiral chain locks. On both sides of the bow, you can see the anchorage observation platform, cable conduit for lightning protection, aluminum ball platform (sounding water depth), cable conduit, mooring post and so on. From front to back. Behind the steel anchor deck is a wooden deck, which extends to the rear main gun. On the front deck, only the front end of the wooden deck is provided with ventilation holes and lifting openings, while the lifting and ventilation openings are centrally arranged behind the windshield in front of the rear main gun. This can not only make the deck in front of the rear main gun look clean and concise, but also reduce the impact of the shock wave of the main gun by using the ventilation pipe.

Foremast, rear axle and chimney

"Yamato" has two bridges, in front of the chimney (hereinafter referred to as the bridge), which is the operational command center of the whole ship. "Yamato" changed the situation that the large-scale combat vessels bridge was too large, which was very simple from the actual naval battle. The area in front of the bridge is 159 m2, and the lateral area of the bridge is 3 10 m2; It adopts double-tube structure, with various lines and pipes in the inner tube, various special rooms in the interlayer of the inner and outer tubes, and devices related to command and detection around the outer tube. In order to reduce the impact of shock waves, there are few openings outside the bridge and they are closed neatly. At the top is the rotating main gun command post, with 98-type azimuth dial, periscope telescope and15m range finder. Below the main gun shooting command post is the air defense command post, and several high-color binoculars are installed around the protective turntable on the top open deck. Under the air defense command post is the daytime combat bridge, also known as the first bridge. Its front and side are equipped with air conditioning plates and protective devices. Usually, the commander of the fleet and his commanders, such as the headquarters and the captain, command the battle here. The next floor is the war room and lounge. Below are the upper observation post, the compass room (that is, the night battle command post), the lower observation post and the command tower (in fact, it is a communication channel, that is, the communication tube) and so on.

Behind the "Yamato" chimney is the rear axle, which is the command post ready for battle. When the artillery is fired separately before and after, it also plays the role of the rear command post.

"Yamato" adopts a single chimney, which is characterized in that the flue of each boiler twists backwards and connects with a certain part of the chimney. The chimney is also inclined backwards as far as possible to avoid smoke affecting the bridge work. In order to ensure the safety of the chimney opening, a 380 mm thick honeycomb board with many small holes with a diameter of 180 mm was installed at the opening. The perforated area is 55% of the non-perforated area, and a protective deck with a thickness of 50 mm is installed on the inclined part and side in front of the chimney. In this way, the safety of the chimney is greatly improved.

Main and auxiliary guns and anti-aircraft guns

Daiwa is famous for its giant main guns. Assemble three main guns, the first two, and then 1. At that time, the Japanese navy kept the caliber of the main gun secret. At that time, it was called the 94-type 400 mm gun, which was 45 times longer, but actually it was 457 mm. The rotating part of the turret of the main gun weighed about 2,700 tons, equivalent to the displacement of the destroyer "Autumn Moon" of the Japanese Navy. The armor of the turret shield is very thick: 650 mm on the front, 250 mm on the side, 190 mm on the back, 270 mm on the top and 560 mm on both sides of the base. A rangefinder with a length of15m is installed at the rear of the turret, and periscope sights are installed at the front of both sides and the front of the top of the turret. The above telescopes and sights are periscope-type, in order to minimize the impact of artillery shock waves. The pitch angle of the turret is +45 degrees and -5 degrees. When loading, it is fixed at +3 degrees, the pitching speed is 8 degrees per second, and the turret rotates once for 3 minutes. Launch speed, 1.8 rounds per minute; The maximum range is 42,000 meters and the flight time is 90 seconds. The base number of shells is 0/00 rounds per gun/kloc-and the charge of each shell is 330 kg. Each lifting speed is 6 seconds, and the loading is mechanized. The three main guns have the same style and are all developed by the Naval Gun Department of Wu Haijun Factory. If nine main guns shoot to one side, the recoil will reach 8000 tons. The shock wave was also very strong when launching, so the ship design department took great pains for this day.

There are 4 auxiliary guns and 3 sets of 155 mm guns, which are located in the front of the superstructure and on both sides of the hull. These auxiliary guns are the main guns of cruisers, and their performance is better than that of 200mm guns. There are also 24 doors127mm anti-aircraft guns and 25mm cannon 1 13 doors. The whole warship is like a hedgehog standing up to defend itself, and all kinds of weapons are erected all over the body.

Stern and aft deck

The stern of the Yamato also has its own characteristics. The ship adopts semi-balanced rudder, which is arranged in front and back with a distance of15m, and is installed on the centerline (in the past, the warship was a balanced rudder, and the two rudders were installed side by side, which was easy to be damaged at the same time). The rear rudder is large and is the main rudder; The front rudder is small, and it is the auxiliary rudder. Because of the large inertia of the ship, it is difficult to turn only with the auxiliary rudder, which plays an auxiliary role in the main rudder. There are storage batteries, diesel engines, hydraulic pumps and other facilities in the steering gear room, and the deck protection is thick. The main rudder can still work even if the power supply is cut off.

The shape of the stern is similar to that of a cruiser, but there is a flat place at the rear end of the stern. It was originally planned to install a seaplane recovery device, but it was not installed for some reason.

The back deck of the Yamato is also unique. There are hangars, boathouses, carrier-based aircraft recovery and launching devices behind the rear main gun. In order to avoid the impact of artillery shock waves, hangars, boathouses and other facilities are under the upper deck. The deck behind the rear main gun is an iron deck. The outboard brackets on both sides of the rear main gun have tunnel-like boathouses. There are also overhangs on both sides of the back of the boathouse, and there are railings below, on which the mobile boat is hoisted to lift the boat.

The rear upper deck is obviously sunken at the stern, forming an approximate rectangular slot, which is a temporary storage place for carrier-based aircraft hoisting, and there is an opening in front of the slot leading to the hangar.

The hangar in the ship is located between the upper deck and the middle deck in front of the rear main gun. There is a trapezoidal area in the first half, and three Zero Fighters and three water observation planes can be placed on both sides of this area. On both sides of the trough are platforms with the same height as the upper deck, and the launching devices of carrier aircraft are arranged on the platforms. In addition, the stern of the ship also has a lifting device.

During the 29 years from 19 13 to 1942, the Japanese navy built 12 battleships. Among them, Yamato (the same type as Musashi) has the shortest ship age (194 1 built), the largest displacement, the strongest firepower and the thickest armor, and is known as an invincible and impregnable marine steel castle. Therefore, the Japanese navy, which is superstitious about the winning theory of big ships and huge guns, has high hopes for it, and believes that with the single-ship power like Yamato, it can gallop across the Pacific Ocean and compete with the American fleet. However, under the attack of the US aircraft carrier task force, the "Yamato" did almost nothing. As the flagship of the joint fleet, it participated in the naval battle of midway, but it was repeatedly frustrated. Later, he entered the naval battles of Mariana and Wright Bay, but he did not achieve remarkable results. Finally, on April 7th, 1945, as the flagship of the Second Fleet (Commander Ito Shinichi vice admiral), Yamato led the light cruiser Yasuji and eight destroyers to Okinawa in an attempt to make a special attack on the landing allies. However, during the voyage, it was attacked by the American aircraft carrier group, and seven medium-thousand-pound bombs and dozens of small bombs subsequently sank into the sea near the cape of Kyushu Square. The "Yamato" was buried at the bottom of the sea, marking the end of the 70-year imperial naval history since the establishment of the Ming Dynasty, and the end of Japanese militarism is approaching.

Historical photos and artistic paintings:

[194 1 during the sea trial of Yamato in Seto Inland Sea], [1two Yamato ships leaving for Tulak Island before August, 943].

[Equipment Drawing of Yamato 1944], [Submarine Yamato wreck], [Front view of Yamato] and [Rear main gun of Yamato]

Performance data:

The displacement is 64,000 tons (standard)/73,000 tons (maximum)

A seaplane carrying six pontoons.

The maximum speed is 27 knots.

The main gun is a triple 18 inch (457 mm) main gun.

Auxiliary gun, 6-inch (155mm) main gun in triplicate.

127mm antiaircraft gun, 24 doors, 25mm antiaircraft gun 1 13 doors.

The crew is 2400.