Yamato versus the Royal Navy

[Eric Harvey]

Okay...a hypothetical question, especially for the Seekrieg players:

I was asked the question recently about the Yamato verus
a dozen old RN battleships ("old" is the operative word), who
would come out the winner?

Assuming that the British is limited to Queen Elizabeth, Royal
Sovereign, Glorious, Repulse, Hood and Vanguard classes
only (just the older stuff), could they - even many of them -
defeat the Yamato in a running fight? Or would the Yamato's
massive size, armor and guns make their attempt futile?

Based on the the blunt data of their main guns' penetration,
and the Yamato's incredibly thick armor, the British chances
of prevailing seems very, very low (even at close range, the
British guns are not rated as being capable of penetrating the
Yamato's belt armor; and forget the turret armor).

So, how many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie-pop,
and how many WW1 British BBs does it take to sink the Yamato?

Eric

[Donald M. Scheef]

This would be a bloody (in both senses of the word) mess, but eventually the large number of 15" and 16" shells from the British ships would wipe out the command and fire control facilities of the Yamato. Even with the main guns and propulsion intact, Yamato would not be an effective combat unit.

I'll have to check to see if any of the British capital ships retained their below-water torpedo tubes. If so, they would then be able to smash in the hull sides sufficently to capsize or sink the Japanese ship.

btw, for "old" British capital ships, I would delete Vanguard but include Nelson & Rodney (explaining the 16" inch shells in the first paragraph).

Don S.

[Eric Harvey]

Don,

Well let me clarify that I am specifically excluding the later British BBs (with the 16" guns), because you're right, I think the 16" guns would do okay.

If we're talking [only] about the Royal Sovereigns and whatnot (with 15" guns or smaller), which have a substantively lesser punch, could they - in numbers - take on the Yamato? That is the question, as Hamlet said.

Also, the Yamato's guns would [i]well [/i] outrange the British BBs, and what is more, the Yamato is - I think - faster than all of the older British BBs, giving the Yamato a certain tactical advantage , assuming it didn't use its speed to just up and run.

If we look at this mathematically, the devil is in the details, because a dozen British WW1 BBs [i]may[/i] be able to damage the Yamato, but how many of then would be sunk in the process, and then are the ones that are left enough to survive the Yamato's fire? (for every BB you lose, the British chances of success decrease exponentially, not linerally).

It's perhaps an inane question, I know, but it's actually interesting in its own right, I think.

Eric

[Cav Dog]

Line 'em up and fight it out, after all, isn't that part of the fun of wargaming? The "what if" scenarios

[John Drye]

There is a similar scenario in Micronauts The Game WWII based loosely on Leyte Gulf.

It pits Yamato (and her sister Mushashi) plus 3 older ships against six pre-war US battleships with a mix of 14â€￾ and 16â€￾ guns.

The three times I’ve seen it played resulted in much mayhem and crippled ships on both sides.

It’s a pretty interesting scenario because both sides have to answer the classic “close or open the rangeâ€￾ question.

John Drye

[av8rmongo]

I think when you get a battle of one versus many the many are going to win. A great deal depends on starting conditions I guess but sooner or later the higher volume of fire will win through. As Don S. said Yamato would become combat ineffective.

Paul

[Mk 1]

There is a similar scenario in Micronauts The Game WWII based loosely on Leyte Gulf.

And the Micronauts rules are still on special!

Oh, brother, just what I need -- ANOTHER hobby! Will someone ELSE buy 'em all up, paint 'em all up, and invite me over to play this one? Please?

I think when you get a battle of one versus many the many are going to win. A great deal depends on starting conditions I guess l

I would also expect that any rational scenario would include a fair number of escorts. In all these "my battleship vs. your battleship" set-ups, I always wonder what happened to the rest of the fleet that would have been floating around. Battleships were not exactly lone rangers, after all...

(Except for Bismark and Graf Spee, of course. Which is what makes their battles so much fun to see played out.)

[av8rmongo]

Graf Spee is actually an interesting case for this question. Inividually, ship vs. ship duel, it should have been able to defeat Exeter, Ajax or Achilles but together they prevailed.

Paul

[Panzerleader71]

Classic bear v. wolf pack. The bear will kill or cripple a good number of wolves, but the pack (9/10) will be victorious.

Graf Spee as above is a good example, and so is Bismark. Both had superiority over there enemies in one way or another, and both are on the bottom, with the majority of their enemies on the surface. My money would be on the RN in this battle.

She had the weaknesses of all other ships, they were just a little harder to get to.

[chrisswim]

A friend of mine who served in WW2 on the Battleship Queen Elizabeth in Indian & Pacific Oceans did not want to bump into the Yamato. Incidently, he (his wife does, he has died) has piece of the Graf Spee in their house.

[Donald M. Scheef]

In an open-sea scenario the ship with superior speed and superior range has a definite advantage.

Yamato is faster than the British battleships (although the margin above the QE class is relatively small). The battlecruisers, however, have a definite speed advantage over Yamato.

The 18" guns of Yamato also have a greater range than the British 15". However, since both could range beyond visibility limits (the distance at which the tops of the ships are visible to each other), the practical range for accurate fire control is the same for Yamato and the British ships. If we include spotter aircraft, the Japanese ship regains some of the range advantage.

I stand by my prediction that the British would eventually sink the Yamato, but only after losing a large fraction of their initial strength.

Several years ago, I ran a similar scenario that modified the Battle of Suriago Strait. Instead of Fuso and Yamashiro, the Japanese sent Yamato and Musashi through the straits. Waiting for them were Nevada, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Arizona, New Mexico, Mississippi, Idaho, Tennessee, California, Colorado, Maryland, and West Virginia. (The salvage teams at Pearl Harbor did even better than the amazing job that occurred historically.) The two players on the Japanese side thought that they were being given a better chance against the six US battleships historically present. The six players on the US side were expecting a larger number of old Japanese battleships. Neither side had the cruisers and destroyers historically present.

The result was a bloodbath. When I called an end to the game, Yamato and seven of the US battleships had been sunk. Musashi was severely damaged, had no superstructure, was burning, and had expended 100% of its main-gun ammunition. The five surviving US battleships had all received significant damage and had expended all their armor-piercing ammunition. They were still lobbing 14-inch high-explosive shells into the wreck of Musashi.

Don S.

[av8rmongo]

I thought this proposition was interesting enough to run some numbers using Command at Sea rules.

For the RN, if we exclude 16in gun BBs, it basically comes down to KGV class with new 14in guns and all the others with older 15in guns. (The stats for the MkII, MkI/N and MkI 15in guns on all the other BBs are on the same data line) A similar breakdown occurs when armor is compared KGV has a belt armor factor of 40 while the others are 25 or 26. The Deck armor ratings are 14 for KGV and a range of 8-11 for the others.

CaS breaks gun range into four bands, short, medium, long and extreme. At short and medium ranges shells hit belt armor. At long and extreme range plunging fire could hit deck armor. (We'll consider only AP type ammunition for this scenario) The CaS gun statistics for the RN appears below.

Mk VII 14in/45
Short: 0 - 7.7kyds / 61 belt
Medium: 7.8 - 19.3 / 44 belt
Long: 19.4 - 30.9 / 31 belt or 10 deck
Extreme: 31 - 38.6 / 24 belt or 19 deck

MkII, Mk1/N and MkI 15in/42
Short: 0 - 6.7kyds / 66 belt
Medium: 6.8 - 16.8 / 47 belt
Long: 16.9 - 26.9 / 33 belt or 11 deck
Extreme: 27 - 33 / 25 belt or 21 deck

Now for Yamato
Armor rating is 44 belt / 20 deck (I've ignored Torpedo bulge armor ratings)
Yamato is vulnerable to RN fire in the following range bands:

From KGV: Out to 19.3kyds the 14in guns can penetrate her belt armor but beyond that the 14in shells just cannot get enough energy to reliably penetrate belt or deck armor.

From all the rest: Out to 16.8kyds the 15in guns can penetrate belt armor. But only at extreme range (27 - 33kyds) can the 15in shells penetrate her deck.

Yamato has Type 94 460mm/45 guns
Short: 0 - 8.5kyds / 69 belt
Medium: 8.6 - 22 / 49 belt
Long: 22.1 - 36.8 / 35 belt or 14 deck
Extreme: 36.9 - 46 / 27 belt or 27 deck

Based on that the RN vulnerabilities are as follows:

KGV belt armor can be penetrated out to 22kyds and deck armor can be penetrated from 22.1 - 46kyds.

All the rest: Belt armor can be penetrated at any range. Deck armor can be penetrated by plunguing fire 22.1 - 46kyds.

So what does all that mean? If the goal is to penetrate armor then If you're not in a KGV you should work hard to maintain extreme range of 27 - 33yds. Your fire will be less effective but its the only chance you have at penetration. The problem is this is only Long range for Yamato which means her fire is faster and more effective at the same range. KGV class ships have to push inside 19.3kyds and look for a belt armor penetration.

What would I do? If the engagement geometry was favorable i.e. Yamato was in some way surrounded preventing her from using her speed to outrange me, then I would push everything in to around 15kyds or so. KGV would be effective and the others would be there to draw fire and cause as much non-penetrating topside damage as possible to wear Yamato down.

If you're Yamato I think it would be best to keep yourself from being penned in. Pick the closest enemy and pummel them into submission. Don't split fire, find or create a hole and keep moving. Only KGV has the speed to keep up.

As far as the RN 16in BBs are concerned, Nelson/Rodney were midway between KGV armor and the older BBs. Vanguard completed after the war and the Lion classes which were planned but never completed would have fared slightly better than KGV in terms of armor but the 16in guns were basically inferior to the 14in and 15in guns available to the RN. The max range was greater and plunging fire penetration was better but beyond that they had inferior performance.

Anyway, that's my interpretation based on the stats in CaS. I would be interested to see if other rules/stats lead to other interpretations.

Paul
[edited to change ranges from nm to kyds. If I've missed any they're supposed to be in kyds.]

[cbovill]

I love this question!!!

This would be a fun scenario to game out. Makes me want to go and buy the Yamato's right now.

Okay, so the Yamato can steam at 27 knots, the Queen Elizabeth's can steam at 24 (as reconstructed) and the R class can steam at 23 knots, with the R class battlecruisers steaming at 31 knots. That gives us a dozen British battleships/battlecruisers against the Yamato (I'm tempted to include Musashi to make this more doable).

British commander could use the two R class battlecruisers as his vanguard force to insure that contact is always maintained with the Yamato (she's faster than the British battleline). The Queens would form up a squadron of five and the R's would form up a second squadron of five. The three squadrons should arrange themselves so as to present the broadest possible target for Yamato and envelop her from all sides if possible. It may end up with the two battlecruisers on the far side between Yamato and her base, with the remaining British squadrons giving chase from the other side.

British commanders are going to have a major problem with spotting fall of shot and making corrections to fire as they will have 12 ships firing the same size shot at the same target at the same time. British accuracy will be low. But as evidenced by previous British tactics, they will surround their quary, blind her by taking out her FCS and C&C systems and then pummel her to death. They do not want her to escape towards land where she could beach herself and become a fortress with super guns that they cannot penetrate without a lucky shot. They could easiliy cause the turret mechanisms to fail though and thus take the guns out of action that way.

The Japanese commander should focus first on the battlecruisers and take them out of action, that will restore control of whether or not there is to be a battle back to the Yamato as she will now be the fastest ship. But Yamato is at risk of being holed fore or aft of her armored belt and thus having her speed reduced below that of the British line. In that event she can only hope to take as many British dreadnoughts to the bottom before she too rolls over and sinks.

The Japanese stand to lose little in this engagement since only one super-dreadnought is exposed, the British are exposing their ability to protect their interests and influence world power by engaging in this battle and so must be very careful in their prosecution of this fight to maintain the fleet and destroy the enemy. The British don't know how to retreat from a fight, its just not in them to back down. So they will take on this challenge and they will win, just not sure how much damage Yamato will do in the process. Bismarck was blinded in the first round by KGV and Rodney when her foretop FCS was taken out and they had to go to local control, which made her shooting ineffective.

That's my two cents!

Chris

[Eric Harvey]

Some real good points, fellas

Now, this actually isn't just an idle question: Some design work I've been doing (a rather simplified abstraction of naval combat) put a single QE's chances of sinking the Yamato at approx 5% (without boring you with the specific details, assume the mathematical model shows itself working pretty accurately when applied to known historical engagements, e.g., the Bismarck, etc).

Okay, that seemed reasonable at first blush (5% is pretty small, so that seems like a fair roundabout chance of the QE managing to sink the Yamato). It might even seem overly generous to the Q.E. (out of a 100 simulations, the Q.E. might be able to sink the Yamato 5 times).

But, when you add a few more British BBs to the mix, the math would seem to indicate that you'd need 20(!) British BBs to mathematically guarantee that the Yamato couldn't survive.

Well, that begged the question: What about - say -10 British BBs? (again, we're talking about the older WW1 pirogues; ships like the Nelson would fair quite well against the Yamato, perhaps suicidally, true, but you get my point).

But you guys make some excellent points, namely that much would perhaps depend on the dueling ships relative positions, and the tactics they employed during the fight.

And, of course, luck (good and/or bad) would plays its part.

Eric

[Mk 1]

Some design work I've been doing (a rather simplified abstraction of naval combat) put a single QE's chances of sinking the Yamato at approx 5% ...

But, when you add a few more British BBs to the mix, the math would seem to indicate that you'd need 20(!) British BBs to mathematically guarantee that the Yamato couldn't survive. ...

But you guys make some excellent points, namely that much would perhaps depend on the dueling ships relative positions, and the tactics they employed during the fight.

You need to be careful about math with probability-based statistics. Probabilities don't add up like discrete numbers do. They change based on sample size, shifting prior vs. following event constraint, and causal linkages, among other factors.

Perhaps I may give you a case to illustrate?

Let us say that you have force A, with cruisers, and force B, with destroyers. You determine, by your modelling, that the cruisers are 4 times as "lethal" to the destroyers, as the destroyers are to the cruisers. You create a simple model. It says that a cruiser will kill a destroyer with 100% of its "shots" (whatever you consider to be a quantum of firing .. a broadside, or 5 minutes of shooting, or whatever...). But the destroyers will only kill cruisers with 25% of their "shots".

Now, for the sake of simplicity in your simulation, you assume that the two sides take turns. Shots are not taken simultaneously.

If I told you that the scenario pits Force A with 10 cruisers, against Force B with 30 destroyers, and Force A (the cruisers) gets to shoot first, which side do you think will win?

Remember, the cruisers are 4X as lethal as the destroyers. There are 3X as many destroyers.

I will even grant every marginal judgement to the favor of Force A. They get first shot, and any rounding will be done to their favor.

Arithmetic would lead you to expect Force A to win. Statistics will tell you otherwise. The answer, if you follow the simulation, is that Force B (the destroyers) will win, decisively.

Observe:

Starting Balance: A = 10, B = 30 (1:3 ratio)

Turn 1:
Force A fires 10 times, and destroys 10 destroyers.
Balance: A = 10, B = 20 (1:2 ratio)

Turn 2:
Force B fires 20 times, and destroys 5 cruisers.
Balance: A = 5, B = 20 (1:4 ratio!)

Turn 3:
Force A fires 5 times, and destroys 5 destroyers.
Balance: A = 5, B = 15 (1:3 ratio)

Turn 4:
Force B fires 15 times, and (rounding to A's favor) destroys 3 cruisers
Balance: A = 2, B = 15 (1:7 ratio!)

Turn 5:
Force A fires 2 times, and destroys 2 destroyers
Balance: A = 2, B = 13 (1:6 ratio)

Turn 6:
Force B fires 13 times, and destroys all remaining cruisers (could kill 3, but only 2 remain)
Balance: A = 0, B = 13

Force A had ships that were 4X more effective. Do the arithmetic, and you would have expected a 4 to 1 exchange rate. Do the stats, and you find the exchange rate to be only 1.7 to 1, not 4 to 1.

Unfortunately it is hard to use the 1 vs. 10 scenario if you keep the rule about rounding, as stats using discrete steps (rounding to whole numbers) close to the sample size (1 Yamato) are always skewed.

But do this same simulation with 4 superbattleships that are 100% effective, versus 40 old battleships that are 5% effective. Same 20 to 1 effectiveness, versus 1 to 10 balance of forces. What do you think your results will be?

You'll end up after 8 turns with 30 surviving old battleships, and no Yamatos. 20 to 1 superiority, but only a 5 to 1 exchange rate.

As Stalin said, "sometimes quantity has a quality all it's own".