Mugen no Gunkan Yamato - Vol. 1 Ch. 4 - Isoroku Yamamoto

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Thanks for the hard work, loving the manga so far, i hope you'll continue translating this manga
 
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Thank you for the upload ! Would you be continuing this until you're finish ? Looking forward for the next update
 
Fed-Kun's army
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Well let's see how the author tries to make a ship that was a literal waste of oil into some game-changing piece because either the MC will have to say that the Americans broke the Japanese code or he'll have to know exactly where the Yorktown, Hornet, and Enterprise at real-time, aside from they'll come from the east, and the other thing to consider is that the Yamato will be going against Carriers without its 1944 number of AA guns, and she'll need to come way too close for her to be able to shoot her main guns, from a carrier perspective, and considering the Americans were already using radars, different from the Japanese who were mostly using visual spotting, I will say the Japanese still loses the battle of Midway the same way they lost in our timeline, with the Yamato not even being used during the battle

Edit: The Americans had by January 1942 broken parts of the Japanese naval codes, if the commander is boarding the Yamato still in January then he can still say, but it appears that the MC will either forget it, nor anyone will believe the seaman that the codes have been broken
 
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@entity_101

The mode of engagement for Yamato was actually well-defined. The Yamato's huge cannons can fire way further than it can see, with some sources citing that they can reach a target on the other side of the horizon. Therefore, Yamato was designed to operate with the assistance of a spotter plane flying high to identify targets and make corrections to the firing solution. Had Yamato been used the way it was designed to be used, the targets could be hit without them even knowing where the shells came from. Unlike carriers with their very visible planes, it is very hard to see artillery shells.

In other words, the Yamato and its sister ship was designed to be the artillery of the sea, bringing land tactics to the sea. As much as an artillery barrage is devastating against infantry and tanks, a Yamato cannon barrage would've been devastating to a fleet.
 
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hey hey hey this is sorta bs from a number of perspectives... even with the assistance of someone that knows the future japan couldnt hope to win with how shitty their production capabilities and technology were at the start as well as with how much easier the us could develop countermeasures against new tech since japan had no hopes of striking the us mainland without heavy bombers, and the us could do exactly that to japan
 
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@Aichan

Yes and no, the Yamato did have impressive firing capabilities, said to reach 42km of distance (impressive, definitely, useful, arguable at best), but it had flaws, first, it didn't have firing assistance made of radar (it was visual, the spotter planes could assist, but against a fighter squadron of a carrier, that was as good as gone so it can't be considered against a carrier), and its armor was actually weak to torpedoes (it was damaged by a submarine torpedoes and was forced to go back to a port for repairs). But one of the biggest flaws of that huge range, it's that the crew would need to know the exact position of the ship, it's direction and speed, and calculate the right angles to shoot, which from that perspective makes it kinda pointless to have a huge range that you would have very low chances of actually hitting something that's moving at a very decent speed, and an artillery barrage only need to know where the enemy is and let the hell loose and they have the ground to make the shells explode, a battleship needs to be precise to deal damage, not just shoot and pray that something gets hit because if they do that they only hit the water, and splash water everywhere

As for the carriers, their main advantage it's that that they can attack for long distances and with pretty good accuracy. During the battle of Midway, both carrier groups didn't see each other as their planes attacked, and I'm sure that Yorktown, Hornet, and Enterprise were all attacking at a range way longer than 42km, so Yamato's gun would be useless unless it got itself close enough, ut by that time it would definitely be spotted by some scout plane of one of the three carriers (or even from the Midway base itself)

So basically in that fight, it would be Yamato with its main gun's maximum range of 42km, with low precision and low accuracy at that distance, and without any help of spotting planes (since they would be shot down by fighters), against three carriers each carrying around 36 Douglas SBD Dauntless: 1 795 km (1 120 mi), 18 Grumman F4F Wildcat: 1 360 km (845 mi), and 18 Douglas TBD Devastator: 1 152 km (716 mi) (I'm using Enterprise's 1st Deployment: 7 December 1941 - 10 March 1942 fighter planes)

If the Yamato truly went against a carrier in 1942, the only thing she would see would be a bunch of planes coming towards her, dropping bombs and torpedoes, if she survives, she won't be able to hit a carrier because it would be striking her at around 27 times her effective distance. So the Yamato by the time she was being used was useless because the USN was going all-in for carriers, while the Yamato would be a great battleship killer... In a one on one

My sources: http://www.cv6.org/company/airgroups.htm

https://youtu.be/Pot-PNTYopA [IJN Yamato - Guide 082 (Extended)]
 
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@entity_101
You're right in that it was a flawed design for fleet to fleet engagement. However, the concept of super battleships was not really in the realm of ship to ship. Indeed, it would be hard for a cannon to hit the target (a ship) at 42km away. While it could mathematically be solved, it would require a lot of effort to get it to work. Whereas the USN simply need to send their planes and let the pilots make all the split-second decisions.

However, that is not to say that it was useless for its time. Not saying you said that, just saying that it's not useless as some people think.

The ability to hit a stationary target at 42km is a huge advantage. For example, the Yamato could simply sit 40km away from Hawaii and just pummel at Pearl Harbor from long range, protected by AA-heavy lighter ships (maybe Nagara-class). USN won't dare send their CAGs as it would be suicide. Which means they will need to send ships to intercept. The Yamato fleet can simply move away at that point as their purpose of terrorizing and distrupting the operations of Pearl Harbor has been accomplished. Keep up such harassments throughout the year and the IJN would have a bit more breathing space. Sure it's unlikely to go that well, but Ai-chan is speaking of hypotheticals.

You'd probably say that planes and bombers can do the same thing, and better. But planes and bombers are manned by people. And will therefore, not be sent where they would most surely die. Cannon shells are not people. Nobody cares even if you throw thousands of them at the enemy.
 
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A@Aichan

Well, now in the scenarios you put yes, the Yamato would definitely be useful very useful indeed, and ironically that was the only plan the Japanese managed to come up with, the higher-ups that came up with it and because they were too stubborn to just accept that they lost the war, which was the operation Ten-Ichi-go, were they planned to have the Yamato go to Okinawa and have it turned into a coastal battery so that it would try to sink as many American ships without being able to be sunk

And it was escorted by I think 4-5 light cruisers and a destroyer, and the Americans when they found the Yamato and its escorts, they attacked it with everything the 7 Essex-class carriers could send, suicidal? Kinda, but only seven? fighters were shot down, with ironically most of them being shot down by the explosion of Yamato's main battery magazines, and not by its AA guns...

As for the coastal bombardment, the battleships are definitely the best option since they would be able to attack away from any danger, and yes nobody cares about shells since they're cheap

I'm mostly saying that the Author needs a very logical and convincing argument, to make me believe that the Yamato would change the course of the war, and the useless thing, I'm taking from this:
"A famous story is told of a brawl in the Yamato's wardroom triggered by a casual remark made by a young officer—most likely a proponent of air power—to the effect that there were three totally useless big things in the world: namely, Egyptian Pyramids, the Great Wall of China, and the Battleship Yamato." (Source with sources: https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/60424/what-is-the-source-of-the-three-most-useless-things-in-the-world-are-the-great)

If I had to say the concept of this history is interesting, but the problem is that the Yamato was for all intents and purposes, too expensive and important to be used as the MC said in the previous chapter "used all out", and that the IJN, especially the higher-ups, had a lot of flaws from the carrier air squadrons, to their unwillingness to accept and tell the truth (the higher up literally hid the fact that they lost the battle of Midway from the Emperor himself)

The MC said that if Japan had put a tougher fight they could have made a better deal, I would say, it would be the complete opposite, I would say the Americans would double down the terms of surrender if the Japanese truly tried to act tougher than they actually were, honestly I say that the pages 2 to 4 (upper half) of this chapter are literally the embodiment of the only way Japan could have gotten the best peace terms from the Americans
 

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