The US had at least one turret explosion during the war, and there was Mount Hood and the West Loch disaster, not to mention Port Chicago. Japan entered the Great War against the Central Powers as a coalition partner; if the coalition had broken up, Tokyo might still have found reason to quarrel with Berlin. At the dawn of the twentieth century, it hadn't been so. However, before long both Bismarck and Tirpitz begin to lose speed, cutting off any chance of escape.The battle between the smaller ships also begins to go the Japanese way. The remaining Japanese cruisers and destroyers, having disposed of their German counterparts, open up with their own guns and fire their remaining torpedoes. Unlike Magazine explosion ([i]Mutsu[/i]). Two hours into the engagement, an explosion rocks Tirpitz; the crippled battleship soon capsizes and sinks. For that matter, it was weird to have the carriers as decisive instead of using them in support of the battleships.Why weren't battleships part of the Pearl Harbor attack plan (either as part of the main plan or a near-term follow-up action - instead of just 2 escorting battleships)?
Three other Japanese task forces would approach Leyte on different headings.
The island of 900,000 was thought to have a particularly sympathetic population, good invasion beaches and terrain well-suited to U.S. military strengths.
It's possible that the nature of the Pearl Harbor attack made this task much harder, and that a more conventional approach might have resulted in us accepting some sort of negotiated settlement, particularly if they'd managed to administer a major defeat.Huh--I always thought Pearl Harbor seemed, ethics aside, pretty wildly successful militarily, and that it probably maximized Japan's slim-to-nil chances of winning that war.But now that I think about it, one of Japan's most valuable assets was underestimatedness, and they must have burned an awful lot of it in that attack.Also, thinking about the comparison to Germany... was there a viable way Japan could have taken a similar sea denial approach? Still, both German battleships remain shockingly resistant to the damage inflicted by the IJN. Leyte Gulf was the closest the Japanese came to their Decisive Battle, and all nine remaining battleships participated.Ultimately, the battleships of Japan were even less useful than their German counterparts. Once it became clear that the Philippines would be the target, the Imperial Japanese Navy put its Victory plan into effect.The massive loss of carrier and pilots at Philippine Sea meant that the Imperial Japanese Navy could no longer rely on its carrier force as a useful strike arm.
These raids succeeded not only in destroying a large portion of Japan’s air forces, but also in temporarily leaving the Japanese in the dark about U.S. plans.U.S.
Yamato and Musashi, the largest and most powerfully built ships in history (although perhaps at some disadvantage relative to the AmericanMore importantly, the imperial ambitions of Kaiserine Germany are worth remembering.
Japan Bet the Empire At Leyte Gulf And Its Ambitions Sank With Its Battleships. At stake would be the survival of the Japanese Empire, the independence of the Philippines, and the lives of nearly 200,000 sailors. Also, thinking about the comparison to Germany... was there a viable way Japan could have taken a similar sea denial approach? Although officially taken into IJN service, Bismarck never returns to combat status; the expense and difficulty of refit prove too much for the Japanese. I think the plan behind the strategy they adopted was to shatter our morale so thoroughly that this would happen early on, instead of shattering it after the Decisive Battle. This is a list of surviving major warships from the "all gun" era, essentially up through the 1950's. With Kido Butai (the Japanese carrier force) engaged elsewhere, the Imperial Japanese Navy assigns HIJMS Yamato and HIJMSThe German squadron has a three-knot speed advantage, which it uses to try to pull away from the Japanese and avoid the engagement.