re: Japan vs Nazi Germany (hypothetical alternative history)

Why would anyone argue about obsolete battleships?

quote:

---

Except that the Yamato class had terrible fire control systems that probably could not track the Bismarck, yet alone the Tirpitz alongside. Yamato v. Bismarck + Tirpitz would end with Yamato being flanked and sank by both fast battleships. If you throw in the Musashi, I still think the Bismarck and Tirpitz could rain hell on them from range. Where both Yamato classes couldn't deliver accurate fire.

---

The shorter range if the German 15inch guns coupled with the Yamato's massive armor would have been the deciding factor. Even if the Germans landed a series of salvos, the Yamato could shake off the effects easily. But even one salvo from Yamato's 18 inch guns would have doomed the Germans.

quote:

---

Too far apart geographically for it to happen.

---

not if you look at their plan to divide the world. their empires would share one bigass border.
LINK

quote:

---

There never was any possibly of the US becoming a puppet of anyone.

---

that is why this is a hypothetical situation

quote:

---

Is it because the Yamato had bigger guns? Seriously, didn't the Bismark have like 16" and the Yamato 18"? Is that the difference?

---

The real big ship fight would have been between the Yamato and the Iowa (or maybe even the South Dakota for that matter). Just to throw my hat in real quick because I love naval warfare:

The Bismarck only had a 15".
The Iowa, however did have 16" with amazing shells that almost made up the difference in comparison with the Yamato's 18". The two, Iowa and Yamato's, artillery were very comparable to each other; spouting almost identical velocity and range. The advantage went to Yamato in pure payload weight by about 500 lbs. The Bismarck had only two real advantages; Accuracy and rate of fire. That said the Yamato and Iowa could fire from 40k-45k yards away, while the Bismarck could only fire from 38k and had a very low weight to it's projectiles by about half of the other two vessels.

In other words, the shell's could be said to have been vastly more important than the Battery itself.

....and that's just talking about their main armaments. Truly, if it was the Yamato vs. Bismarck in open water....the Yamato probably wins it fairly handily.

Side note: I used to go here all the time for info on ships LINK. It has a great deal of valuable info, and the guy who wrote it has a genuine love and unbiased nature towards the facts behind the ships.

Good stuff, thanks

quote:

---

Truly, if it was the Yamato vs. Bismarck in open water....the Yamato probably wins it fairly handily.

---

I disagree. The Yamato's fire control system was no where near as advanced as the Bismarck's. I'd also wager the Bismarck had the better officers and crew.

Let's not forget that the Bismarck's armor was pretty legendary. James Cameron's expedition to the Bismarck in 2001 proved that it was not British shells or torpedoes that sank her in the final battle, but the ship's own crew. It refused to sink despite being hit by an estimated 300-400 shells at close range.

Germany would control most of the resources on earth.

Nazi ability to wage aggressive war would allow them to dominate Japan.

OK, I said I was going to post my thoughts on a war between Germany & Japan so here goes...

First, let's set the stage, (I'm going to go with the most realistic version here) Germany has forced Britain to sue for peace and has conquered the USSR. The Soviet Union has totally collapsed and Germany has unfettered access to the heartland of Asia. Japan has defeated the US in the Pacific and forced America to basically withdraw to it's western shoreline. Japan rules over a Pacific centered empire with huge holdings in China and Indochina.. And speaking of China, the war there for all intents and purposes has ended with the withdrawal of outside support for both the Nationalist Chinese and their communist rivals. India has been given independence from Britain and now is basically a vassal state of Japan. Australia is isolated and forced to accept at least a non-aggression pact with Japan.

The time frame of a German vs. Japanese war is sometime around 1943 - 1945. I use this window because for everything up to this point to have the slightest chance of happened, WWII would have had to have been won by Germany & Japan no later than mid-1942. After that point there would be a period of consolidation while both sides put their affairs in order in their newly acquired empires.

Now that we have that settled, we're left with where this war would be fought. Looking at a map of Asia, supposing it to be divided in the manner I described, I'd say the most likely flash-points would be (1) Manchuira (2) India or (3) Persia.

For the sake of arguments, lets say the Germans & Japs come to blows over the most likely of reasons, control of the middle eastern oil. So we have Japan vs. Germany in lets call it 1944 and the two sides will fight a war primarily in Persia.

First let's look at the ground forces of both armies. Here we find a huge difference between the two sides. For the Germans, their army (or as they call it the Heer) is built for a mobile combined arms 3 dimensional battlefield where fast moving armored columns are supported by ground attack aircraft and mobile artillery. Japan on the other hand has it's army very much organized and made primarily as a late WWI era force where there are little to no concentrated armored formations and armor is instead spread out to "support" the infantry which is primarily either footborne or at best truck mounted.

let's look at armored vehincels first. By 1944 the Germand main battle tank would be the Panther. (I'll let the picture tell the tale)

What you're looking at is well sloped, thick armor coupled with a devastating high velocity anti-tank gun.

The Jap main tank at the same time. This is the Type 3 Chi-Nu medium tank.

It's armor is thin and not very well sloped. That gun is a low velocity (680 FPS compared to 1120 FPS for the Panther) 75mm gun.

Long story short, German armored forces (which would vastly outnumber Jap armored formations to start with) would arse rape any Jap tanks that were stupid enough to try and stand and fight.

As for infantry, the Jap infantry is well trained and disciplined but they lack battlefield firepower as they are all armed with the sub-par pre-WWI era bolt action Arisaka rifle and the cumbersome Type 92 machine gun spread out thinly at the company level.



And even those formations lucky enough to have a magazine fed Type 96 LMG would still be equipped with a weapon totally outclassed by the German belt fed MG 42.


The German infantry, in addition to being almost totally mechanized, are by 1944 all equipped with at least semi-automatic and in many cases automatic rifles that all support the devastating MG42 which is liberally spread out at the squad level.



The bottom line is that a German infantry company will be able to completely dominate a similar or even larger Jap body when it comes to both maneuver and column of firepower on the battle field. Just as the German armored formations would dominate their Jap counterparts, the same would be true for the infantry.

The final aspect on the ground to look at is artillery, once again a picture is worth a thousand words...

German artillery...

That's a battery of German Hummel 150cm SP howitzers. Fully mobile, highly accurate, able to keep pace wit hte fast moving German armored columns.


That's the Jap Type 38 15cm howitzer. It was the primary Jap artillery piece at the time. As you can see, totally outclassed by it's German counterparts.

So As you can see the German ground forces would totally outclass their Jap adversaries in every conceivable manner. A meeting of these two armies would result in a complete rout of the Jap forces.

That's enough for now, next well look at air power...

quote:

---

As far as the naval aspect goes it would come down to who had aircraft carriers?

They made battleships almost obsolite.

The German army outclassed the Japanese by far, so did the air force (luftewaffe).

---

I'll get into that later but for now I will say that the fact Japan possessed a large fleet of aircraft carriers would have not saved them in a war against Germany.