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re: Japan vs Nazi Germany (hypothetical alternative history)
Posted on 3/28/14 at 12:39 am to RollTide1987
Posted on 3/28/14 at 12:39 am to RollTide1987
In terms of fire control, you're really splitting hairs. Most would agree that both the Yamato and Bismarck had fairly even fire control with each being poor systems, however to bring the Iowa back up; The Iowa decimates both of them in this area.
Quoting Brooks Rowlett "Only with the advent of 10cm and (later) 3cm wavelength sets was true 'blindfire' radar fire-control achievable, wherein the firing ship need never come into visual range of the opposing vessel. The Germans, Japanese, and Italians never developed sets of this capability (both the Japanese (despite its 10cm wavelength) and German sets were usable for fire control against a battleship-sized target only out to a range of about 27,000 yards.)" Now in optical fire control, the Bismarck did have a fair advantage of about 5 meters difference over the Yamato; but to actually use these form of data input the ships would have had to be a hell of a lot closer than 25k yards which the Yamato would never let happen. So I consider it a moot point in terms of optics.
To go to the armor, its really no contest. The Yamato is simply a beast. Going back to Brooks "Bismarck, for instance, was designed for combat in the North Atlantic. Her designers anticipated weather and visibility conditions such as had prevailed at Jutland in WWI. As a result, she was optimized for short-range, flat-trajectory combats. Her armor scheme reflects this, with an armor layout that makes it fantastically difficult to put a shell into her vitals at short range, but which is vulnerable to long-range fire, and which reduces the total amount of protected volume in the vessel by carrying her armor deck lower in the ship than her contemporaries." So, to add, the British and French ships were never gonna blast through it, namely for the way the Biz was built. on the side though, the Allied Euro fleets had some of the worst armaments in the entire war. That could do nothing but help the Biz in this case. Add to that, the Yamato excelled in long distance combat.
"By the same token, Yamato was simply built to stand up to and utterly outclass any conceivable American or British opponent by sheer weight of gunfire, and elephant-like armor. As such, hers is a sort of 'brute force' approach to protection. Her armor layout isn't the most efficient, but she has a lot of armor, so it doesn't really matter."
That said, the Yamato had 16" steel plating to the Biz's 12". To further add injury, the Biz's 15" 47cal only had a projectile weight of 1800 lbs, which compared to the Yamato's 18.1"/45cal 3200 lbs, is rather infantile. That's just the shells, talking about the actual Battery's and you have a simlar 2:1 ratio of power in favor of the Yamato.
Now then, the Bismarck was faster and much more manuverable when firing (The Yamato had to be practically at a stand still to fire). So if it were to close the distance before being blown to shreds it could probably do some damage. However, even with that I don't think it'd be enough. I just don't see the Biz's artillery being able to dent the Yamato.
Talking about Navel expertise in terms of crew though, you have the Japanese who are all about the attack and almost no defense (in terms of tactics) vs the German's who are more deceptive in their approach to a fight.
Either way, it's be a fun matchup.
Quoting Brooks Rowlett "Only with the advent of 10cm and (later) 3cm wavelength sets was true 'blindfire' radar fire-control achievable, wherein the firing ship need never come into visual range of the opposing vessel. The Germans, Japanese, and Italians never developed sets of this capability (both the Japanese (despite its 10cm wavelength) and German sets were usable for fire control against a battleship-sized target only out to a range of about 27,000 yards.)" Now in optical fire control, the Bismarck did have a fair advantage of about 5 meters difference over the Yamato; but to actually use these form of data input the ships would have had to be a hell of a lot closer than 25k yards which the Yamato would never let happen. So I consider it a moot point in terms of optics.
To go to the armor, its really no contest. The Yamato is simply a beast. Going back to Brooks "Bismarck, for instance, was designed for combat in the North Atlantic. Her designers anticipated weather and visibility conditions such as had prevailed at Jutland in WWI. As a result, she was optimized for short-range, flat-trajectory combats. Her armor scheme reflects this, with an armor layout that makes it fantastically difficult to put a shell into her vitals at short range, but which is vulnerable to long-range fire, and which reduces the total amount of protected volume in the vessel by carrying her armor deck lower in the ship than her contemporaries." So, to add, the British and French ships were never gonna blast through it, namely for the way the Biz was built. on the side though, the Allied Euro fleets had some of the worst armaments in the entire war. That could do nothing but help the Biz in this case. Add to that, the Yamato excelled in long distance combat.
"By the same token, Yamato was simply built to stand up to and utterly outclass any conceivable American or British opponent by sheer weight of gunfire, and elephant-like armor. As such, hers is a sort of 'brute force' approach to protection. Her armor layout isn't the most efficient, but she has a lot of armor, so it doesn't really matter."
That said, the Yamato had 16" steel plating to the Biz's 12". To further add injury, the Biz's 15" 47cal only had a projectile weight of 1800 lbs, which compared to the Yamato's 18.1"/45cal 3200 lbs, is rather infantile. That's just the shells, talking about the actual Battery's and you have a simlar 2:1 ratio of power in favor of the Yamato.
Now then, the Bismarck was faster and much more manuverable when firing (The Yamato had to be practically at a stand still to fire). So if it were to close the distance before being blown to shreds it could probably do some damage. However, even with that I don't think it'd be enough. I just don't see the Biz's artillery being able to dent the Yamato.
Talking about Navel expertise in terms of crew though, you have the Japanese who are all about the attack and almost no defense (in terms of tactics) vs the German's who are more deceptive in their approach to a fight.
Either way, it's be a fun matchup.
1
Posted on 3/28/14 at 10:24 am to HeavyCore
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...
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...
This post was edited on 3/28/14 at 10:25 am
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