Who Likes Ships? We Have Aircraft and Trains.

The second German submarine memorial, at Laboe. Behind the preserved Flak-type VII/41 U-995 stand the memorial to not just German submariners but also in general sailors lost at sea by warfare of all nationalities

HIJMS Nagato

69 Sleeper Bee said:

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We used a hydraulic torque wrench to put our propeller blades on…old school!

The Fuso in 1941, with her impressive “pagoda”, highest bridge superstructure in the world.

1942 conversion: This was a complete reconstruction as hybrid battleship/aircraft carriers. 70-metre-long (229 ft 8 in) flight deck installed aft, hangar, 22 seaplanes, 2 catapults

polywideblock said:

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The Fuso in 1941, with her impressive “pagoda”, highest bridge superstructure in the world.

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That giant tower did not stop it from being torpedoed by PT boats in the end. Of course, you can't really fault the ship for the choices of the commander.

Evaluation of the Fuso and Yamashiro also showed it was an obsolete design by the time the war started, with so many turrets the majority of its area had magazines to go with them. Lots of firepower, but very risky.

polywideblock said:

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1942 conversion: This was a complete reconstruction as hybrid battleship/aircraft carriers. 70-metre-long (229 ft 8 in) flight deck installed aft, hangar, 22 seaplanes, 2 catapults

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The Ise could not retrieve it's own aircraft. Sea planes with the crane, but it was mostly supposed to ferry aircraft to islands air bases and not act as a carrier. This conversion was done late in the war out of desperation and a realization the gun ships were basically of no more use by the time the decision was made. They may have made a difference much earlier in the war had they been pressed on the attack in various battles.

At the wars onset, the Ise class was considered average to good in terms of design and relevance. Adding giant torpedo blisters killed it's speed and made them into fuel hogs, which was a detriment to Japan. Like most of Japan's gun ships, the commanding officers in each battle were ultra conservative, not wanting the shame of losing one, even in battle. Japan waited to use them until there was no air cover for them and the war had significantly changed into an air war. had they been pressed much earlier into battle, they may have been enough to fully cripple the US Navy, at least for much longer than what happened.

If I remember right, Ise and her sister ship both were part of the fleet that went to Pearl Harbor, along with the flagship Nagato.

The rear turret was removed, and to offset the weight to maintain ballast they made the entire flight area/rear deck out of a couple feet of concrete. Tons, and tons of concrete.
Ise was sunk in harbor at Japan if memory serves and scrapped in place.

I got to thinking a few months ago that I have never read much about the naval warfare in WW1. So randomly I found “Naval Battles of the First World War”. Not sure it’s the best book on the subject but it was interesting reading. It illustrated that by 1910 there had been great progress overall in fighting ship design and outfitting. Gun torrents with multiple, high velocity, long range guns were universally in use along with streamlined hulls, and heavy armor. Propulsion was still a bit crude with most of them coal fueled to produce steam drive and they were constantly having to seek out ports were they could replenish their coal bins or find merchant ships they could raid and steal their coal. But even with seemingly modern ships with modern weapons, they were still for the most part relying on 19 century communications and visual sighting. They generally had wireless telegraph capability but it was short range, relied on multiple repeating stations, and being mast mounted was also usually about the first casualty of a naval fight. So usually within minutes of battle starting they were back to flag communication.

Do to the lack intelligence and tracking capability the German and British units generally had no idea where each other was exceptional for reports of port calls and sailings (Not to unchanged even at the start of WWII). So they spent most of their time cruising around the oceans, hoping to stumble into the opposing battle group by chance, usually missing each other by a few miles or few hours as navigation plottings years later would show. Often they didn’t even know if the enemy battle group they were seeking was even in the same ocean they were in.

When they would stumble on a few ships visually they had no idea who they were - friend or foe. The few naval aircraft they had were usually on ships too slow to keep pace with the group and were usually useless in all but the best weather. So one side would usually telegraph or flag an inquiry, “who are you”, upon which point if it was an enemy ship they would promptly answer with a fusillade of every gun they had. After a few exchanges there

would be so much smoke from the guns hanging over the ships and the ocean that they would often just be firing blindly hoping to hit something. And of course that meant that signal flagging within the battle group became difficult to impossible so no one in the group knew what the plan was and basically just fought their own battle.

But anyway it was an interesting, if confusing read, illustrating a kind of transition period in naval warfare. For the most part the last, great gun ship to gun ship battles were in WWI.

A few other notes in the book. The guns by then had long range with some of the bigger guns able to reach out nearly (maybe more) than 20 miles. Guns of 11, 12, 14 and 15” were increasingly common. I believe there were even a few 16”. But although they had early fire control technology, they were still reliant on visual targeting. The Germans had superior fire control systems that typically allowed them to get on target quicker than the British ships, but ship for ship the British ships had more throw weight than the Germans and once they found the range they could do a lot of damage.

Somewhat of a carryover from the last century I guess, both had heavy hull armor but fairly light deck and turret top armor. That failed to recognize the greater incidence of plunging hits from long range firing. In general the Germans had slightly heavier deck and turret top armor but both had a weakness in this area. That was compounded by their open elevator shafts from the turrrets down to the powder and shells rooms deep in the hulls. A hit through a turret top often resulted in the shell or blast traveling down the open shaft into the powder rooms, blowing the ship apart. In particular the British were slow to do anything about this and lost a tremendous number of ships this way. The Germans leaped on this quickly and redesigned their elevator and hoist systems to include blast shutters that opened and closed for each hoist of shot and shell to a gun. The British were still in the process of this at the end of the war and continued to lose a lot of ships this way.

One thing I noticed, most ships sunk met a very violent end, often by these magazine explosions that just blew them apart, taking virtually all hands down too. It seemed to be very rare to ever pick up more than 15 to 20 survivors after a ship was sunk.

Detective D said:

The Ise could not retrieve it's own aircraft. Sea planes with the crane, but it was mostly supposed to ferry aircraft to islands air bases and not act as a carrier. This conversion was done late in the war out of desperation and a realization the gun ships were basically of no more use by the time the decision was made. They may have made a difference much earlier in the war had they been pressed on the attack in various battles.

At the wars onset, the Ise class was considered average to good in terms of design and relevance. Adding giant torpedo blisters killed it's speed and made them into fuel hogs, which was a detriment to Japan. Like most of Japan's gun ships, the commanding officers in each battle were ultra conservative, not wanting the shame of losing one, even in battle. Japan waited to use them until there was no air cover for them and the war had significantly changed into an air war. had they been pressed much earlier into battle, they may have been enough to fully cripple the US Navy, at least for much longer than what happened.

If I remember right, Ise and her sister ship both were part of the fleet that went to Pearl Harbor, along with the flagship Nagato.

The rear turret was removed, and to offset the weight to maintain ballast they made the entire flight area/rear deck out of a couple feet of concrete. Tons, and tons of concrete.
Ise was sunk in harbor at Japan if memory serves and scrapped in place.

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They really didn't have the option of putting the ships into battle, as you mention, they used a lot of fuel. And Japan didn't have fuel to spare, having previously obtained 90% of their petroleum products from the United States before the war. They had energy reserves at the start of the war, but quickly went through it all, and were trying to make synthetic oil and fuel out of sugar, pine needles and rice, which worked but far from the amounts needed.

They didn't even have enough fuel for adequate pilot training, let alone sending out a capital ship.