Shipbucket

Isn't the only reason that the ships got rebuilt so much due to treaty's stopping new building ?

JSB

that, and the fact that steel for new ships was scarce, IIRC, made that the ships were modernised instead of replaced. and this creates that long life span, not the fact that the structure could take it (because it can do that on most if not all ships, when maintained)

One other question I'd ask is relating to range and fuel economy - I understand Yamato was an absolute fuel hog, perhaps not surprising given the size - given the probable difficulties in fitting electronics that erik_t has mentioned, the likelihood that even if refitted with modern, more efficient machinery (at what cost?) she'll still be a thirsty beast, wouldn't almost any other battleship be a better pragmatic choice to update?

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Saying "well every other battleship lasted for thirty years" (even if true) is dreadfully fallacious thinking. Combat aircraft also used to have useful service lifetimes of maybe three to five years. That doesn't mean we threw away the F-15 in 1981.

The world changes; old rules of thumb are not necessarily valid in perpetuity.

I remember reading that one of the reasons Yamato was such a fuel hog was a poorly designed underwater bow which would have been replaced.

So why are you starting with the 1941 version and not the 1945?

In fact, Yamato's bow was very carefully optimized for high speed through expansive tank testing. It might not have been an excellent hullform for fuel efficiency, but to call it "poorly designed" would be a mischaracterization IMHO.

Shipright wrote:I remember reading that one of the reasons Yamato was such a fuel hog was a poorly designed underwater bow which would have been replaced.

So why are you starting with the 1941 version and not the 1945?

Because it had less equpment on it wich makes it easier to remove all of them

A question, then - I've seen a couple of mentions of Yamato being an expensive ship to run (and therefore being mostly left out of the war) - but why was this? Was it simply the size of the beast or something innate about the hull or propulsion systems that had a disproportionate effect?

thus bigger the ship, thus more power needed, more speed needed, more power needed, more power needed, more fuel needed.

Yamato had 150.000hp for 27knots, and used steam turbines. to get steam she needs boilers, boilers need either coal or oil.
Iowa was smaller than Yamato but needed 212.000hp to get up in 32.5 knots.

1 knots more doesn't mean 1hp more on ships like yamato it would need minimum 50.000 hp more for 1 more knots.


compare it to an Norwegian PT boat of Hauk class. they had 7200 hp to do 32 knots, on an 36.5 meter long hull. and these vessel could empty a 1000 liters tank in under an hour. Yamato would do it in an second.

I still mostly cleaned up ww2 stuff. If you have noticed i'm almost done with removing ww2 stuff from the front of the superstructure.