I finished an interesting book entitled “Destroyer Captain,” authors James & David Hornfischer. It follows the career of MOH recipient Capt Ernest Evans. In the section dealing with Leyte Gulf the authors state the Yamato and Musashi battleships could fire only one turret at a time, ostensibly due to potential damage to their decks. I’ve read more than my share of WW2 books, but have never come across this assertion. Can anyone corroborate this?
Never heard that before.
The question involves potential damage to the Musashi and Yamato from firing its own guns, I saw something online (not immediately confirmable) that not all guns in a turret fired simultaneously, to lessen the chance of blast damage.
(apologies for answering a different, unasked question the first time).
Haven’t hear anything like that for the Yamato neither.
Battleships seemed to fire routinely all their guns, but there had been a problem on the Richelieu class: with 4 guns by turret, firing them all at once caused a significant dispersion (between 500 to 1800 m varying with the range) compared to British BB. The problem was solved with a 60 ms delay, so not very noticeable.
The salve of the Yamato wasn’t even the heaviest of the time, British had more in WW1, so the “potential damage to the deck” semms dubious.
The Iowas fired with a slight delay between the barrels to prevent one projectile’s flight interfering with the next.
This article mentions
At 10:14, the Japanese detected two Martin Mariner PBM seaplanes, and the Yamato fired a salvo at them from her 18.1-inch guns but missed.
If taken at face value it implies that the Yamato could fire all of its guns at once without exploding into space.
(Speaking of space, the Yamato did have limited firing from the wave-motion gun installed during a later refit.)
I know that there was a question above the effects of the blast from the big guns.
Here’s one sourse.
It doesn’t specifically mention that only one turrent could be fired at a time, and I don’t seem to recall that specifically.
Back in '85 on a NATO deployment we got to witness USS IOWA doing a full firepower demonstration, the final part of which was a full broadside.
Cool, I did not know that and it would be interesting to know the length of the delay. Btw, the 16 in rounds were visible in flight.
The delay on Iowa’s guns was a .06 seconds from what i can find with a quick google.
The othe way to minimise shell’s interfering with eachother in flight was to stagger the arrangement of the guns in the turret. I.e. on a 3 gun turret the middle one sticks out just a bit further.
The gunners must take care about firing the guns non-simultaneously. A side gun fired by itself can put torque on the turret ring. At best, this reduces accuracy. At worst, it can damage the traversing gear. I’m guessing that the two side guns fire simultaneously but the middle gun is either fired sooner or delayed.
I wonder if t here’s an alternate universe that has a cartoon about the Battleship Musashi being turned into a space ship.
I don’t recall seeing any limitations on a full broadside. I could imagine that the turret firing arcs were limited, especially when firing within a few points of the bow or stern or “over the shoulder” where the blast could affect the bridge.
They could be firing at a reduced rate to watch for fall of shot and adjusting fire. No mention of firing arc restrictions for any of the BB’s reviewed.
http://www.combinedfleet.com/f_guns.htm#4