Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by git-pull 2508 days ago
Look up Yamato battleship on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYrj3gzXgeA, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_battleship_Yamato)

The interpretation I've found is after these battles (with US Carriers vs Japanese battleships in WW2) the tendency was to favor aircraft carriers and phase out battleships.

One big reason is how versatile and integral a carrier is in to a fleet. Carriers can send out scouts, attack, defend from hundreds of miles away from the carrier (where the ship is beyond the horizon, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radar_horizon).

The weakness of a battleship is the target has to be tracked, and I think the best way to do that would be aerial recon. Battleships like Yamato then had pontoon type scout planes, but nothing like a carrier.

Without a carrier accompanying it, Yamato wouldn't be able to create a defensive perimeter of fighters to ward off dive bombers. I don't think it'd be able to effectively counter a fleet with carrier in the end.

More on Yamato: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ten-Go

Anyone here know more about this and can link some vids/resources on naval stuff?

1 comments

They were certainly an extremely important platform in WWII. But since then, there have been enormous developments in rocketry which make aircraft carriers highly vulnerable. I've seen the arguments that anti-missile defenses will protect them, but I just don't buy it. This is today's version of "The bomber will always get through."