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Paul Allen Helps Find Sunken Japanese WWII Battleship Musashi Off Philippines
mpicpp writes with news about the discovery of a sunken Japanese battleship by Paul Allen and a team of researchers. Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Paul Allen and his research team have found a massive Japanese World War II battleship off the Philippines near where it sank more than 70 years ago, his representatives said Wednesday. The apparent discovery of the wreckage of the Musashi, one of the largest battleships in history, comes as the world marks the 70th anniversary of the war's end. Allen and the team aboard his superyacht M/Y Octopus found the ship on Sunday, more than eight years after their search began, Allen's publicity agency Edelman said in a statement. Detailed images captured by a high-definition camera mounted on the underwater probe confirmed the wreckage as that of the Musashi, it said. Japanese experts said they were eager to study the images to try to confirm the ship's identity. Allen's team found the battleship in the Sibuyan Sea, using an autonomous underwater vehicle in its third dive after narrowing down the search area using detailed undersea topographical data and other locator devices, the statement said. "The Musashi is truly an engineering marvel and as an engineer at heart, I have a deep appreciation for the technology and effort that went into its construction," Allen said.
... a Microsoft executive discovered something.
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They were, in essence, the best WW1 warships ever made... except that they were deployed during WW2. The age of the dreadnought-style battleship was on its way out by this point and the era of aircraft carrier dominance had begun. Even if Musashi and Yamato had been deployed for key battles such as Midway and Guadalcanal, it's unlilkely they would have made much difference.
Yamato was deployed at Midway. She was part of the body of surface combatants (with one light carrier as escort) kept out of range for the surface action that Spruance wisely declined to permit. The deployment at Midway was a Rube Goldberg contraption that personifies everything that was wrong with IJN thinking in WW2; multiple formations scattered too far apart for mutual support and a requirement that the enemy do what you expect for victory to occur.
Neither ship was used at Guadalcanal for the same reason that the old American battleships weren't used: Neither side had sufficient tanker assets in theater to keep the old battle-wagons fueled. The USN deployed new design battleships (USS South Dakota, North Carolina, and Washington) but kept the Pearl Harbor survivors on the West Coast. The IJN used two older battle cruisers (Kirishima and Fuso) that weren't as fuel hungry as their bigger/newer cousins.
They were, in essence, the best WW1 warships ever made... except that they were deployed during WW2.
The biggest flaw with the IJN was their inferior fire control technology. This is evidenced both in surface actions (Samar being the best case study) and in the anti-aircraft role. The USN had radar directed fire control in 1942, for both surface targets and aircraft. The Japanese paid an extremely heavy price when attacking our ships with aircraft, the two carrier battles in the Guadalcanal campaign (Eastern Solomons and Santa Cruz) were Pyrrhic tactical victories at best, with most of the Japanese aircraft losses coming from AA fire.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Although the Iowa class's speed allowing it to keep up with the Carrier Task Forces was certainly useful, that wasn't the dividing line between relevance and obsolescence. If anything, I would argue that Battleships are not completely obsolete even today, it's just that they're economically inefficient at the tasks and role they perform. As for secondary and antiaircraft guns, those were a standard factor for pretty much every Battleship, US or otherwise, and certainly not unique in any way to the Iowas.
The US was building battleships pretty consistently until about 1942, ironically far more so than Japan. In the same 1936-1946 time frame, Japan built the two Yamato class, the USA built and completed ten battleships. Moreover, if you consider the time frame, the Yamato's US contemporary is the North Carolina, not the Iowa. Both were designed in the aftermath of the Second London Naval Treaty, as was Britain's King George V and France's Richelieu - the difference is that Japan didn't sign the treaty, and thus built a ship vastly in excess of what the treaty would restrict. They also did so in secret, meaning that the full extent of Yamato's design and strength wasn't known in the USA.
Japan's biggest problem was that the US had cracked their code and knew ahead of time when and where they were going to strike.
Midway is a perfect example, Japan tried to set a trap for the American carriers coming out of Pearl Harbor. But the US turned it into an ambush that pretty much destroyed Japan's naval air power by sinking four carriers and killing a large percentage of their experienced pilots. The same thing happened again at Saipan, when Japan lost three carriers and over 600 aircraft.
The US hasn't forgotten the value of Intelligence gathering.