japanese battleship Zipang 500.000 ton

Dilandu said:
Well, supertankers are even bigger - and they are able to move just well.
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But not very fast compared to a battleship, you're looking at around 17knots vs around 30knots by the time of WWII.
 
Dilandu said:
Well, supertankers are even bigger - and they are able to move just well.
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I was basically on about fuel usage and the ability to tank enough oil on top of the munitions etc required. A real monster of a ship but without a dockyard able to create it, doomed to insignificance.
 
Foo Fighter said:
I was basically on about fuel usage and the ability to tank enough oil on top of the munitions etc required. A real monster of a ship but without a dockyard able to create it, doomed to insignificance.
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In primis it was required for its creation a bigger dockyard and resources that probably Japan don't had it. In last video, i suppose they are imagined battleship Zipang refitted with classic aa-battery of ww2 like type 96 gun of 25mm.
 
A very nice target for a carrier group. Hell, that big and lumbering it would have been a nice target for a B-29...
 
Why?! Why?!?!?!?!

It is large enough that heavy bombers could actually hit it... and anything else for that matter. It'd need enough armour to be impervious to 16 inch shells and torpedo bulkheads (and even then - the enemy would probably create super-torpedoes.

It'd be interesting to see it with sails though.
 
Avimimus said:
Why?! Why?!?!?!?!

It is large enough that heavy bombers could actually hit it... and anything else for that matter. It'd need enough armour to be impervious to 16 inch shells and torpedo bulkheads (and even then - the enemy would probably create super-torpedoes.

It'd be interesting to see it with sails though.
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By 1945 it'd need enough armor to be impervious to a nuclear bomb... :rolleyes:
 
Foo Fighter said:
Could it manage to move at all without an oil tanker clamped alongside?
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So bigger the ship, so lower will be the specific fuel consumption (per ton). Also the max. speed increases with the ship length (see Froude number). So, the fuel consumption/speed/range was surly not the main obstacle...

Of course, it would have been a gigantic waste of resources in a world with aircraft carriers. I guess the Japanese doctrine of the decisive battle was the driving force behind this idea. If this ship would have met an unprepared, concentrated American fleet (in times without aircraft carriers) it might have been devastating weapon.

The drawback of this doctrine was, that the enemy must have been playing according to the rules, which usually didn't happen to often...
 

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