Here Parshall lumps together several factors, such as speed and damage control. Based strictly on raw numbers, I would give the edge to Iowa based on her superior fire control. Among the battleships he compares are Yamato and Iowa, based on five criteria: guns, armor, underwater protection, fire control and “tactical factors” such as speed and damage control.

“But if you throw enough shells up in the air, strange things can happen.

1.) “All optics do a very good job at determining bearing to the target, but not so good at determining range,” Parshall says.

Here was perhaps the Iowa’s biggest advantage.

Here was perhaps the Iowa’s biggest advantage. “World War II radar, on the flip, could give you a very good range number, but unless you had a modern set, getting a decent bearing was a real bear. “The chances of any given shell giving us a good underwater effect is pretty low,” Parshall noted. “But if you throw enough shells up in the air, strange things can happen. However, Yamato had poor seams between her upper and lower armor belts, which allowed water to enter when she was torpedoed by U.S. aircraft off Okinawa. “That’s why I say there’s a lot of luck involved here,” Parshall tells War is Boring. Since they couldn't match American quantity, it was Japanese navy doctrine for each warship to be more powerful than its individual U.S. counterpart.

But when it comes to damage control, America was far ahead of Japan and other nations.

Yamato and Iowa wouldn’t have stood turret-to-turret in an arena like a pair of heavyweight boxers. © Copyright 2020 Center for the National Interest All Rights Reserved, Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway. Since they couldn't match American quantity, it was Japanese navy doctrine for each warship to be more powerful than its individual U.S. counterpart. “In a 1945 test, an American battleship (the North Carolina) was able to maintain a constant [fire control] solution even when performing back to back high-speed 450-degree turns, followed by back-to-back 100-degree turns,” Parshall writes.

The Iowa-class and Yamato-class battleships were the ultimate development of the battleship for the United States and the Empire of Japan. They would have been surrounded by cruisers, destroyers and subs.

So which battleship would win? In the other corner, Iowa, at 45,000 tons the pride of America's World War II battleship fleet.

In reality, the two ships never met in battle.

“World War II radar, on the flip, could give you a very good range number, but unless you had a modern set, getting a decent bearing was a real bear. But what if they had, in a cataclysmic clash of seagoing titans? At that distance, both the Yamato’s and Iowa’s guns could penetrate each other’s armor. Yamato and Iowa wouldn’t have stood turret-to-turret in an arena like a pair of heavyweight boxers. Marksmanship is a key consideration when trying to hit a moving target from 25 miles away, even one that is almost three football fields long.
In the end, a Yamato versus Iowa duel might have been a fascinating but futile curiosity. “As such, hers is a sort of ‘brute force’ approach to protection. They would have been surrounded by cruisers, destroyers and subs.

This would not have been as one sided as people like to believe. “Iowa’s fire control is better. Based strictly on raw numbers, I would give the edge to Iowa based on her superior fire control. But it would only take a lucky hit or two to knock out a radar, and with those powerful 18.1-inch guns, a hit from Yamato’s main battery would hurt Iowa. While both ships enjoyed certain advantages over each other, those advantages are so slender that luck would probably play as decisive role as firepower and armor. “Iowa’s fire control is better.

In one corner, Japan’s Yamato, weighing in at 65,000 tons, the biggest battleship in history. Yet the real issue was even hitting the target in the first place.


As part of its quest for qualitative superiority, Japan trained its battleship crews in long-range shots to achieve such devastating underwater hits. © Copyright 2020 Center for the National Interest All Rights Reserved.


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