It's funny how so many Japanese anime, movies, and TV series highlight the beehive shells to the point where it became the staple or even symbol of the Imperial Japanese Navy, despite its questionable combat effectiveness, as the ammunition was so unique among the navies during WW II
I suppose it is like Germans and Tiger tanks. So memorable, and such a "hero" vehicle makes it more recognizable and more of an underdog than the huge masses of common Shermans, or swarms of carrier aircraft that brought the Yamato down.
@@UCannotDefeatMyShmeat "Look, they are saluting us!, wave them back boys!" *Wiggle Wing* *Japanese POV* "Sir, we don't even hit the planes but it seems they are destabilized!" "Those crazies did it!, and i thought it was a joke!. There goes my 500 yen.."
@@NayuzAqua Nothing wrong with the concept. But they got the application wrong, as they did with their AA in general. The way to make it useful udring mass air attacks was to fire into sectors as an area saturation tactic, ignoring individual aircraft. Same with all AA in WW2 until good radar controlled AA fire comes in ('44 for the British, '45 for the US, no one else got it right during the war) and allows individual target tracking and engagement
to add to this: the main deck had to be cleared of personel when firing the main guns, due to the shockwave blasts capable of injuring the crew. that's why they disrupt the operation of other AA guns
Goes to show how slow battleship guns actually are to move around. They were close enough they could probably see the main guns swinging around to aim at them and started evasion before _Yamato_ was even done loading.
Interesting video! The "beehive" in the title caught my attention immediately because when I was in the Marines in the 1970s there was an anti-personnel shell nade for the 106mm recoilless rifle called the "beehive round." It was a hollow shell packed with (if I remember correctly) 6,000 small darts called "flechettes," French for little arrow. I watched a firing demonstration where they stripped the leaves off a treeline firing one of those rounds. Impressive, to say the least! Know what the nick-name for the beehive round was? "Hamburger Helper!" This was almost 50 years ago and I have no idea if the 106 is inventoried by the Corps anymore but trust me, you did NOT want to be downrange of one of those things!
Certain types of munitions have flechette/beehive warheads still. Notably Marine gunships have free-flight rockets available that can be equipped with them, and certain types of tank rounds and the M30 GMLRS are "shotgun" like (though balls, not darts). Nobody really liked the flechettes, for all they were effective. Just a nasty weapon, and more "smart" warheads were more useful. The 106mm went out of service years ago, though the 84mm Carl Gustav Recoilless Rifle has been gaining back popularity among the infantry of the army and Marines.
more than the 106 had beehive rounds the 105mm howitzer had one and there was.are 2.75 inch rockets filled with them as well as 12 gauge shotgun shells!! a nasty little weapon when they go into someone they bend and twist hard for the docs to get out!!!
@@astrobeno I don't think cartoon makers are a part of the cabal of propagandists you check under your bed for at night, but maybe I'm the crazy one here.
Another creator referred to the Beehive shells and 25mm Type 96 gun as "morale builders" They made lots of noise and nice explosions but did not do much to actually take down planes.
@@iatsd Imperial Japanese Navy AA was fraught with problems and significantly behind the times of WWII... Which includes their AA guns. Radar and Radar gunfire direction for AA was a rare thing for the Japanese. At Midway, none of the ships with Nagumo's strike force had Radar. It was a big reason why the American dive bombers were able to get to their attack points. By the time the Japanese saw the dive bombers, they were already on their attack runs. The 25mm/60 Type 96 gun's main problem for most of the war was that rounds were fed with 15 round magazines. So stoppages were frequent. The 127mm/45 Type 88 and 89 AA guns were found on Cruiser and larger vessels. The main problem for them was poor range. The 127mm/50 3rd Year Type was found on their Destroyers. Technically they were dual purpose because they were mounted on turrets allowing high angle of fire. Realistically? Training speed was terrible. They required hand ramming of their rounds which considerably slowed their rate of fire. They had no radar fire direction. They were useless in the AA capacity. The 100mm/65 Type 98 as found on the Akizuki-class family of Destroyers were good AA guns. There were only 2 problems with them. 1) Short barrel life. 2) Very rare guns. So rare that when Yamato got her late war AA refit, she received none of these guns. The IJN arsenal of AA weapons also had a major flaw. They had the large, long range AA guns like the 127mm. They had short range 25mm guns. But they had no AA machine guns larger than 25mm. They were the only navy in WWII that had this flaw. The Germans had 37mm for their ships. The British and Americans had 40mm up the wazoo. Frankly, the 20mm and 25mm guns were too short in range. So the larger stuff like 40mm Bofors was sorely needed to back up the slower firing, long range 127mm or so guns.
@@waibansteinburg8192 no ship can survive that no matter what not even current Modern warships. Yamato is pretty beautiful ship her death mark the end of era of battleship and start the era of Carriers. So yea her death is pretty magnificent and Majestic. Edit: may her crew rest in peace with her.
@@SpencerLemay Good luck fighting against 200 to 300 planes (Modern jets with Anti missiles and stuff) with one single warship. No matter the AA system it will get overwhelmed. That's why US warship always moves in packs to maximize the AA defense.
Before watching i knew this was likely just a name for a type of shell, but part of me wanted to believe imperial japan would be insane enough to use actual beehives in naval combat
2:49 small correction for no reason, Yamato would fire beehive shells on quite a few different occasions, not just twice. the first time was during the battle of the phillipine sea where she (and the rest of the japanese task force) fired on returning japanese aircraft (or alternatively she and musashi didnt open fire, nobody can seem to decide) during this same battle she would also fire on american aircraft with her main armament. Yamato would fire these shells on multiple occasions during the battle of leyte gulf, aparently even firing them on the escort carrier white plains because they forgot to load her main batterys with AP shells. A few months later, Yamato would be attacked while underway in the inland sea (as part of a air raid on the naval base at kure) a picture of Yamato was taken during this attack in which you can see her main armament trained to starboard, indicating that she fired beehive shells.
We had beehive shells in Vietnam. They were antipersonel with the barrels depressed for direct fire. It meant the enemy was close and we were in trouble.
My grandfather is 97 and he fought at Okinawa in the Navy. He was 17 then. I asked him if he ever saw Yamato. He said, "No. We sunk her before she could get close to the island (of Okinawa)." 🇺🇸⚓️🦅💪🏻🫡
Unironically this vid brought me attention to the animted film "In This Corner of The World". Was expecting another bleak end similar to Grave of the Fireflies, but im glad its end with a heartfelt note yet still showing the horrors of war. Thanks Johnny.
@@waibansteinburg8192 Kancolle browser might be largely forgotten but the arcade is pulling good numbers in japan. Just compare it to fgo arcade which is 2 years younger and no longer prints cards.
In one of the said game's guides (kudos to the players themselves), Type 3 shells were best used against enemy installations while pretty crap against aircraft.
Interestingly enough, the Americans also had AA shells for large-caliber guns, at least technically. Since nose fuses were standardized, it was technically possible to screw a timed or VT fuse into an HE shell up to 16 inches. This capability was considered for some weapons, with anti-aircraft firing tables being provided for weapons up to the 8-inch 55-caliber guns on heavy cruisers.
The idea of the shell was not as similar as a regular AA round that would burst in the air spreading killing shrapnel, but the idea of the beehive shell was to have it detonate close enough to an aircraft and will depend on its hot 3000 degree flam that would spread about 16 feet in the air to strike an aircraft burning a hole in its wing or completely exploding the aircraft, although it did have some shrapnel in it but mainly was an incendiary shell
I really think you should mention about the real designation of this weapon which is Type 3 anti-air shell. Which can be heard at the begining. Japanese seems to love this cluster incendiary idea a lot, they even made an airdrop version to drop on the top of bomber formation.
We had 105mm Beehive rounds in NAM. They fired flechettes(tiny darts) and were credited with saving several firebases when they were first used in direct fire situations.
I feel like one salvo of regular airburst shells would have worked better but still wouldn't be super effective as you would realistically need air radar and proximity fuses for that to be usable but would be at the expense of exposed AA crews
Going into this I thought it was a long range area suppression/light-casualty inflicting weapon, designed to shower an area with thousands of needles. As soom as JJ said anti-aircraft I started dying laughing.
@@EllisJohnstone Though in war they are most often seen as a SHORT-range last-ditch weapon for artillery, or sometimes aerial rocket systems (Korea, Vietnam, etc)
Haven't started the video in depth yet but i'm imagining these are somewhat like cannister/shrapnel shells. The Yamato is a legendary vessel and i can't wait to see which great films you cite here
@@waibansteinburg8192 'Legendary' does not necessarily imply goodness. Just like the word "epic" isn't always a good thing, both are words with meanings that have evolved certain connotations. This is common throughout the evolution of human language
There is a rabbit hole about the safety of those shells too. The Japanese in the know were scared shit less to keep them onboard warships. There were many designers that didn't trust them.
The Oxygen torpedoes were pretty scary to have onboard as well. There are photos of Japanese cruisers heavily damaged with the crews desperately trying to dump the torpedoes over before fire could get to them.
And the Patton series tanks, and firebase artillery. The US armored cav in particular liked to use beehive rounds as "ambush breakers" while defending road-bound convoys.
The beehive shell makes sense in practice - afterall canister shot had existed as a naval ammunition since the age of sail and continues to be used to this day as an alternative ammunition choice for artillery and tanks. Shotguns are the weapon of choice for hunting birds, so why not just scale that concept up from a 12 guage shotgun and 2' long grouse, to an 18" gun and 20' long torpedo bombers. Well the problem there is that a battleship's main armament is not even close to a man with a shotgun. A man with a shotgun can swing his gun around and stop right on target in merely a second, he can track the grouse with ease, and he can follow up a missed shot with at least one more almost instantaneously. But even more prominent as a factor, the grouse don't shoot back, so a good gamesman could get within 30 yards before taking his shot. Scaling it up, a 12 gauge shotgun is about 25 times smaller than an 18 inch gun like on Yamato, so 30 yards becomes 750. By comparison the US Mk. 13 Torpedo had a range of over 5,000 yards. Now it's unlikely that a torpedo bomber would attempt to make it's attack from that far out, but it's obvious that the sort of range between the target and the shooter are vastly different at this scale. Battleship main armament were incredibly cumbersome as weapons. Slow to aim, slow to reload, and almost impossible to track targets with - the exception being other large warships at range, where 28kts at 10 nMi would only need a rotation of a few minutes of angle every second, if that. All this lends itself to the propensity to entirely miss any aircraft with the first rounds, and then be almost unable to even aim a second salvo, never mind get one loaded in time. And of course, as Johnny mentions, the use of the main guns would render it impossible to man half the other dedicated AA armament, lest the concussion from the main guns kill or seriously wound the other seamen. End of the day, the Battleship was already obsolete as a naval weapon before the war broke out. Aircraft carriers were clearly the new king of the seas, and famous battleships like Bismarck, Tirpitz, Yamato, etc only avoided being famous wrecks so long as they avoided allied aircraft - which is to say, not very long. Yamato was an incredibly impressive waste of resources. Had the Japanese built half a dozen carriers and the aircraft to go with them, than attempting to build the two huge resource drains that were Yamato and her sister, Musashi, then perhaps the war in the pacific would have been very different. In-fact, Shinano, the third in-class, being converted to an aircraft carrier is perhaps physical evidence that the Japanese themselves had come to the same conclusion, even if too little, too late
Theoretically this sounded like a good idea. It just didn't work well in actual practice. Just another problem out of many more than plagued Imperial Japanese Navy AA capabilities.
The Japanese failed to design effective enough shells, both against air and sea targets. Their industry did only 137 live tests on shells to examine effectiveness until 1945, while the US did thousands. USA hardly improved on AA shells during the war but armour piercing did great. However flak was also most effective against other ships but neither side realised.
i wonder if it would have been more effective if they just focused on making as much shrapnel as possible, the incendiary elements don't seem necessary or effective
HMS Rodney fired her main armament at aircraft during Pedestal. They were guided by RDF at a predictive target boxes. Can’t find any evidence that they were on anyway effective. The rounds were standard HE. Nice one JJ
I can't imagine just how badly you had to have pissed off Lady Luck to get smacked right in the chin with a shot from the main gun of a battleship. Those things are big enough that I am utterly unconvinced the shell would even detonate before passing clean through
Johnny I love your videos they are awesome. I would really appreciate if you did a video on the future about the primary weapons of the American Revolution: The Brown Bess and Charleville Model 1766 Flintlock Muskets and the Bayonet. No rush though and keep churning out your history videos! Wish you the best of luck and success with your RUclips Channel!
IVE DONE IT BEFORE AND I HIT AN AIRCRAFT AND SHOT IT DOWN WITH THE AP SHELLS AND I SPAWNED LARGE BOMBERS AND I MISEED 90 PERCENT OF THE TIME AND HAVE U BEACHED HER
According to my research, the Japanese soldier is the best in all of WW2. This is because they fought until they were dead. Sacrifice and Imperialism. If the USA had not dropped the 2 atomic bombs, the Second World War would have lasted until 1949. So banzai for this video John.
You may want to look up the US 77th infantry division. Leyte - they did an amphibious landing on the enemy's side of the island, where they would be outnumbered three to one, took the port, destroyed a troop transport, and began stacking bodies. They are credited with 19,456 confirmed kills... And suffered 543 casualties in return. A 36:1 ratio.
What I'm trying to say is that it wouldn't have lasted that long. Japan has a whole lot of coast and at that point not a lot of trained soldiers left. Stopping the invasion would have been futile, they simply couldn't put enough troops on the beaches to put up any significant resistance, and what troops they could put up would not have been well trained. Meanwhile, those doing the beach landings would have been combat veterans primarily.
Also, if the big main guns are being operated then it's more likely that powder bags will be exposed inside the turret rather than deep in the magazine that could be flooded quickly if necessary. Damage control is something that was found (with the benefit of hindsight) to be extremely important to overall survivability.
Hello Johnny great video as usual here’s one you might not have covered but I think would be interesting is the Flower Class corvettes used as part of the Atlantic conveys. As a kid I read The Cruel Sea by Nicholas Monsarrat it is such a brilliant book and the film that depicts it is equally great. As someone who is into films The Cruel Sea was produced by Leslie Norman who was the father of Barry Norman who was a famous uk film critic of the 70s and 80s
“Poor manufacturing quality” i could hear that from a mile away, Though, do you know if it was from the Shell being a late war design or the fact it was so complex? Or both? Great video again, Johnny.
I think the main reason that limited its effectiveness was due to a conic area of effect that is easier to evade. If it worked like flak shells which exploded uniformly across an area, it could damage even evading aircraft further away from the explosion. Flak guns were used to such effect and even today is making a comeback against drones and loitering munitions.
Like the Bismarck, any enormous badass destroyer is gonna be attacked with swarms it can't possibly keep up with. Especially if it's shooting firecrackers
I always thought that they were called beehive shells because they were full of bees. Seriously though, thanks as always for the uploads. Even a reposted one is a welcome sight in my feed.
I wouldn't say that they were useless. If I'm not mistaken, the German 88 had an abysmal hit rate, but even if only one in a thousand shells scored a direct hit, many others damaged planes or got way too close for the comfort of the pilot... This meant that the pilots started evasive maneuvers and could no longer effectively approach their target in a fashion that would allow them to aim.
The dif is that an 88mm had a rate of fire of about 15 rounds a minute, so it could set of an effective flak box that may drive off aircraft. 9 rounds every 30 seconds or so (if you are lucky) with slowly turning turrets is more of a "slip in the bath tub" threat against attacking aircraft, and why the tech never caught on.
@@MM22966 I think a more traditional flak could have worked much better. They obviously wanted to to work close in (hence the cone). Traditional flak didn't need to hit a target because the omnidirectional shrapnel could take a plane from the sky or kill/wound it's crew.
You mentioned the main guns interfering with the other anti-aircraft guns….. as I recall this is because the concussive effect of the 18 inch guns required all the crew to clear the decks
Like flak shells, they would have been a lot better if they had some sort of proximity fuse rather than gunners trying to eyeball the distance to target (against a moving target). I would imagine they had much better range than the much smaller anti-aircraft guns. So it probably helped to send a few volleys while the enemy aircraft are still at range, but switching to the dedicated anti-air would have been wise.
A number of US carrier pilots were fired on by the Japanese Type 3 shells, but most found the "pretty" or such. Not an frightening weapon as intended. A lot of WW2-era AA fire was intended to drive away the attackerm or to force them to miss. Destruction of the attacking aircraft was desired, but survival of the ship was the primary mission. The "beehive" shells were more intended to break up attacking formations and deter the attackers.
The Reupload still remains just as interesting. Besides that though, despite the Bee-Hives shells failing to work, what also helped distract Japanese crews was the enemy glass bottles and other stuff we were dropping down.
Beehive sheets are much more effective when you are able to fire along a plane ( not an airplane but a flat trajectory) such as the use of beehive shells in Vietnam but artillery crews.
I mean the concept is still completely useful just not executed well. We use proximity and AA frag shells in SPAA today on different systems. I think the first change I would do is change the spray pattern to be more of a sphere, and increasing the amount of pellets inside of the shell instead of using a lower pellet counter but bigger pellets. Ball bearings about the thickness of two human adult thumbs (Average) would be large enough to accomplish pellet size and density. Japanese AA doesnt really suffer from numbers, its just not effective AA and the scheme they used wasnt effective for fighting aircraft. The three powers that really did it well Id say is Germany and United states. Britain for good measure. But just about every other party really lacked in understanding how to combat aircraft. (The best way is to fight aircraft with other aircraft)
It's funny how so many Japanese anime, movies, and TV series highlight the beehive shells to the point where it became the staple or even symbol of the Imperial Japanese Navy, despite its questionable combat effectiveness, as the ammunition was so unique among the navies during WW II
Questionable?
They didn't work.
US pilots literally laughed at them.
@@HarryBalzakapparently they were considered basically fireworks
I suppose it is like Germans and Tiger tanks. So memorable, and such a "hero" vehicle makes it more recognizable and more of an underdog than the huge masses of common Shermans, or swarms of carrier aircraft that brought the Yamato down.
@@UCannotDefeatMyShmeat
"Look, they are saluting us!, wave them back boys!"
*Wiggle Wing*
*Japanese POV*
"Sir, we don't even hit the planes but it seems they are destabilized!"
"Those crazies did it!, and i thought it was a joke!. There goes my 500 yen.."
They didn't really do anything but they look cool
Basically anti Aircraft shotgun blast
exactly
If it at least worked lmao.
If you were trying to take out mosquito with a shotgun.
@@NayuzAqua Nothing wrong with the concept. But they got the application wrong, as they did with their AA in general. The way to make it useful udring mass air attacks was to fire into sectors as an area saturation tactic, ignoring individual aircraft. Same with all AA in WW2 until good radar controlled AA fire comes in ('44 for the British, '45 for the US, no one else got it right during the war) and allows individual target tracking and engagement
Unfortunately, they didn't weren't connected to a usable fire control
to add to this: the main deck had to be cleared of personel when firing the main guns, due to the shockwave blasts capable of injuring the crew. that's why they disrupt the operation of other AA guns
Let's bee nice to Johnny, it must sting to come up with so many puns without a hive-mind
At least he doesn't drone on too long like some other youtubers, honey.
Honorable mention to Space Battleship Yamato. Every broadside is an aniti-air broadside if you are shooting at flying spaceships.
Hearing they failed against slow moving "flying boats" is pretty telling.
Goes to show how slow battleship guns actually are to move around. They were close enough they could probably see the main guns swinging around to aim at them and started evasion before _Yamato_ was even done loading.
Interesting video! The "beehive" in the title caught my attention immediately because when I was in the Marines in the 1970s there was an anti-personnel shell nade for the 106mm recoilless rifle called the "beehive round."
It was a hollow shell packed with (if I remember correctly) 6,000 small darts called "flechettes," French for little arrow. I watched a firing demonstration where they stripped the leaves off a treeline firing one of those rounds. Impressive, to say the least!
Know what the nick-name for the beehive round was? "Hamburger Helper!"
This was almost 50 years ago and I have no idea if the 106 is inventoried by the Corps anymore but trust me, you did NOT want to be downrange of one of those things!
Certain types of munitions have flechette/beehive warheads still. Notably Marine gunships have free-flight rockets available that can be equipped with them, and certain types of tank rounds and the M30 GMLRS are "shotgun" like (though balls, not darts). Nobody really liked the flechettes, for all they were effective. Just a nasty weapon, and more "smart" warheads were more useful.
The 106mm went out of service years ago, though the 84mm Carl Gustav Recoilless Rifle has been gaining back popularity among the infantry of the army and Marines.
more than the 106 had beehive rounds the 105mm howitzer had one and there was.are 2.75 inch rockets filled with them as well as 12 gauge shotgun shells!! a nasty little weapon when they go into someone they bend and twist hard for the docs to get out!!!
You don't want to be right behind a recoilless rifle either, for that matter
@@MM22966 Thanks!
@@BarackLesnar That's putting it mildly! You've got to see the backblast to believe it!
I am surprised that Japan never did a cartoon of bears attacking the Yamato, with the Japanese shooting actual beehives at them.
Sounds too american to me. 🙂
because its american cartoon makers which downgrade IJN for propaganda
@@astrobenothis is up there among the most ridiculous things that have ever been said. Not at the top, but it's up there.
@@freeshrugs1 think so, then try to read about propaganda against kamikaze or rommel
@@astrobeno I don't think cartoon makers are a part of the cabal of propagandists you check under your bed for at night, but maybe I'm the crazy one here.
Another creator referred to the Beehive shells and 25mm Type 96 gun as "morale builders" They made lots of noise and nice explosions but did not do much to actually take down planes.
More due to the way the Japanese did AAA than the weapons themselves.
@@iatsd Imperial Japanese Navy AA was fraught with problems and significantly behind the times of WWII... Which includes their AA guns. Radar and Radar gunfire direction for AA was a rare thing for the Japanese. At Midway, none of the ships with Nagumo's strike force had Radar. It was a big reason why the American dive bombers were able to get to their attack points. By the time the Japanese saw the dive bombers, they were already on their attack runs.
The 25mm/60 Type 96 gun's main problem for most of the war was that rounds were fed with 15 round magazines. So stoppages were frequent.
The 127mm/45 Type 88 and 89 AA guns were found on Cruiser and larger vessels. The main problem for them was poor range.
The 127mm/50 3rd Year Type was found on their Destroyers. Technically they were dual purpose because they were mounted on turrets allowing high angle of fire. Realistically? Training speed was terrible. They required hand ramming of their rounds which considerably slowed their rate of fire. They had no radar fire direction. They were useless in the AA capacity.
The 100mm/65 Type 98 as found on the Akizuki-class family of Destroyers were good AA guns. There were only 2 problems with them.
1) Short barrel life.
2) Very rare guns. So rare that when Yamato got her late war AA refit, she received none of these guns.
The IJN arsenal of AA weapons also had a major flaw. They had the large, long range AA guns like the 127mm. They had short range 25mm guns. But they had no AA machine guns larger than 25mm. They were the only navy in WWII that had this flaw. The Germans had 37mm for their ships. The British and Americans had 40mm up the wazoo.
Frankly, the 20mm and 25mm guns were too short in range. So the larger stuff like 40mm Bofors was sorely needed to back up the slower firing, long range 127mm or so guns.
skynea history wasnt it?
when 286 planes deliver weapon to single warship no one flak cannot help, even golden and brilliant, too many target, too much hits
Yamato do look beautiful no matter how many times I see it like Rotation of her bigs gun got that terrific but magnificent look in them.
@@bf0019 Got swatted by hundreds of mosquito...
Indeed, she is magnificent, especially when sinking 😂
@@waibansteinburg8192 no ship can survive that no matter what not even current Modern warships.
Yamato is pretty beautiful ship her death mark the end of era of battleship and start the era of Carriers.
So yea her death is pretty magnificent and Majestic.
Edit: may her crew rest in peace with her.
@@bf0019 "no ship can survive that no matter what not even current Modern warships." Except modern warships have much more effective AA weapons.
@@SpencerLemay Good luck fighting against 200 to 300 planes (Modern jets with Anti missiles and stuff) with one single warship.
No matter the AA system it will get overwhelmed.
That's why US warship always moves in packs to maximize the AA defense.
This episode was so short it stung a little
Oh you!
What a Johnson
Before watching i knew this was likely just a name for a type of shell, but part of me wanted to believe imperial japan would be insane enough to use actual beehives in naval combat
Hey, Speed Racer says it could work!
I want this as a movie, starring Nicolas Cage because of course.
there is no name like beehive for san shiki dan, its just Type 3 IS shell, dont spread stupid myth
2:49 small correction for no reason, Yamato would fire beehive shells on quite a few different occasions, not just twice. the first time was during the battle of the phillipine sea where she (and the rest of the japanese task force) fired on returning japanese aircraft (or alternatively she and musashi didnt open fire, nobody can seem to decide) during this same battle she would also fire on american aircraft with her main armament.
Yamato would fire these shells on multiple occasions during the battle of leyte gulf, aparently even firing them on the escort carrier white plains because they forgot to load her main batterys with AP shells.
A few months later, Yamato would be attacked while underway in the inland sea (as part of a air raid on the naval base at kure) a picture of Yamato was taken during this attack in which you can see her main armament trained to starboard, indicating that she fired beehive shells.
We had beehive shells in Vietnam. They were antipersonel with the barrels depressed for direct fire. It meant the enemy was close and we were in trouble.
We had canister shells in the US civil war.
father of one historic-liar probably told him about it so he start to spread this term to navy shell
@@awldune Damn you’re older than I am and I’m old.
@@Chiller01 we had them in 20s Afghanistan
@@awldune a guy I knew who survived Battle of Valley Forge told me they had them, too!
That bit about disrupting the operation of the more effective small AA guns is a hugely important fact that I rarely see mentioned
My grandfather is 97 and he fought at Okinawa in the Navy. He was 17 then. I asked him if he ever saw Yamato. He said, "No. We sunk her before she could get close to the island (of Okinawa)." 🇺🇸⚓️🦅💪🏻🫡
Unironically this vid brought me attention to the animted film "In This Corner of The World". Was expecting another bleak end similar to Grave of the Fireflies, but im glad its end with a heartfelt note yet still showing the horrors of war.
Thanks Johnny.
It was quite effective in surface role though. As bombardment shell during Guadalcanal and to some degree during surface engagements
Beehive round mini game in kancolle arcade should have made an appearance here it’s so fun.
>2024
>Kancolle
😂😂😂😂😂😂🖕😂
@@waibansteinburg8192
Kancolle browser might be largely forgotten but the arcade is pulling good numbers in japan. Just compare it to fgo arcade which is 2 years younger and no longer prints cards.
In one of the said game's guides (kudos to the players themselves), Type 3 shells were best used against enemy installations while pretty crap against aircraft.
@ agreed but when I played they do thin the number of air craft resulting in them being less effective on your fleet
Interestingly enough, the Americans also had AA shells for large-caliber guns, at least technically. Since nose fuses were standardized, it was technically possible to screw a timed or VT fuse into an HE shell up to 16 inches. This capability was considered for some weapons, with anti-aircraft firing tables being provided for weapons up to the 8-inch 55-caliber guns on heavy cruisers.
This was a honey of a video !
The idea of the shell was not as similar as a regular AA round that would burst in the air spreading killing shrapnel, but the idea of the beehive shell was to have it detonate close enough to an aircraft and will depend on its hot 3000 degree flam that would spread about 16 feet in the air to strike an aircraft burning a hole in its wing or completely exploding the aircraft, although it did have some shrapnel in it but mainly was an incendiary shell
Shaped charge too. The real problem.
Sounds very ineffective
I'm just here to rewatch the KanColle clip specifically!
@@DesDiv6TTK IJNbobos coping on dying franchise 😂
?
Well, if you're wanting to stir me up to "debate" with you, then you've come to the wrong place.
I hope you have a nice day!
Definitely a good firework show.
Highschool fleet mentioned❗❓🗣️🔥🔥
Great anime, feels like its underrated
@@Kiryukazuma-j6gGirls und panzer too
0:25 "You know what? That's a good idea."
- General Douglas MacArthur
proximity fuzes is where it's at. they were the real MVP in the pacific theater.
Heck yes. A closely guarded secret. Imagine if the Germans had proximity fuses against our bombers in Europe?
one of the best episodes of dogfights also love the puns
I really think you should mention about the real designation of this weapon which is Type 3 anti-air shell. Which can be heard at the begining.
Japanese seems to love this cluster incendiary idea a lot, they even made an airdrop version to drop on the top of bomber formation.
We had 105mm Beehive rounds in NAM. They fired flechettes(tiny darts) and were credited with saving several firebases when they were first used in direct fire situations.
I feel like one salvo of regular airburst shells would have worked better but still wouldn't be super effective as you would realistically need air radar and proximity fuses for that to be usable but would be at the expense of exposed AA crews
"What's wrong with you? What you screamin' for? Every 5 minutes there's somethin', a bomb or somethin'. I'm leavin'. bzzzz."
- DJ Ruby Rhod
Going into this I thought it was a long range area suppression/light-casualty inflicting weapon, designed to shower an area with thousands of needles. As soom as JJ said anti-aircraft I started dying laughing.
That sounds like a really interesting idea
@@EllisJohnstone anti-personal artillery ammo that spray fletchettes are often called beehive shells.
@@yellowprime8491 I see. Thank you!
@@EllisJohnstone Though in war they are most often seen as a SHORT-range last-ditch weapon for artillery, or sometimes aerial rocket systems (Korea, Vietnam, etc)
At least it was a honey of a concept! 🤣🤣🤣
Haven't started the video in depth yet but i'm imagining these are somewhat like cannister/shrapnel shells. The Yamato is a legendary vessel and i can't wait to see which great films you cite here
@@ThommyofThenn Legendary on almost getting the entire nation into bankruptcy and ten mosquitoes go.
@@waibansteinburg8192 'Legendary' does not necessarily imply goodness. Just like the word "epic" isn't always a good thing, both are words with meanings that have evolved certain connotations. This is common throughout the evolution of human language
There is a rabbit hole about the safety of those shells too. The Japanese in the know were scared shit less to keep them onboard warships. There were many designers that didn't trust them.
The Oxygen torpedoes were pretty scary to have onboard as well. There are photos of Japanese cruisers heavily damaged with the crews desperately trying to dump the torpedoes over before fire could get to them.
I'm pretty sure the Brits had a beehive shell for the Centurion tank. I think the Australians used it in Vietnam to clear jungle among other things.
And the Patton series tanks, and firebase artillery. The US armored cav in particular liked to use beehive rounds as "ambush breakers" while defending road-bound convoys.
Still used today fired by Apache, and effective.
The beehive shell makes sense in practice - afterall canister shot had existed as a naval ammunition since the age of sail and continues to be used to this day as an alternative ammunition choice for artillery and tanks. Shotguns are the weapon of choice for hunting birds, so why not just scale that concept up from a 12 guage shotgun and 2' long grouse, to an 18" gun and 20' long torpedo bombers.
Well the problem there is that a battleship's main armament is not even close to a man with a shotgun. A man with a shotgun can swing his gun around and stop right on target in merely a second, he can track the grouse with ease, and he can follow up a missed shot with at least one more almost instantaneously. But even more prominent as a factor, the grouse don't shoot back, so a good gamesman could get within 30 yards before taking his shot. Scaling it up, a 12 gauge shotgun is about 25 times smaller than an 18 inch gun like on Yamato, so 30 yards becomes 750. By comparison the US Mk. 13 Torpedo had a range of over 5,000 yards. Now it's unlikely that a torpedo bomber would attempt to make it's attack from that far out, but it's obvious that the sort of range between the target and the shooter are vastly different at this scale.
Battleship main armament were incredibly cumbersome as weapons. Slow to aim, slow to reload, and almost impossible to track targets with - the exception being other large warships at range, where 28kts at 10 nMi would only need a rotation of a few minutes of angle every second, if that. All this lends itself to the propensity to entirely miss any aircraft with the first rounds, and then be almost unable to even aim a second salvo, never mind get one loaded in time. And of course, as Johnny mentions, the use of the main guns would render it impossible to man half the other dedicated AA armament, lest the concussion from the main guns kill or seriously wound the other seamen.
End of the day, the Battleship was already obsolete as a naval weapon before the war broke out. Aircraft carriers were clearly the new king of the seas, and famous battleships like Bismarck, Tirpitz, Yamato, etc only avoided being famous wrecks so long as they avoided allied aircraft - which is to say, not very long. Yamato was an incredibly impressive waste of resources. Had the Japanese built half a dozen carriers and the aircraft to go with them, than attempting to build the two huge resource drains that were Yamato and her sister, Musashi, then perhaps the war in the pacific would have been very different. In-fact, Shinano, the third in-class, being converted to an aircraft carrier is perhaps physical evidence that the Japanese themselves had come to the same conclusion, even if too little, too late
Theoretically this sounded like a good idea. It just didn't work well in actual practice. Just another problem out of many more than plagued Imperial Japanese Navy AA capabilities.
I just finished reading A Glorious Way to Die it's a great story about Yamato and Ten-Go. I highly recommend
The real question here is why did they have binocular bibs?
Yeah, I was wondering what those were! I can't seem to find a good answer through search engines
I think it’s 1. a lens cloth, and 2. to act as a barrier between the binoculars and the coats that could damage them
The Japanese failed to design effective enough shells, both against air and sea targets. Their industry did only 137 live tests on shells to examine effectiveness until 1945, while the US did thousands. USA hardly improved on AA shells during the war but armour piercing did great. However flak was also most effective against other ships but neither side realised.
Japanese Bee didn't like Hirohito-sticks.
i wonder if it would have been more effective if they just focused on making as much shrapnel as possible, the incendiary elements don't seem necessary or effective
Yup
Can you explain the cloth under the binoculars?
That is something I have always wondered about, but I cannot find any information in regards.
I think it's so the rubber on the binoculars doesn't cause marks on their uniforms.
@@JohnnyJohnsonEsq Ahhh.
That makes sense. Thank you!
HMS Rodney fired her main armament at aircraft during Pedestal. They were guided by RDF at a predictive target boxes. Can’t find any evidence that they were on anyway effective. The rounds were standard HE.
Nice one JJ
thats incredibly interesting tho, i need to read about operation pedestal sometime lol
I can't imagine just how badly you had to have pissed off Lady Luck to get smacked right in the chin with a shot from the main gun of a battleship. Those things are big enough that I am utterly unconvinced the shell would even detonate before passing clean through
Do you know what model of sam missile appears in Behind Enemy Lines? I was hallucinated with that shotgun second charge
“Pilots engaged considered them little more than distracting fireworks”
Before the comments get SWARMED with spam. Just wanted to say, great vid as always J.
Basically what happens when you see a single spider and decide to use a shotgun.
Thanks for bee-ing there for us. 🙄
2:35 2sheels per 60s? thats impressive fot big gun
The real question is how many bees could you in an 18" shell
Johnny I love your videos they are awesome. I would really appreciate if you did a video on the future about the primary weapons of the American Revolution: The Brown Bess and Charleville Model 1766 Flintlock Muskets and the Bayonet. No rush though and keep churning out your history videos! Wish you the best of luck and success with your RUclips Channel!
Glad to see some love for Battletations Pacific
I don't know much Japanese but I like how I can make out "San shiki dan". It's spoken so fast though, as if it's only 2 syllables.
TY for this Video! Great!
2:17 tell that to Space Battleship Yamato
A.K.A
The animators were coping real hard that their battleship got blown to bits.
(I'm just messing around in good fun.)
Author is such a soyjak ultranationalist
Oh Honey, those bee puns were not sweet.
Flechette shells would have been more effective against a massed flock of airplanes. But then again, few airplanes remain massed during combat.
Thanks for reminding me of In This Corner of the World.
Shotgun air burst shell makes sense, but why’d they use this firework thing rather than straight up steel fragments?
Sanshiki dan is one of the most interesting little bits of ww2 for me.
Sometimes i wonder if they just shook up a very angry beehive and just fired it at people 😂
You should do 007 gear next
hey johnny thanks for vid!
Wow!
This vid just added to my buzz.....
Danke Schoen Johnny! 👍👍
The only reason I knew this was because the Yamato was a map in Ravenfield.
IVE DONE IT BEFORE AND I HIT AN AIRCRAFT AND SHOT IT DOWN WITH THE AP SHELLS AND I SPAWNED LARGE BOMBERS AND I MISEED 90 PERCENT OF THE TIME AND HAVE U BEACHED HER
"Sir! Enemy aircraft spproaching from starboard!"
"Fire the BEEEEEEEEEES!!!"
Love your videos! Please keep up the excellent work!
According to my research, the Japanese soldier is the best in all of WW2. This is because they fought until they were dead. Sacrifice and Imperialism. If the USA had not dropped the 2 atomic bombs, the Second World War would have lasted until 1949. So banzai for this video John.
You may want to look up the US 77th infantry division. Leyte - they did an amphibious landing on the enemy's side of the island, where they would be outnumbered three to one, took the port, destroyed a troop transport, and began stacking bodies. They are credited with 19,456 confirmed kills... And suffered 543 casualties in return. A 36:1 ratio.
What I'm trying to say is that it wouldn't have lasted that long. Japan has a whole lot of coast and at that point not a lot of trained soldiers left. Stopping the invasion would have been futile, they simply couldn't put enough troops on the beaches to put up any significant resistance, and what troops they could put up would not have been well trained. Meanwhile, those doing the beach landings would have been combat veterans primarily.
All right here IS JOHNNY again....Thank you JJ
Old nasty flying Shoe🇺🇸
Also, if the big main guns are being operated then it's more likely that powder bags will be exposed inside the turret rather than deep in the magazine that could be flooded quickly if necessary. Damage control is something that was found (with the benefit of hindsight) to be extremely important to overall survivability.
Hello Johnny great video as usual here’s one you might not have covered but I think would be interesting is the Flower Class corvettes used as part of the Atlantic conveys. As a kid I read The Cruel Sea by Nicholas Monsarrat it is such a brilliant book and the film that depicts it is equally great. As someone who is into films The Cruel Sea was produced by Leslie Norman who was the father of Barry Norman who was a famous uk film critic of the 70s and 80s
“Poor manufacturing quality” i could hear that from a mile away, Though, do you know if it was from the Shell being a late war design or the fact it was so complex? Or both?
Great video again, Johnny.
I think the main reason that limited its effectiveness was due to a conic area of effect that is easier to evade. If it worked like flak shells which exploded uniformly across an area, it could damage even evading aircraft further away from the explosion. Flak guns were used to such effect and even today is making a comeback against drones and loitering munitions.
Like the Bismarck, any enormous badass destroyer is gonna be attacked with swarms it can't possibly keep up with. Especially if it's shooting firecrackers
Man proximity fuses were a real game changer
I always thought that they were called beehive shells because they were full of bees.
Seriously though, thanks as always for the uploads. Even a reposted one is a welcome sight in my feed.
For a second... i thought there would be no End Pun.. but you came thru for us.. lol.
I wouldn't say that they were useless. If I'm not mistaken, the German 88 had an abysmal hit rate, but even if only one in a thousand shells scored a direct hit, many others damaged planes or got way too close for the comfort of the pilot... This meant that the pilots started evasive maneuvers and could no longer effectively approach their target in a fashion that would allow them to aim.
The dif is that an 88mm had a rate of fire of about 15 rounds a minute, so it could set of an effective flak box that may drive off aircraft. 9 rounds every 30 seconds or so (if you are lucky) with slowly turning turrets is more of a "slip in the bath tub" threat against attacking aircraft, and why the tech never caught on.
@@MM22966 I think a more traditional flak could have worked much better. They obviously wanted to to work close in (hence the cone).
Traditional flak didn't need to hit a target because the omnidirectional shrapnel could take a plane from the sky or kill/wound it's crew.
@@MM22966 9 rounds every 30 seconds is a higher rate of fire than 15 rounds every minute.
@@HomeDefender30 Which is a full broadside compared to one gun. A full BATTERY of 88's would be on the order of 60-90 RPM.
@@MM22966 ahh never mind I see what your driving at there… I read your first comment wrong.
Proximity fuses were far and away more effective.
You mentioned the main guns interfering with the other anti-aircraft guns….. as I recall this is because the concussive effect of the 18 inch guns required all the crew to clear the decks
Paled in comparison to our 5" VT proximity fuzed AA shells which proved so effective.
Will you also be reviewing Yamato's experimental shell that changes direction when it hits the water level?
Ah the Yamato, if she only were a few years early.
Can you do a video about Japanese ww2 anti air volley rocket launchers? Or British Unrotated Projectile laucnhers
Me reading the title believing They actually used bees as some sort of Obscure weapon.
Like flak shells, they would have been a lot better if they had some sort of proximity fuse rather than gunners trying to eyeball the distance to target (against a moving target). I would imagine they had much better range than the much smaller anti-aircraft guns. So it probably helped to send a few volleys while the enemy aircraft are still at range, but switching to the dedicated anti-air would have been wise.
There's an alternate history anime called "Deep Blue Fleet" which featured these. Though they made them look like lasers.
Wondering how many beehive shells still remain aboard the yamato today.
really interesting they should have used them to clear the beaches
A number of US carrier pilots were fired on by the Japanese Type 3 shells, but most found the "pretty" or such. Not an frightening weapon as intended. A lot of WW2-era AA fire was intended to drive away the attackerm or to force them to miss. Destruction of the attacking aircraft was desired, but survival of the ship was the primary mission. The "beehive" shells were more intended to break up attacking formations and deter the attackers.
The Reupload still remains just as interesting.
Besides that though, despite the Bee-Hives shells failing to work, what also helped distract Japanese crews was the enemy glass bottles and other stuff we were dropping down.
Beehive sheets are much more effective when you are able to fire along a plane ( not an airplane but a flat trajectory) such as the use of beehive shells in Vietnam but artillery crews.
Beehive around! Damn! Last thing you do not want to be the end of that barrel if stationary.
Edit : Especially the M50 during the Vietnam War.
Always interesting. But now I want to know what the deal is with the handkerchiefs under the binoculars
An impressive coral reef.
Twice as nice the second viewing
I mean the concept is still completely useful just not executed well.
We use proximity and AA frag shells in SPAA today on different systems.
I think the first change I would do is change the spray pattern to be more of a sphere, and increasing the amount of pellets inside of the shell instead of using a lower pellet counter but bigger pellets. Ball bearings about the thickness of two human adult thumbs (Average) would be large enough to accomplish pellet size and density.
Japanese AA doesnt really suffer from numbers, its just not effective AA and the scheme they used wasnt effective for fighting aircraft. The three powers that really did it well Id say is Germany and United states. Britain for good measure. But just about every other party really lacked in understanding how to combat aircraft.
(The best way is to fight aircraft with other aircraft)