IJN Haruna - A Survivor Until The Very End
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- Опубликовано: 13 дек 2023
- While not unique in lasting until the final months of the Pacific War, Haruna is still an interesting case. An old battlecruiser-turned-fast-battleship, and the last survivor of her class. Alongside Nagato, she was the only capable capital ship left to Japan at the end of the war.
Arguably more capable, in her generally better material condition. Relative lack of firepower and armor aside.
For all of that, though, Haruna survived as long as she did...by not getting involved in the battles off of Guadalcanal. By avoiding submarine attack. And by, generally, avoiding damage as a whole.
Not the most exciting career, but then, that's often the case for survivors.
Further Reading:
www.amazon.com/Warships-Imper...
www.amazon.com/Kong%C5%8D-Cla...
www.amazon.com/Imperial-Japan...
www.combinedfleet.com/haruna.htm
The large gap between the aft turrets is due to turbine rooms being located there. It was a feature on many of the late battlecruisers including Derfflinger and her unbuilt successors and HMS Tiger.
SC too.
IJN Kongo was modeled after the HMS Tiger (same ship designer). It was built in England and Vickers convinced the Japanese to upgraded the guns from 13.5 in (of the Tiger) to the new 14 in gun (originally suppose to be 12 in). Both guns fired about 2 rounds per minute but the smaller Tiger gun allowed for more ammunition per gun (about 40 rounds each gun). The Vickers 14 inch gun was a very good naval gun, world class at the time. The rest of the class (Haruna) was built in Japan. The class significantly improved Japanese naval ship building capabilities.
Yes HMS tiger and her A, B, Q, X gun layout
instead of the A, B, X, Y gun layout
This video failed to mention that on December 11, 1941 the US news media made an erroneous report that the Haruna had been sunk by B-17s off the Philippines, which was a big morale boost for the American public at the time. However the Haruna was nowhere near the area and wasn't attacked.
They even named the pilot a Lt. Meyer Rosen or similar name
lol they can't help themselves from self-inserting @@josephshulman6666
@@josephshulman6666 I believe it was Colin Kelly that was given credit
At least that’s the story I remember
Just a comment on the photo of Taffy 3 carriers being fired at. Those are 3 gun salvos. The only BB that could do that was the Yamato.
Good point. One of the big players in why general consensus these days is that Yamato sank Gambier Bay and not Chikuma is that almost all photographs of Gambier Bay under attack display her underfire from three gun salvos and white splashes, corresponding with Yamato's gun layout and undyed shells.
Haruna was always one of my favorite ships and by far the prettiest name for a ship
"25mm morale boosters" Ha! That is the truth it seems.
Thanks for covering my favorite ship right on her launch day!
I love the Nagato she was a super-dreadnought and it took two nukes to sink her one been placed right next to her hull would love to see a vid on her
So she had a twin A,B, Q, X gun layout
(Q turret normally being a turret midship but in this case a turret unable to fire over X turret)
Unlike the standard twin A,B, X, Y gun layout
(The American standard because triple A,B, X)
Edit : neson class ships were A, B, N (N because the that turret couldn't fire over B turret)
and the dunkirk was a A, B
GREAT VIDEO THANKS!
In the end, Haruna-chan wasn't Daijoubu.
Her oldest British-build admiral loving sister 'Kongo' suffers much worse. Her wreckage has yet to be found while Hiei and Kirishima have already been found by RV Petrel.
Some say Kongo was sunk at Formosa Strait.
I like Japanese Fast Battleship IJN Haruna
Good videa, thank you.
IIRC, the reason that the IJN reclassified the Kongos as fast battleships was that they stopped using the battlecruiser classification, and thus there wasn't anything else to call them.
The four _Kongos_ really saw a lot of use. They were fast enough to sail with the Carriers and expendable enough to be used a lot. The _Yamatos_ and _Nagatos_ were the core of the Japanese main fleet - which was supposed to wreck the enemy in The Decisive Battle ... and so they were not used in the Solomons Campaign.
As to them being "Battleships" they were no more Battleships than the _Scharnhorsts_ .
A Battleship has to have BOTH big guns and heavy armor. Any ship having only one of the two and going against a ship that has both - is going to experience what really happened when they did.
Of all of these "Battle Cruisers" _Hood_ was best suited to the role of Battleship - but - she blew up anyway when she took on _Bismarck_ .
_Sharnhorst_ was taken out by _Duke of York_ .
_Kirishima_ was take apart by _Washington_ .
_Hiei_ , _Fuso_ and _Yamashiro_ were all taken out by various light and heavy ships with _Hiei_ like _Bismarck_ falling victim to a steering hit that doomed it.
One of the things I don't understand is why the Japanese didn't use the better armed (12x14"guns) _Fuso_ and _Ise_ (unmodified) in the Solomons instead of the _Kongos_ (8x14" guns) - unless it was the speed. The _Kongos_ were 7 knots faster and that might have been the consideration - in wanting them to be better able to get in and out while it was dark. I just don't know if the 23 knot speeds of the _Fusos_ and _Ises_ would have been enough. Transports couldn't do it but they were substantially slower than warships - so I don't know.
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While the Kongos were used a lot, they ended up not doing much in the end; aside from their role at Samar being massively overplayed (for Kongo specifically), the only time they really did anything noteworthy was during the Guadalcanal campaign…..where they got actively involved all of three times (Henderson Field bombardment and 1st and 2nd Guadalcanal) and lost two of those three engagements (and half their class).
Fusos and Ises drank a lot of fuel which wasnt readily available after Midway, this is one of the reasons why Haruna and Kongo didnt travel south until September 1942. Plus speed as you mention. They had to get from about Munda at dusk down to Guadalcanal, bombard the airfield for an hour and back up near Munda at dawn. They couldn't do it, so it wasn't worth the effort to get slow and "important " ships damaged unnecessarily.
Lastly, Savo and its Sound had not been charted by IJN. They were unsure of how deep certain newly named Ironbottom Sound was.
Hence, Kongos were expendable to a degree, if bigger ships were to be lost.
Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were battleships and were classified as such by the German navy. Even though 280mm guns may be small by WW2 standards that doesn't change the ships design concept. The British created the confusion by calling them battlecruisers, the Germans never did.
It's ironic that not only she's the youngest of the kongo sisters but also the last survivor of her class as all her sisters were at the bottom of Davey Jones locker now
good job
Will there be a video on the wrecks of Ironbottom Sound?
Launchdd on my bday! Pretty cool
So at 18:58, you say.. 2 bombs did a surprisingly amount of damage. Not a surprise when hit with two 500lb bombs on 1.5 inches of deck armor..
He said that the deck armor had been upgraded to as much as 4.5 in. Not sure the thickness where the bombs hit.
When I see the pagoda mast it's hard to wrap my head around what I'm actually looking at. It looks like a child did a poor job building a skyscraper out of large Lego blocks.
I guess they just really wanted to have some of their main stations in an elevated position. Seems really exposed to me. I imagine the guy who designed them was once assigned to lookout duty on the top of the mast on long cold nights. "I sure wish there were 4 walls and a roof up here."
Looks like the designer fancied a game of Jenga and let his mind wander when at the drawing board.
Zaktly 🌿✍️
RIP Haruharu
The Kongos - the IJN only useful battleships in WWII (or battlecruisers, no discussion please 😉)
Haha. They where both. Great post.
You are just begging for an argument!😁
2:14 "..in typically Japanese fashion..."
Bayonet lugs on the 14" and 6" guns?
TY ,nice job, I wonder on the battle carriers ? A hybrid for invasion assaults ?
they ran out of combat worthy carriers.
the Unryuu class got small carrying capacity while the rest of their carriers, both standard and light, got sunk off in the battle of Samar.
compounded that IJN is now lacking manpower and materials to fully load any of their carriers...
I still cant comprehend Nagato surviving the whole war. SHE JUST SO THICC AND IT WAS A PLANE GANK META
?????
Haruna is not daijoubu...
Thank you for the Comment
Man of culture I see. Haruna is always daijoubou desu
I'll add force z to the what iff navil battless. I say the british as they had 10 modern 14 inch and 6-15 inch vs 16-14inch plus 8 inch max armor vs 14 inch and 9 inch.
😃👍
would be better if the video can reach 1080 in quality
And the only Kongo class not to explode when sunk.
Kirashima took at least 17 to 21 16 inch AP shell hits from Washington. She foundered and went down quickly. I didn't know she exploded . She wallowed back and forth as the flood water surged through her perferated hull.
Planes from dad’s carrier, Shangri La , sank her.
Personally, I’ve always found the Kongo Class to be overrated. Everyone treats them like the heavy workers of the Japanese navy that did so much more than dat der Yamato, but they never really did all that much, it’s just really easy to surpass ships that spent most of their lives sitting in port. The bulk of their service was made up of mere escorting duties, with the occasional shore bombardment once in a blue moon. They severely underperformed in any surface action they partook in. Hiei and Kirishima barely managed to sink USS Edstall before both being sunk at the battle of Guadalcanal by US surface warships. Haruna only managed to straddle two escort carriers off Samar, while about half of Kongo’s supposed hits on US warships were misattributed to her and actually belonged to other Japanese warships (like her supposed hits on Gambier Bay and Johnston, actually belonging to battleship Yamato).
Not dissing this video though, another amazing price of work. Keep up the good stuff.
This is more of a glass half-empty, half-full way of comparison. Every battleship had no real impact on the large-scale Pacific campaign, so people instead just look at what they did compared to each other. The Kongou-class were the only Japanese battleships that were remotely close to doing meaningful work and thats good enough. Battleships no longer were the ones dictating wars' outcomes, so they just made do with what they had.
Also I dont think its fair to hold Edsall against them bc both battleships were trying to engage a fleeing destroyer with a working engine at max range.
A shame she wasn't preserve as a museum, a ship that survive both world wars are a rare thing.
Not much chance of preserving a ship that was sunk in shallow water and would've needed millions of dollars worth of repairs just to float again, let alone preserve. Like the video said even if she had survived she'd have become A-Bomb bait just like Nagato.
Nobody cared about museums then. And the steel would have been more useful, ask the British
Dont worry, Haruna's steel was used for reconstruction and for making thousands of toyota cars
@@JoshuaTootellhms warspite was scrapped, so as uss enterprise
I don't understand America didn't consider submarine to cut off Japan's supply lines .. that's it.. no food or fuel.. what's millions of people to do without food or fuel??
that's the point, ww2 was a total war, the line between civilians and military was blurred to an extent, especially in ww2 japan in which civilians were fanatical courtesy of the dictatorship, imagine a North Korea that is actually launching invasions
Funny that despite weighting more, the Alaskas unlike the Kongos weren’t considered capital ships 🤔
The Alaska's ship type designation is a can of worms on a whole other level