Wreck of Musashi Found

[Leo Etgen]

Hi guys

It appears that the wreck of the Musashi, the Japanese battleship sunk on 24 October 1944 during the Battle of Leyte Gulf, has been discovered by Paul Allen of Microsoft following an eight-year search.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...llionaire.html

Horrido!

Leo

[GuerraCivil]

How many men went down to the bottom of sea with Musashi? The wreck is the grave of many Japanese sailors - I have read that the remains of about 1000 men are there, although more than half of Musashi´s crew was saved.

Thinking of investments made in Musashi - for Japanese war efforts it was less productive than to invest the same money in the development of smaller warships, submarines or naval air forces. I think that Musashi was a big blunder investment and a premium example of outdated naval thinking of 1930´s - the only good side of it was that the war ended somewhat more quickly because Japanese did put their money in these gigant but vulnerable warships. But not to say that they were the only ones to do that error.

[Leo Etgen]

Hi GuerraCivil

I have seen that 1,023 men went down with Musashi. It is generally considered that the investment that the Japanese made in Yamato and Musashi was a waste of resources and indeed it was but I was reading that at the time the battleship proponents had a number of detailed studies and practical trails that demonstrated how difficult it was for naval aircraft of the era, due to their limited load capacities, to destroy capital ships on the open sea. Even once aircraft had developed to an extent where their capabilities had increased to a level where they could pose a serious threat to capital ships there remained a number of theoretical problems. Horizontal bombardment was quite inaccurate against a moving target and dive-bombing and torpedo attack were projected to suffer heavy losses due to enemy fighters and anti-aircraft fire. Eventually the Japanese developed coordinated massed attacks to attempt to prevent the target from coming through unscathed but until this was proven effective as per the sinking of the Prince of Wales and the Repulse the only certain way to defeat an enemy battle fleet was through capital ships.

Horrido!

Leo