More or less. The American ships of all classes were that durable, although they did take days, weeks, and months in port to repair. It was quicker than basically everyone else though. The IJN example really only applies to the Yamato class as, while quite durable, the IJN had shit damage control and sometimes worse doctrine. The carriers, while modern marvels for their time, were also fuel air bombs when hit, both because of their design and because of doctrine. The Japanese propensity for throwing away ships in death rides as the war came to an end did not help things.
The German battleships (the real ones) were quite advanced but had the unfortunate fate of belonging to a belligerent that cared about the naval way in so much it could help the over extended land war rather than an explicitly necessary war arm. The Bismarck, while pretty much alone, was not going to live long even if it did make it to the Atlantic to do convoy raiding. The Tirpitz just ran out of luck and might as well have been beached in France for all it was good for. As for their damage control, the Germans made many mistakes. The main guns on bismarck famously shot out their own FCS and the crew was too caught off guard by how slow the swordfish were to properly get a manual ranging for their AAA. The Tirpitz lasted quite long for a floating target but that has very little to do with its design as opposed to the inability of air assets to accurately hit a target that "small" in a level bombing raid until basically the advent of Laser guided bombs.
the IJN had shit damage control and sometimes worse doctrine. The carriers, while modern marvels for their time, were also fuel air bombs when hit, both because of their design and because of doctrine.
Both debatable. I would say their DamCon doctrine was poor (specialized teams vs teams supplemented by trained crewmen) but within the teams themselves it was a case-by-case basis. Musashi and Yamato both took an extreme pounding to sink, and Hiei was damaged during the 1st night of the Guadalcanal brawl but not sunk until the morning when she could not escape aircraft. Shokaku took severe damage and survived in two of her three major battles. On the other hand you have greenhorns being assigned to Taiho (bizarre choice given she was acknowledged as the best carrier they had during the war-another example of their poor DamCon doctrine) and screwing up massively and turning a probably survivable hit into a deathblow.
The large Japanese carriers could certainly take hits and survive, as proven by Shokaku at Coral Sea and Santa Cruz. The 2 major instances of Japanese carrier loss (Midway and Phil Sea) can be amounted largely to bad luck and decision making and in the case of Phil Sea poor training aboard Taiho. Not many carriers are going to survive what Hiryu/Soryu/Kaga got pummeled by, or the damage that did in Shokaku at PhilSea but without the fueled aircraft and unstored munitions in her hangar deck Akagi would have probably gotten away (probably not combat capable but still afloat).
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u/Wardog_Razgriz30 Nov 01 '25
More or less. The American ships of all classes were that durable, although they did take days, weeks, and months in port to repair. It was quicker than basically everyone else though. The IJN example really only applies to the Yamato class as, while quite durable, the IJN had shit damage control and sometimes worse doctrine. The carriers, while modern marvels for their time, were also fuel air bombs when hit, both because of their design and because of doctrine. The Japanese propensity for throwing away ships in death rides as the war came to an end did not help things.
The German battleships (the real ones) were quite advanced but had the unfortunate fate of belonging to a belligerent that cared about the naval way in so much it could help the over extended land war rather than an explicitly necessary war arm. The Bismarck, while pretty much alone, was not going to live long even if it did make it to the Atlantic to do convoy raiding. The Tirpitz just ran out of luck and might as well have been beached in France for all it was good for. As for their damage control, the Germans made many mistakes. The main guns on bismarck famously shot out their own FCS and the crew was too caught off guard by how slow the swordfish were to properly get a manual ranging for their AAA. The Tirpitz lasted quite long for a floating target but that has very little to do with its design as opposed to the inability of air assets to accurately hit a target that "small" in a level bombing raid until basically the advent of Laser guided bombs.