Originally Posted by KevinTheCynic

To clarify things from my perspective, I really like the Yamato. It is simply awesome (in the proper sense of the word) in scale and another good example of how massive we humans can build things.
But...

Everything I've read about her final hours and having seen the images from the seabed and the diorama showing her final resting place firmly cements in my mind that she did not have good enough damage control.
To quote the article linked to "Normal practice would have been to flood the magazines, preventing any explosion, but the pumping stations that should have performed this task had been rendered unusable by previous flooding."
That's an unfortunate oversight at best and just bad design judgement at worst.

Indeed, I just ordered another published book on the matter "Titans of the Rising Sun: The Yamato Class battleships"

To see if I can learn more about the damage control practices and design features from both crew training perspectives and naval designers perspective.

But I feel that a further and most costly way to dive deeper into how well they were designed internally (no pun intended) . Would be a ROV observation of Musashi today. That's why I titled this thread as such.

Currently I am reading up and researching the Battle of the Denmark straight. Although in no way historically related, researching Germany's approach to the same issue has shed key points of interest in seeing how well ships of this era were designed.

Because like Bismarck and Tirpitz, the Yamato and Musashi were post Washington Treaty design's. Both were considered "modern" battleships.

For anyone else, academics or enthusiasts for old warships such as myself. One aspect is continually ignored. If you want to see a true test of any vessels structural integrity and how well it performs under stress. Then how it holds up on it's plumment to the sea bed can in a rough sense attest to that. I know it's a little out of context but fluid forces of rushing through water puts incredible stress on a vessels frame, and in this sense can better paint a picture on what kind of internal layout the Yamato and Musashi had. Due to the fact their official plans were literally destroyed and much remains guess work on what the inside of the ships really looked like being as even for Yamato, no penetration of the hull has yet been performed.

The issue isn't with flooding the room containing the pumps needed to flood the magazine in case of fire.
The issue is that there appears to have been no redundant systems, i.e. there was no backup in case those pumps were damaged/inaccessible.

Originally Posted by KevinTheCynic

The issue isn't with flooding the room containing the pumps needed to flood the magazine in case of fire.
The issue is that there appears to have been no redundant systems, i.e. there was no backup in case those pumps were damaged/inaccessible.

Let alone if the crew was well trained enough by that point in the war to man those systems efficiently. Also with reported issues of internal compartmentalized construction becoming more than just a nuisance when navigating the ship. Placement of any redundant system would have been hindered to a degree.

Lastly the U.S. Navy would have been more than prepared to launch follow up strikes on both Ships had they stayed afloat longer.

No warship then or today will stay afloat if you blow enough holes in it. Even if both ships were the best designed vessels of the time, the Allies would have thrown enough ordnance at them above and below the water line to if they did not sink would be rendered smoldering wrecks and out action.