So, you've got all these battleships...*

Those who know me well probably know about my love of battleships. It really has never been a secret and before we get to the technical part of this entry, here are a couple of entertaining photos of me at the U.S.S. North Carolina museum in Wilmington, NC, one from when I was about 20 or 21 and one fro when I was 2 or 3.

Anyway, last night on NOVA the topic was the sinking of the Japanese super-battleship Yamato (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/supership/). Of course, I watched and all in all the program was reasonably well done. It spent too much time on the general history of the war in the Pacific for my tastes, but it was a program for the casual viewer. They couldn't very well have said at the outset, "If you don't know the basics, go watch all 13 hours of "Victory at Sea" and then come back."

So, a couple of things that the program wasn't exactly accurate about, in my opinion. The program oversimplified the Washington Treaty of 1922, implying that the U.S. and Great Britain forced the 5:5:3 ratio on the Japanese when there was actually a relatively strong "Treaty Faction" in the Japanese navy that understood that the 5:5:3 ratio effectively guaranteed the Japanese naval superiority in the Pacific given the American and British two-ocean navy requirements. The program also never mentioned that there was a sister ship to the Yamato (the Musashi) that was sunk by U.S. aircraft at the Battle of Leyte Gulf in the Philippines in 1944 (6 months before the Yamato was sunk), nor that a 3rd ship in the class (the Shinano) was started but converted to an aircraft carrier following the Battle of Midway. Shinano was actually the largest aircraft carrier built until the U.S.S. Forrestal was completed in the 1950's.

Oh, the Lovely Mina and I went to the U.S.S. Massachusetts museum in Fall River last summer, which was nice. One of these days I will drag her to Mobile, AL to see the U.S.S. Alabama. I am sure she is very excited and looking forward to that!

* This is the opening line of my brother David's always humorous impression of me.