beehive shells they were a Japanese anti-aircraft shell designed to be fired
from guns as large as the Yamato's the largest battleship ever built
Japan's strategy for holding the Pacific was to dominate the skies of the vast ocean
using their expanse of captured islands as unsinkable aircraft carriers
these unique anti-aircraft shells reflected this focus on the air
throughout the navy beehive shells would be used from 5-inch guns to the Yamato's 18.1 inch guns
40 percent of the Yamato's main armament would be anti-aircraft shells
beehive shells had some success against hitting stationary targets
they were used at Guadalcanal to bombard Henderson field destroying 48 aircraft
they also hit and lightly damaged the USS San Francisco however against moving
targets in the air they were a little more than an impressive pyrotechnic display
the concept of the beehive shell on paper sounds imposing these were 18-inch shells weighing as
much as a car they were filled with hundreds of incendiary tubes and steel projectiles
the shell was set by a delay fuse designed to explode at a desired altitude
on explosion the steel and incendiary tubes were ejected in a 20 degree cone forward which further
mixed with the fragments from the shell itself the incendiary tubes ignited about half a second later
and burned for five seconds creating five meter long flames a beautiful site for a bystander
in practice there were several significant issues in using these shells poor manufacturing
quality meant they were hard on the guns and were prone to damaging the gun's rifling
the incredible blast from the monstrous main guns also disrupted the operation
of the more effective smaller anti-aircraft guns
main guns were not designed to be used as anti-aircraft guns
despite what is shown in some games or anime these turrets are slow to traverse and elevate
designed to shoot at slow-moving ships not fast-moving aircraft the guns were also slow
to load at most one shell every minute and a half the lag time between setting a fuse on a shell and
the shell actually firing on such a massive gun is time enough to cause the shell to burst off target
the Yamato fired these shells against incoming aircraft on two separate instances during
operation 10 go her last operation beehive shells failed against PBM flying boats
shadowing her as shown in Yamato from 2005. the shells failed again against
attacking aircraft of task 58 as shown in the great war of Archimedes from 2019
the Yamato was destroyed during operation Ten-Go april 7 1945
by part of an overwhelming force of 280 American bomber and torpedo bombers
she was said to have been completely overwhelmed despite her over 150 plus anti-aircraft guns
beehive shells attempted to break up the onslaught detonating a mere 1 000 meters from the ship
but had no effect it's estimated the Yamato was sunk by at least 11 torpedoes and six bombs
all right I'm johnny thanks for watching this brief on beehive shells sorry there's
not a lot of media on the subject but it's an interesting weapon nonetheless
foreign