Interesting IJN Footage

Here's something I stumbled across on criticalpast.com:

Japanese Naval exercises involving battle ships and simulated attacks by aircraftThere are obviously a number of things spliced together in this clip for one reason or another, I've seen the last few second with the destroyer squadron a few places before. But the AA drills are new to me. Most seem to be aboard a heavy cruiser, but there are two short segments a bit after the three minute mark that must almost surely be aboard a carrier. You'll notice that the heavy AA is well below a line of nets and circular gun tubs, which feels to me like a CV position. The early war Japanese carriers had their heavy AA in unusually low positions, which gave them a very restricted sky ark. This is especially true of Akagi. Since the guns appear to the an older 4.7" 50 cal. I would be inclined to guess this might be Akagi. The one thing that bothers me is that they look like single mounts, and Akagi had doubles. But maybe the angle is just right so that the first barrel is masking the second.

Interesting footage, anyway. Whatever it might be. Some rarely seen stuff.

 

Awesome footage. Looks like the admiral at the beginning, with the binoculars is Yamamoto-also the battle flag shot could be from the PH raid because the older flag with the more modern flag looks like Togo's famous Z flag (from the Tsushima battle) that was hoisted on the Akagi on Dec. 7th.

Yes it does look like the second barrel is masked in the shots.

Here's a Hasegawa model. This shot looks a lot like the area in the video:

View attachment 13935

 

If you're talking about the flag thirty seconds in, you're probably looking at the vice admiral's rank flag. The "Battle Flag" (officially the Japanese naval ensign) is flying from the peak of the gaff. (Which makes it the slightly lower flag coming off the arm that sticks back from the mast. Counter-intuitively this is actually the place of highest honor on a flag pole or mast that has a gaff.) The flag at the top of the mast is usually the CO's rank flag. There's a complicated etiquette to what goes where that I won't go into, but you can see a nice color version of several significant IJN flags and pennants here:

JAPAN NAVAL FLAGS I

If they are correct, Togo's Z pennant is simply a standard maritime Z.

I can confirm most of the rest of them from Jane's, and internet resources seem to concur that Togo hoisted an ordinary "Z" as code for "The Empire's fate depends on the result of this battle, let every man do his utmost duty."

You can just make out the flag in Shotaro Tojo's 1906 painting "Admiral Togo on the bridge of Mikasa."

Wikipedia has a nice article on maritime signal flags.

And another nice one on The Battle of Tsushima, which provided me with the painting and the code.

 

View attachment 13939

Hey, they look alike, don't they?

 

Nice video. thanks.
And hey, isn't that yamamoto looking at a map of Hawaii ? ( ...i know)



Who can tell the type of submarine on the surface with a very lengthy tower (which were made only at the end of the war ?..how does this match with yamamoto pre-war images ?)