Yeah, Moonraker is hilariously awful too.
But it was mostly a communication thing. I was thinking that "miss" was a qualifier and not as bad as "disaster" in your book.
That said, Moonraker did at least give us that little gem of a line at the ending: "I think he's attempting re-entry, sir."
Comedy gold, right there.
Also I should probably read some of the books. Your description of YOLT has me intrigued, even though the movie was very average.
Be sure to take care in picking which books to read! Some are brilliant, some are fun romps and others are rather dreadful. My personal favorites are (in chronological order): Casino Royale, From Russia With Love, Dr. No and the Spectre trilogy. The trilogy is composed of Thunderball, On Her Majesty's Secret Service and You Only Live Twice.
One of the biggest issues of the film YOLT is that it's misplaced in the order and the book's story can only work if you set it after OHMSS. The film series put in some
very minor efforts to try and make the film version of Diamonds are Forever act as its version of the book YOLT (aka they point out that Bond wants revenge on Blofeld), but it lacks all the nuance and intelligence of the novel.
In the book, the setting of Japan acts as more than just another exotic location for Bond to explore; he undergoes a sort of spiritual healing through delving himself into the Japanese culture. It's an incredibly gloomy and macabre story that is really unlike anything else in the Bond mythos, be it novels or films. The closest comparison that I could make would probably be Skyfall, and even that's still pretty different from YOLT.