During the Second World War, the Imperial Japanese Navy’s Yamato was feared due to its immense size and power. She was the most heavily armed battleship ever built, with nine 18.1-inch (460mm) main guns, the largest ever mounted on a warship. Each shell weighed nearly 1.5 tons and had a range in excess of 26 miles.
Yamato was also the heaviest warship ever constructed and the most heavily armored, leading to a belief she might be “unsinkable.”
Still, today, she lies at the bottom of the East China Sea, about 180 miles southwest of Kyushu, Japan.
The warship was sunk more than 80 years ago, on April 7, 1945, and is now broken into multiple pieces — proof she was neither unsinkable nor as well-protected as her designers may have believed. Naval historians have noted a design flaw, namely that her armor was riveted instead of welded, creating a point of weakness that allowed damage to propagate after bombs and torpedoes struck.
Another notable fact about Yamato is that, due to a shift in naval strategy during the Pacific War, she spent most of her career in naval bases and engaged in combat just a handful of times. Her only real battleship-to-battleship sortie was during the Battle off Samar, part of the larger Battle of Leyte Gulf in October 1944. In that engagement, the IJN super battleship was credited with sinking the United States Navy’s Casablanca-class escort carrier USS Gambier Bay (CVE-73) and the Fletcher-class destroyer USS Johnston (DD-557). At the same time, Yamato also inflicted hits on another destroyer, USS Hoel (DD-533), fired by her 6.1-inch guns, contributing to the U.S. warship’s sinking.
Given all the hype, it is hardly an impressive record for what was built to be a decisive weapon, one that could single-handedly defeat multiple U.S. battleships and bring America to the peace table. Obviously, that never happened; instead, it was aircraft that sank the Yamato and her sister ship, the Musashi.
As Bernard Ireland and Eric Grove wrote in Jane’s War at Sea: 1897-1997: 100 Years of Jane’s Fighting Ships, “One of the great unanswered questions of the Pacific War surrounded the likely outcome of a gunnery duel between [the U.S. Navy’s USS] Iowa and a Japanese Yamato.” The authors suggested that speed and maneuverability of the U.S. Navy’s “fast battleship” might have given it an edge, despite being armed with 16-inch guns.
“That the battleship’s day was done, however, was underlined by the loss of both Yamatos to carrier-based air attacks,” Ireland and Grove explained. “As scorpions succumb to a massed attack by ants, so did these super-battleships founder from the cumulative effect of scores of torpedo hits, bomb hits and near misses.”
Building the Yamato
An irony of Yamato is that the Japanese military invested a massive amount of money, resources and time in three super battleships, only to barely utilize them in their intended role. In fact, the third hull of the Yamato-class battleship was converted into the aircraft carrier Shinano, but that is a story for another time.
What is important to the discussion is that the super-battleship was built in keeping with the pre-war naval strategy that called for victory in a “Kantai Kessen” or “decisive battle.” The doctrine had worked in the Russo-Japanese War at the Battle of Tsushima Strait in May 1905, and in the early 1930’s, it remained a sound strategy, at least to Japanese naval designers.
Even as the IJN began to build aircraft carriers, it initially underestimated their capabilities.
That policy evolved, but by then, the construction of Yamato was already underway. The UK’s Royal Navy carried out its raid on the Italian fleet at Taranto in November 1940, which simply confirmed what many in the IJN believed — that carrier-based aircraft could be the weapon to lead a Kantai Kessen doctrine.
What is also known about the construction of the super-battleship is that no fewer than 23 designs were prepared between 1934, when plans for a super battleship were first introduced, and by 1937, two such vessels were ordered. Construction occurred in great secrecy, with Yamato laid down at Kure, Japan, and Musashi in Nagasaki. That included the installation of high fences, protective roofing and camouflage netting.
The debate over the building of Yamato is the central theme of the highly fictionalized 2019 film The Great War of Archimedes. It started a debate over the necessity of such a warship, yet it does put some of the costs in the spotlight. It also explains how truly massive the battleship was compared to existing capital ships of the era.
Well Armed and Armored
As built, Yamato was 263 meters (863 feet) in length, had a beam of 39.9 meters (130 feet, 3 inches), and a full load displacement of 72,809 tons. As previously noted, its primary armament was nine 18.1-inch guns, the largest ever mounted on a warship. Secondary armament consisted of a dozen 6.1-inch (15.5 cm) guns in four triple turrets; guns larger than the primary armament of the U.S. Navy’s Fletcher-class destroyers!
The battleship was initially equipped with 36 25mm anti-aircraft guns and four 13.2mm machine guns. By 1945, the number of 25mm anti-aircraft guns had increased to 162, an indication that the IJN saw what aircraft could do (and had done) to battleships.
The main turrets on Yamato were protected by 9.8 to 25.6 inches of armor, while the battleship’s belt armor was 16.1 inches (410 mm) thick. The deck armor was 7.9 to 9.1 inches (200 to 230mm), and the conning tower was protected by 19.7 inches (500mm) of armor.
Yamato was powered by four steam turbine engines that gave the battleship a top speed of 27 knots (31mph), while she had a range of 7,200 nautical miles. By 1945, her crew consisted of 2,700 officers and sailors.
From Midway to Leyte Gulf
The IJN Yamato was not part of the fleet that attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941, as the warship was still being fitted out. However, just over six months later, she served as the flagship for IJN Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto at the Battle of Midway in June 1942.
As part of the “Main Body” that stayed about 300 miles behind the carrier strike force, she saw no combat in that action.
The super-battleship was present at the Battle of the Philippine Sea in June 1944, and then took part in the Battle of Leyte Gulf, specifically the Battle off Samar. It was during that engagement that she was damaged after two bombs dropped by U.S. carrier-based aircraft impacted turret 1. Some crew quarters were destroyed, but Yamato survived the battle. She returned to Brunei for repairs.
Less than six months later, she was sortied on a mission that was to be her last.
Ten-Go
Yamato was ordered to disrupt the American landings at Okinawa. Dubbed “Ten-Go,” it was the final major Japanese naval operation of the Pacific War and called for the super-battleship to beach herself and serve as a coastal defense gun until she was destroyed.
On April 7, 1945, the IJN task force sailed from Japan.
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It was also a mission that the crew almost certainly knew they wouldn’t survive, a one-way trip with no air cover and limited fuel supply. There are reports that some crew members were given the option to refuse the mission, but everyone chose to proceed.
What the IJN didn’t know is that the United States Navy had intercepted and decoded radio signals and was prepared to engage the IJN Yamato in the open sea. Within hours, U.S. carrier-based planes launched devastating waves on the IJN task force.
That particular day has been described as having low overcast conditions, which was ideal for an air attack. It was truly like ants carrying out a massed attack on a scorpion. Within 10 minutes of the aircraft engaging the battleship, Yamato had taken two bomb hits and another from a torpedo. One of its escorting destroyers was sunk, and a light cruiser was disabled.
Between 1300 and 1417 hours, the IJN force was under almost continuous air attack.
The scorpion was barely able to sting back, as the anti-aircraft crews lacked adequate training and were only able to shoot down just over half a dozen American aircraft. The U.S. pilots, seeing an opportunity that wasn’t to be missed, piled on the attacks against the battle wagon.
Yamato took at least 12 bombs and seven torpedo hits in just two hours. The combination of bombing and torpedo attacks knocked out every gun on the topside and caused the mighty warship to list significantly. The 1,000 watertight compartments proved ineffective in saving the ship, as the lower decks began to flood.
The sailors clung to what they could, but it was a hopeless endeavor. The ship’s deck went nearly vertical, with her battle flag just barely above the waves.
Shells flew across the ammunition room and crashed against the bulkhead, setting off a chain reaction. The unstable cordite charges in the battleship’s forward leading gun magazines detonated in a massive, spectacular fireball. It created a mushroom cloud that witnesses said reached a height of over three and a half miles into the sky. It was seen nearly 100 miles away on the Japanese mainland of Kyushu. The force of that blast broke the ship in two and caused her to sink rapidly with a tremendous loss of life.
Just 269 of her crew survived.
The light cruiser Yahagi proved almost as challenging as the battleship, taking 12 bombs and seven torpedo hits before finally sinking. Four IJN destroyers were also sunk or scuttled, while four others that were damaged managed to limp back to Sasebo. An additional 1,167 Japanese sailors were killed on the combined vessels.
A total of 10 U.S. aircraft were shot down in the engagement, with a loss of 12 men.
Sunset of the Battleship Era
The IJN Yamato wasn’t the last battleship to be sunk in combat, as the IJN Hyūga survived until July 28, 1945, when she was sunk in port in Kure Harbor, Japan. Battleships would also remain in service after the war, and the United States Navy briefly returned its four Iowa-class battleships during the 1980s, when then-President Ronald Reagan called for a navy of more than 600 ships.
However, the sinking of Yamato can be seen as symbolizing the end of the battleship era. It demonstrated the vulnerability of the capital ships to air power. It may have been heavily armed and armored, yet it played a minimal role in combat operations.
Had Japan been on the offensive, Yamato could have played a role in providing fire during amphibious landings, but the tide of war turned essentially before such an opportunity was ever presented to the super-battleship.
Destruction of Yamato in Pop Culture
For the Japanese people, the battleship Yamato remains a symbol of national pride, heroic sacrifice and even a cautionary tale about the futility of war. That latter fact is noted in the film The Great War of Archimedes, where (spoilers) it is even suggested that the warship needed to be built to be lost in a heroic sacrifice. The 2019 film even opens with the warship’s destruction in Operation Ten-Go. It is a dramatized depiction that relies heavily on CGI, but is still worth watching.
The final mission of the IJN Yamato is also presented in the 2005 film Yamato, which chronicles the last year of the ship’s service. The film’s final act also recreates the April 7 air assault that destroyed the battleship.
Both films received high praise in Japan.
The 2005 movie was filmed on a 1:1 scale replica of the forward section and the portside anti-aircraft guns. After filming was completed, the set was open to the public for nearly a year, during which it attracted more than 1 million visitors. Model maker Tamiya also released special-edition scale models of the battleship to coincide with the film’s release, and the company even produced a special 1:350-scale diorama of the wreck site.
Finally, Yamato has remained a staple of Japanese pop culture, including the anime series Space Battleship Yamato, which was released in the U.S. under the title Star Blazers.
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