YAMATO
]The battleships
Yamato and
Musashi were the ultimate of the type: the biggest, best-protected, and best-armed warships of all time. Indeed,
Musashi set a minor record of her own: the biggest warship ever launched from a slipway, at 35,737t. Their design was initiated in 1934, and the first presentation submitted on 10 March 1935, in the knowledge that the Washington and London Treaties, which controlled the construction of new capital ships, were to expire on 31 December 1936. There were to be no less than 22 more design submissions prepared before authorization to proceed was finally given, and construction of the
Yamato began, at Kure Navy Yard, on 4 November 1937. She was followed, in March 1938, by
Musashi at Mitsubishi’s Nagasaki yard – later the target for the second atomic bomb. Two more units were authorized:
Shinano was completed as an aircraft carrier but the unnamed ‘No 111’ was broken up incomplete.
Much of the design work concentrated on the possibility of giving the ships a combined steam and diesel powerplant (and diesel-only was also considered), but the necessary 30,000hp engines were unavailable.
Yamato was floated out of the specially-enlarged dry-dock at Kure on 8 August 1940; her main guns, transported by a specially-built heavy-lift ship, the
Kashino, were mounted between May and July 1941. On 16 December, nine days after the attack on Pearl Harbor,
Yamato was commissioned. She became Admiral Yamamoto’s flagship on 12 February 1942, and served in that capacity at Midway, with the intention of using her 18.1in (460mm) rifles to bombard the island itself. Ironically, it was the overwhelming effectiveness of carrier-based aircraft during that battle which finally brought home the fact that the days of the battleship were numbered.
Yamato was hit by a single torpedo from the US submarine
Skate off Truk on Christmas Day 1943, and took on 3000t of water. However, she made Kure on 16 January and was repaired, during which her heavy AA battery was modified and she rejoined the fleet on 1 May 1944. She was in combat in the Marianas in June. Later, on 25 October (the day after the
Musashi was sunk, by 17 bombs and perhaps as many torpedoes),
Yamato finally fired her guns, 104 rounds in all, at US warships in the Battle of the Samur Sea, sinking an escort carrier and a destroyer. She was herself sunk off Okinawa, on what was effectively the most involved Kamikaze mission of the war, on 7 April 1945. Hit by six bombs and perhaps 10 torpedoes, she went down at 1423hrs, with the loss of all but about 280 officers and men aboard.
Displacement: 63,000t (later 65,000t) standard; 71,660t (later 72,810t) full load
Dimensions: 862ft 9in x 121ft 1in x 34ft 1in (263m x 36.9m x 10.4m)
Machinery: four-shaft, Kampon geared turbines; 150,000hp
Armament: nine 18.1in (460mm); 12 (later six) 6.1in (155mm); 12 (later 24) 5in (127mm) DP; 24 (later 150) 25mm; six or seven aircraft
Armour: belt 16.1in (410mm); deck 9.1in–7.9in (230mm–200mm); turret faces 25.6in (650mm); conning tower 19.7in (500mm)
Speed: 27 knots
Range: 7200nm (13,320km) at 16 knots
Complement: 2500
Pictured: The Yamato and her sister ship Musashi were the ultimate gun-armed warships, supposedly impregnable to (2200lb) 1000kg AP bombs, and with guns which could fire 1.46t shells to a range of almost 23nm, at a rate of up to two rounds per barrel per minute.Fact File: Many design elements of the Japanese super-battleships still remain shrouded in secrecy. In August 1945, all the drawings – and even the official photographs – of the ships were destroyed.