Jamato
The battleship Yamato, weighing 72,800 tons and equipped with nine Type 94 46 cm guns, was Japan’s only hope of destroying the Allied fleet off the coast of Okinawa. She was the lead ship of her class of battleships built for the Imperial Japanese Navy shortly before World War II.
Together with her sister ship Musashi, they were the heaviest and most powerfully equipped battleships ever built. The guns on the Yamato were the largest guns ever mounted on a warship.
Pacific Ocean
Named after an ancient Japanese province, the ship was designed to counterbalance the numerically superior fleet of the United States, Japan’s main rival in the Pacific. The ship was built in 1937 and formally commissioned a week after the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941.
The ship was torpedoed by an American submarine in 1943, which necessitated subsequent repairs, and was also retrofitted with radar and other anti-aircraft guns. She was also present at the Battle of the Philippine Sea in June 1944, but played no part in it.
Sinking
The only time Yamato fired her main guns at enemy targets was in October 1944, when she was deployed against American forces at the Battle of Leyte Gulf. In 1945 it was already clear that the force was clearly on the side of the American fleet. Japanese vessels did not stand a chance against American aircraft giants.
In a desperate attempt to slow the Allied advance, Yamato was sent to Okinawa in April 1945 with orders to fight until destroyed. The ship was spotted by American submarines and aircraft, and on April 7 it was hit by 19 aerial torpedoes from American aircraft carrier bombers and subsequently sunk. As a result of the destruction of the ship, 2,498 members of its crew drowned.
