Yamato on trials, 1941
|
| Career
| 
|
| Ordered:
| March 1937
|
| Laid down:
| November 4 1937
|
| Launched:
| August 8 1940
|
| Commissioned:
| December 16 1941
|
| Fate:
| Sunk April 7 1945
|
| General Characteristics
|
| Displacement:
| 65,027 tonnes (empty, including 21,266 tonnes of armour); 72,800 tonnes (estimated, full load)
|
| Length:
| 256 m (water-line)
|
| Beam:
| 36 m
|
| Draught:
| 11 m (maximum)
|
| Propulsion:
| 12 Kanpon boilers, driving 4 steam turbines, 150,000shp (110MW) (estimated) =
|
| Speed:
| 27 knots (50 km/h)
|
| Range:
| 11,500 km at 16 knots (30 km/h)
|
| Complement:
| 2,750
|
| Armour:
| 650 mm on front of turrets, 409 mm side armour, 198 mm armoured deck
|
| Armament:
| In 1941: nine 18.1-inch (460 mm) guns (3×3); twelve 6.1-inch (155 mm) guns (4×3); twelve 12.7 mm guns (6×2); twenty-four 25 mm AA guns; eight 13 mm AA guns.
By 1945 six of the 6.1-inch and all 13 mm guns had been removed and the AA defences had been boosted to a hundred and forty-six 25 mm guns.
|
| Aircraft:
| 7
|
Yamato (大和) was a battleship of the Imperial Japanese Navy, and was the lead ship of her class. She and her sister ship Musashi were the largest battleships ever constructed, weighing 65,027 tons and armed with nine 18.1 in (460 mm) main guns.
Construction
Design work began in 1934 and after modifications the design was accepted in March 1937 for a 68,000 ton vessel. She was built at a specially prepared dock at Kure naval dockyards beginning on 4 November 1937. She was launched on 8 August 1940 and commissioned on 16 December 1941. It was intended to build four ships of this class, but Shinano was converted to an aircraft carrier during construction and the un-named Warship Number 111 was scrapped in 1943 when roughly 30% complete. Plans for a super Yamato class, with 20-inch (508 mm) guns, were abandoned.
The class was designed to be superior to any ship the United States was likely to produce. 18.1 in main guns were selected over 16 inch (410 mm) because the width of the Panama Canal would make it impossible for the U.S. Navy to construct a battleship with same caliber guns without severe design restrictions or an inadequate defensive arrangement. To further confuse enemies, her main guns were officially named as 16 inch (410 mm) and civilians were never notified of their completion. Their budgets were also scattered among various projects so that huge total costs would not be immediately noticeable.
Combat
She was the flagship of Isoroku Yamamoto from on 12 February 1942. Replaced as flagship by Musashi she spent much of 1943 in harbor at Truk. The anti-aircraft defences were greatly increased in 1943 at Kure but as she returned to Truk on 25 December 1943 she was badly damaged by a torpedo from USS Skate and was not fully repaired until April 1944. Two of the 6.1-inch (155 mm) turrets were removed and AA gun platforms replaced them. She returned to the conflict and joined the Japanese fleet in the Battle of the Philippine Sea (June) and the Battles of Leyte Gulf and Samar Gulf (October), during which she first fired her main guns. She returned home in November and her anti-aircraft capability was again upgraded over the winter. She was attacked in the Inland Sea on March 19 1945 by carrier aircraft from Task Force 58 as they attacked Kure. She suffered little damage during the engagement.
 Damaged Yamato under enemy fire on her last journey Her final mission was as part of Operation Ten-Go following the invasion of Okinawa on 1 April 1945. She was sent on a suicide misssion to attack the US fleet supporting the US troops landing on the west of the island. On 6 April Yamato and her escorts left port at Tokuyama. They were sighted on 7 April as they exited the Inland Sea southwards. The U.S. Navy launched around 400 aircraft to intercept the taskforce and the planes engaged the ships starting in the mid-afternoon. Yamato took up to twenty bomb and torpedo hits before, at about 14:20, her magazines detonated. She capsized to port and sank, still some 200 km from Okinawa. Around 2,475 of her crew were lost and 269 survived.
The wreckage lies in around 300 m of water and has been surveyed in 1985 and 1999.
References
- Yoshida Mitsuru, Requiem for Battleship Yamato. A detailed description of the ship's final voyage; Mitsuru was the only surviving bridge officer.
- Janusz Skulski, The Battleship Yamato. A highly detailed book on every aspect of the ship.
- Russell Spurr's A Glorious Way To Die. A description of Yamato's final days as seen from the perspective of not only her officers and men, but also the accompanying ships of her task force and the American forces who destroyed her.
Fiction
In a futuristic anime television and movie series Space Battleship Yamato, humanity salvages the wreck of Yamato from the evaporated ocean floor and refits it as a spaceship which saves the Earth and its people from toxic radiation which is ravaging the planet.
The historical fiction anime series Zipang features Yamato prominently in the early episodes of the series.
External links
|
