The footage of Japan’s battleship Yamato is far more than the story of one line of monstrous warships that was sunk; it is a turning point in naval history, the moment when centuries of assumptions about sea power were overthrown by a new era of warfare.
Construction of Yamato in the 1930s was a secret. The Imperial Japanese Navy required a ship so powerful that it would be able to conquer any foe, particularly the American Navy. Weighing nearly 70,000 tons when fully loaded and measuring 863 feet long, Yamato was a floating fortress in every sense of the phrase. She mounted nine gigantic 18-inch guns—the largest ever placed on a battleship—and sported armor so thick that it could disregard the largest shells. Her cannons had a range of 25 miles. Her premise was simple: if you can’t match the enemy in quantities, construct a vessel strong enough to engage several enemies at once.
Despite the fact that Yamato and her sister ship Musashi were still under construction, naval warfare was beginning to change. Aircraft carriers were beginning to dominate the seas, capable of delivering blows far beyond the range of battleship cannons. Despite this, Yamato entered commission in December 1941 as a show of the sea power of Japan. During most of her early years, she spent most of her time in port, hindered by fuel shortages and defensive doctrines that flowed from a navy suffering increasingly mounting pressures.
Yamato’s first real fight was during the battle of Leyte Gulf in October 1944, the biggest naval engagement ever. While spewing her big guns, the battle was won and lost in the skies. American carrier-borne air power reduced the Japanese navy to splinters, sinking Musashi and other vessels. It was agonizingly clear that the age of the battleship had passed, and the seas were now controlled by the master of the skies.
By spring 1945, Japan was in desperation. American forces captured Iwo Jima, cities on the home islands were relentlessly bombed, and the campaign for Okinawa was underway. Desperate, Japan dispatched Operation Ten-Go, a one-way mission in Yamato, light cruiser Yahagi, and eight destroyers to Okinawa. The plan was desperate: Yamato would beach and become a stationary gun platform against the Americans. She had just enough fuel for the trip, no prospect of returning.
The operation was a mixture of hasty decision-making, miscommunication about the emperor’s intentions, and blind dedication to naval pride. Most who sailed on Yamato supposedly believed the operation was going to end in disaster right from the start. On April 6, 1945, over 3,300 men boarded, well aware that few would be coming back.
The American fleet was ready. On April 7, the fleet was detected by air reconnaissance, and Task Force 58 dispatched over 300 carrier-based planes into a swift, relentless attack. Successive waves of torpedo and dive bombers pounded them from every direction. Yahagi was sunk in minutes, several destroyers were lost, and Yamato took a series of torpedo and bomb strikes.
Flooding disabled her power and rudder, leaving her dead in the water. A final torpedo hit made her main guns burst in a tremendous explosion. At 2:23 p.m., Yamato rolled over onto her side and sank, taking more than 3,000 crewmen with her. Only 269 survived. American losses were light, only 10 planes and 12 men being lost.
The sinking of Yamato was not the loss of a ship; it was definitive proof that battleship days were over. Earlier battles had signaled the change, but the sinking of Yamato eliminated all doubt. From then on, aircraft carriers, and not clunky gun-spewing battleships, ruled the seas.
For Japan, Yamato remains a symbol of national pride, sacrifice, and the poignant cost of clinging to outdated strategies. For historians, her fate is a sobering lesson that tactics and technology are constantly evolving, and a failure to adapt accordingly can have catastrophic consequences. Built for a type of war that was already in the past, Yamato became both the world’s largest battleship and one of the last to be constructed.
Today, she rests over a thousand feet beneath the ocean, a silent tribute to her crew and to the day naval combat was forever changed.