Not many ocean adventures can have the same influence on imagination as the story of the battleship Yamato has. Together with her sister ship Musashi, she was the largest and most powerful warship ever. However, the story of Yamato is not just about the might of steel and firepower—it is a story of human aspirations, clever tactics, and the ultimate limitations of technology in modern warfare.
Yamato’s idea was essentially connected to Japan’s Kantai Kessen principle, which assumed that the control of the seas would be determined by a single, deciding naval battle. Inspired by such naval theorists as Alfred Thayer Mahan, Japanese strategists regarded naval supremacy as the direct path to national power.
However, Japan was facing a harsh truth: it could not compete with the gigantic shipbuilding capacities of the United States or Britain. The answer to the problem was going to be daring – build a few enormous battleships so strong that each would be able to defeat several enemy ships at the same time, thus neutralizing their number with pure power.
Yamato construction began in 1937 with great secrecy. The shipyards were out of sight, and the workers were instructed not to talk about what they were doing. The size of these vessels was mindboggling – when Musashi was launched, the waves that she caused flooded the close by homes and even turned over the small boats.
Actually, Yamato weighed more than 78,000 tons, that were more than the total weight of both an Iowa-class and a King George V battleship put together. Her armor belt was 16 inches thick, turret faces were 26 inches, and she had nine 18.1-inch main guns – the biggest naval artillery ever installed, which were capable of hitting targets over 26 miles away.
But her greatness had its drawbacks. Yamato needed a lot of fuel and had a limited operational range, as well as was slower than lighter vessels. Although she had advanced optics, they did not help much against the radar-directed gunnery of American and British ships. Defensive weapons were not arranged in a good way, and her 25mm anti-aircraft guns were so weak that the crews were often exposed to strafing. Special “beehive” shells that were to become walls of fire for aircraft rarely had the intended effect, and sometimes they even harmed Yamato’s guns.
Yamato’s military career was not stable. She was only a short time acting as Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto’s flagship, but hardly ever took part in the decisive surface action for which she had been built. During the Battle of Midway, she stayed away from the fighting while Japan’s carriers were destroyed. Later, at the Battle of Samar, she shot at American escort carriers but was not able to stop them from continuing their activity – the shells that were sent through the vest-constructed ships did not explode.
By the time it was April 1945, Japan was almost defeated. The navy put Operation Ten-Go into effect as a last stand. Yamato, together with one cruiser and eight destroyers, was given an order to go to Okinawa, land on the beach, and become a coastal gun battery. Any crewman was allowed to stay behind if he wanted, but not a single person agreed. The plan was made quickly, and its purpose seemed more symbolic than strategic.
The result was tragic. American submarines were following the force, and almost 400 U.S. aircraft attacked it without delay. The attack lasted for two hours nonstop, during which bombs, rockets, and torpedoes were unleashed on Yamato. She was destroyed with several explosions and then turned over and blew up with a very big fire that sent a big cloud into the sky. Apart from the over 3,300 men who were on board, only a few hundred were able to survive.
Maybe Yamato would have made better use if she had been used to do the things some people say, such as raiding supply lines or otherwise playing with the U.S. fleet in an open battle. However, by 1945, Japan’s resources were getting smaller, and the technology that was old made such a thing impossible. The strong point of the Allies was still going to be the case even if Yamato dealt a bigger blow to them. She would still end up being destroyed. Some have said that the money which was spent on building her could have been better used on planes or escorts, but whether or not that would have changed history is still a question.
Currently, Yamato represents not only the brilliance of the engineering world but also the inability of brute force to win when the air power era dominates. Her legend continues in museums, models, as well as people’s memory – the memory that even the strongest warship by strategy, innovation, and the unstoppable march of progress can be defeated.
