Japanese battleship Yamato
.jpg?lang=en) Yamato on trials, 1941 | |
| Career | RN Ensign |
|---|---|
| Ordered: | March 1937 |
| Laid down: | November 4 1937 |
| Launched: | August 8 1940 |
| Commissioned: | December 16 1941 |
| Fate: | Sunk April 7 1945 North of Okinawa |
| General Characteristics | |
| Displacement: | 65,027 tonnes (empty, including 21,266 tonnes of armor); 72,800 tonnes (estimated, full load) |
| Length: | 256 m (800.5 ft) water-line 263 m (862.5 ft) overall |
| Beam: | 36.9 m (121 ft) |
| Draught: | 11 m (36 ft) maximum |
| Propulsion: | 12 Kanpon boilers, driving 4 steam turbines 150,000 shp (110 MW) Four 3-bladed propellers, 6.0 m (19.7 ft) diameter |
| Speed: | 27 knots (50 km/h) |
| Range: | 11,500 km at 16 knots (30 km/h) |
| Complement: | 2,750 |
| Armour: | 650 mm on face of turrets 410 mm side armor, inclined 20 degrees 200 mm armored deck |
| Armament: | In 1941: 9 x 46cm (18.1 in) (3x3) 12 x 15.5cm (6.1 in) (4x3) 12 x 12.7 mm (6x2) 24 x 25 mm AA (8x3) 4 x 13 mm AA (2x2) In 1945 (as sunk): |
| Aircraft: | 7, 2 catapults |
Yamato (大和), named after the ancient Japanese Yamato Province, 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 46cm (18.1 in) 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. Originally it was intended that five ships of this class would be built, but the third ship of the class, Shinano, was converted to an aircraft carrier during construction after the defeat at the Battle of Midway, the un-named Hull Number 111 was scrapped in 1943 when roughly 30% complete, and Hull Number 797, proposed in the 1942 5th Supplementary Program, was never ordered. Plans for a super Yamato class, with 50.8 cm (20 inch) guns, provisionally designated as Hull Number 798 and Hull Number 799, were abandoned in 1942.
The class was designed to be superior to any ship the United States was likely to produce. 46cm (18.1 in) main guns were selected over 40.6cm (16 inch) 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 the intelligence agencies of other countries, her main guns were officially named as 40.6cm Special, and civilians were never notified of the ture nature of the guns. Their budgets were also scattered among various projects so that the huge total costs would not be immediately noticeable.
At the Kure Navy Yard where she was built, the construction dock was deepened, the gantry crane capacity was increased to 100 metric tons, and part of the dock was roofed over to prevent observation of work.
Arc welding, a relatively new procedure at that time, was used extensively during construction. The lower side-belt armor was used as a strength member of the hull structure. The undulating line of the main deck forward saved structural weight without reducing hull girder strength. Tests of models in a model basin led to the adoption of a semi-transom stern and a bulbous bow, which reduced hull resistance by 8%. The ship had one large rudder (at frame 231), which gave it a large turning circle of 640 meters; there was also a smaller auxiliary rudder installed (at frame 219) which was virtually useless. The steam turbine power plant was of a relatively low powered design (25 kg/cm2, 325 degrees C), and as such, their fuel usage rate was very high. This is a primary reason why they were not used during the Solomons Campaigns and other mid-war operations. There were a total of 1147 watertight compartments in the ship. HOLAAAAAA
Combat
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Yamato was the flagship of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto from 12 February 1942 , replacing Nagato. She took part in the Midway operation in June, 1942, but took no active part in the Battle of Midway. She remained the flagship for 364 days, one day shy of a full year, until on February 11, 1943, the flag was transferred to her sister ship Musashi. From 29 August 1942 through 8 May 1943, she spent all of her time at Truk, being underway for only 1 day during this entire time. In May 1943, she returned to Kure where the two wing 15.5cm turrets were removed and replaced by 25mm machine guns, and Type-22 surface search radars were added. She returned to Truk on 25 December 1943, and on the way there, she was damaged by a torpedo from the submarine USS Skate, and was not fully repaired until April 1944. During these repairs, additional 12.7cm anti-aircraft guns were installed in the place of the 15.5cm turrets removed in May, and additional 25mm anti-aircraft guns were added. She returned to the conflict and joined the Japanese fleet in the Battle of the Philippine Sea in June 1944 In October, she participated in the Battles of Leyte Gulf and Samar, during which she first fired her main guns in action, and she received two bomb hits from aircraft which did little damage. 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.
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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 mission to attack the US fleet supporting the US troops landing on the west of the island. On 6 April Yamato and her escorts, the light cruiser Yahagi and 8 destroyers, left port at Tokuyama. They were sighted on 7 April by American submarines as they exited the Inland Sea southwards. The U.S. Navy launched 386 aircraft to intercept the task force, and the planes engaged the ships starting at 1230 that afternoon. Yamato took 8 bomb and 20 torpedo hits before, at about 1423, she capsized to port and her after magazines detonated. She sank still some 200 km from Okinawa. 2,475 of her crew were lost, and 269 survivors were picked up by the escorting destroyers.
The wreckage lies in around 300 meters 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.
- Siegfried Breyer, Battleships and Battlecruisers 1905-1970 (Doubleday and Company; Garden City, New York, 1973) (originally published in German as Schlachtschiffe und Schlachtkreuzer 1905-1970, J.F. Lehmanns, Verlag, Munchen, 1970). Contains various line drawings of the ship as designed and as built.
- Robert Gardiner, ed., Conway’s All the World’s Fighting Ships 1922 - 1946, (Conway Maritime Press, London, 1980)
- William H. Gargke, Jr., and Robert O. Dulin, Jr., Battleships: Axis and Neutral Battlehips in World War II, (Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, 1985)
Effect on later culture
In a futuristic anime television and movie series Space Battleship Yamato, broadcast in the US as Star Blazers, 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, due to alien bombardment.
Yamato is also the name of one of the Galaxy Class sister ships to the USS Enterprise on Star Trek: The Next Generation.
The historical fiction anime series Zipang features Yamato prominently in the early episodes of the series.
The RTS game StarCraft, from Blizzard Entertainment, features a game unit called the Battlecruiser with a special attack called "Yamato cannon" probably in homage to the Space Battle Ship Yamato's Wave Motion Gun.
Now defunct Interplay Entertainment's starship combat simulation game, Star Trek: Klingon Academy, features the Yamato as a class of superheavy deadnaughts fielded by the United Federation of Planets.
External links
- IJN Yamato: Tabular Record of Movement
- Yoshida Mitsuru, Requiem for Battleship Yamato book review
- Russell Spurr, A Glorious Way To Die book review
- Pictures of Yamato Wreck
Yamato Museum 1/10 scale model