The latest damage-control features were built into the ships, as well. This provided the required 27.5 knots speed as planned. Propelled by four geared turbines powered by 12 steam boilers, the ships boasted 150,000 horsepower. In total, the ships’ armor weighed over 22,000 tons. Armor protection was concentrated over the engines, magazines and essential machinery. Fully loaded, the battleships drew 34.5 feet of water-so deep that several Japanese naval bases had to have their harbors dredged to allow the ships to dock there. They had a beam of 127.7 feet and a length of 863 feet. The fourth planned ship was neither named nor completed when it was scrapped in November 1941.Īs expected, these ships were huge. Accordingly, the Shinano was converted mid-construction to an aircraft carrier. But the Pacific war had already pointed out that the primary naval weapon of that war was no longer the battleship, but the aircraft carrier. In 1939, even as the Yamato and Musashi took shape, the third ship of the class, tentatively named the Shinano, was begun. Although the 72,000-ton, 863-foot-long ship had barely seen action, she was ordered to beach herself at Okinawa and use her firepower to disrupt the American amphibious landings she never got the chance. An artist’s impression of American warplanes attacking the Japanese super battleship Yamato, April 7, 1945. United States Naval intelligence acquired no information regarding the two ships, and complete information eluded them until after the war. Similarly, before Musashi could begin at the Mitsubishi docks in Nagasaki, the facility had to be extended over 50 feet into the hillside. Indeed, so large were these ships that the dockyard and channel at Kure, Japan, where the Yamato was built, had to be deepened before construction could begin. The designers finally decided that to meet all these requirements the ship would have a displacement of 69,000 tons. The naval architects were charged with planning a ship that could carry nine 18.1-inch main guns, have enough armor to withstand 18-inch shellfire from an enemy, and have enough underwater armor to prevent damage from a torpedo carrying a 660-pound warhead, while having a top speed of 27 knots and the ability to cruise 8,000 miles at an average speed of 18 knots. More than 20 designs for the ships were considered and discarded. Planning for the construction of these ships began in the fall of 1935. The first two of these ships, the Yamato and Musashi, were approved in 1936 and the remaining two in September 1939. These were to carry 18-inch main guns and enough armor to withstand hits by 18-inch enemy shells. Part of the new naval policy of Japan was to build in secret four new super-battleships. When, in December 1934, Japan decided to renounce the Washington Naval Treaty that had limited its fleet, it immediately moved to increase the numbers of its fleet. The Japanese concentrated on quality rather than quantity, and built their ships designed for combat against a superior force. Treaty obligations kept the number of its capital ships limited to 70 per cent of those of the United States. By 1916 the latest IJN battleship, the IJN Nagato, was armed with 10 16-inch guns, the largest afloat at the time.īy the twenties, Japan was trying to build a fleet to equal, if not in numbers, then in power, that of the United States. They first appeared in 1909 and were followed by several more in the following years. The British battleship made all others obsolete and started many navies, including the Imperial Japanese Navy, on a search for a bigger and better battleship. The roots of the IJN Yamato and its sister super-battleship IJN Musashi can be traced back to the introduction by the British Royal Navy of the HMS Dreadnought in 1905. Yet in its brief career, it accomplished nothing of importance and was sacrificed in the final destruction of Imperial Japan and its kamikaze (“Divine Wind”) hysteria. This pride of the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) was named after Japan itself, IJN Yamato, the historic name for Japan. It carried larger guns than any warship before it. It was the largest warship ever built up to that time.
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