Humpday History Highlight
By Wyatt Earp | April 7, 2010
April 7, 1945 – Japanese Battleship Yamato Sunk By Allied Forces
On this day in 1945, the Japanese battleship Yamato, ostensibly the greatest battleship in the world, is sunk in Japan’s first major counteroffensive in the struggle for Okinawa.
Weighing 72,800 tons and outfitted with nine 18.1-inch guns, the battleship Yamato was Japan’s only hope of destroying the Allied fleet off the coast of Okinawa. But insufficient air cover and fuel cursed the endeavor as a suicide mission. Struck by 19 American aerial torpedoes, it was sunk, drowning 2,498 of its crew. (H/T – History.com)
When I was in grade school, I spent a lot of time reading about the battles of World War II – especially stories that focused upon battleships and aircraft carriers. I knew the story of the Yamato, and her ultimate demise. So imagine my surprise when I saw the first episode of Star Blazers, and heard the narrator explain that the Yamato was “a brave battleship that fought nobly to the end.”
It took me a minute to realize that the anime was created and written in Japan, and they saw the Yamato from their point of view, not mine.
Topics: HHH | 15 Comments »
April 7th, 2010 at 1:55 pm
Back during my modeling phase (plastic and glue type lol)
I got a Japanese made 100+ pc model of the Grumman Bearcat to put together. There was Japanese writing and that writing translated by Japanese on the side of the box
into English, by obviously other Japanese. In the little history box about the aircraft on the side of the carboard box, it said the following:
Grumman Bearcat US carrier fighter aircraft, worthy opponet of the Zero flow by the best pricks of the US Navy. LOL
April 7th, 2010 at 4:23 pm
Japan has its own brand of history revisionists, as we do. We call them liberals.
April 7th, 2010 at 5:54 pm
If I remember my history channel correctly (when it isn’t all pawnbrokers or lumberjacks), the Yamato turned out to be avery conspicuous non-factor against the badly outnumbered and outgunned Taffy-3 in the Battle of Leyte Gulf.
April 7th, 2010 at 7:27 pm
Well… the plan was to beach it on Okinawa and use it as a shore battery – which is why it had so little fuel, it was not supposed to fight at sea. But its moving out was discovered and, just as the Japanese had feared (and which is why it did not really do battle before – it was too important as a symbol to risk), Allied sea and air forces overwhelmed it. As they would have had it gone out to actual battle from roughly the time it was undergoing its first sea trials even before being completed.
April 7th, 2010 at 8:26 pm
Jon – Yeah, something was lost in translation there.
Robert – No question there.
Fenway_Nation – Pawn Stars. I got no time for that rubbish.
John A – The Yamato’s guns as a shore battery. Dayum.
April 7th, 2010 at 10:46 pm
The Yamato-class ships (Yamato, Musashi, and Asano) may well have been the biggest white elephants in the history of naval architecture. The first time they tried to hang the armor plates on Yamato’s hull, they cracked under their own weight and had to be completely reforged.
For the resources involved, the Japanese could have launched up to 30 light and heavy cruisers. With that many extra ships, Japan could well have run the Allies out of New Guinea and the Solomons.
April 8th, 2010 at 4:33 am
Too bad for the Japanese that the real Yamato didn’t have the wave motion gun.
April 8th, 2010 at 7:01 am
Randal- You mean sonic bullets? A very interesting class of weaponry on the horizon. Or electromagnetic rail gun?
April 8th, 2010 at 8:45 am
LOL, I used to run home from school to catch Star Blazers, which started 25 minutes after school let out.
April 8th, 2010 at 8:52 am
Richard – So you’re saying size doesn’t matter? Sweet!
Randal – Yeah, that would have turned the tide of the war right quick.
Jon – It’s a reference to Star Blazers. The wave motion gun was a laser weapon created inside the bow.
Hyman Roth – Great show for its time.
April 8th, 2010 at 8:57 am
An interesting program for the history channel would be
a “What If” program pitting the Missouri vs Bismark vs
Yamato without those pesky aircraft interfering:) My guess would be it would boil down to best captains and best fire control computers of the day.
April 8th, 2010 at 10:59 am
Jon — Missouri wins. Yamato’s 18-inch guns had a 90-second reload time. The 16-inch guns on US BB’s of the Washington and Missouri classes could be fired once every fifteen seconds by a trained, experienced crew, as Washington demonstrated when it sank the Kirishima.
Wyatt, if size mattered, Butterbean would be the world heavyweight champion.
And the Wave Motion Gun fired a gravitic vortex, fanboy.
Um, somebody told me that.
April 8th, 2010 at 11:30 am
Richard – Yeah, “somebody” did. Heh.
April 8th, 2010 at 12:35 pm
Wow. Got done reading the battle account. 3022 out of 3320 crew lost and she went down HARD. Thank God we redesigned our torpedoes earlier if that thing had reached Okinawa…Katie Bar the Door .
April 8th, 2010 at 4:06 pm
That was at damnear pistol range (for a battleship, anyway). Normally, it’s probably closer to 30 seconds. Still, vs 90 sec, the law of n squared becones a bietch.
A f(r)iend on another board wrote a nice piece where Adm Dayo and his Old BBs sink the Yamato with mostly 14-inch fire. She never even saw them to return fire. Radar fire control is a bietch, too.
I have always been impressed that the Japanese Battle Fleet, on a near suicide mission, was chased off by a flotilla of DDs and DEs off Samar. Those boys had the balls of brass buffaloes!