Yamato Class, Japanese Battleships

Photograph of the Yamato

Tonnage	62,315 tons standard
Dimensions	862'10" by 121'1" by 34'2" 262.99m by 36.91m by 10.41m
Maximum speed	27 knots
Complement	2500
Aircraft	2 seaplane catapults 7 seaplanes
Armament	3x3 18"/45 guns 4x3 6"/50 guns 12 5"/40 dual-purpose guns 24 25mm AA guns 4 13mm/76 machine guns
Protection	16.1" (410mm) belt 9.1" (230mm) deck 25.6"/9.8" (650mm/250mm) turret 22" (560mm) barbette 19.7" (500mm) conning tower
Bunkerage	6300 tons fuel oil
Range	7200 nautical miles (13,300 km) at 16 knots
Modification	In late 1943, both ships unshipped two of the triple 6"/50 turrets to bring the total 25mm count to 36. Yamato: The antiaircraft armament was upgraded to 98 25mm AA in April 1944; to 24 5" in June 1944; to 152 25mm in July 1944; and to 150 25mm in April 1945. Musashi: The antiaircraft armament was upgraded to 54 25mm in early 1944; to 116 25mm in April 1944; and to 130 25mm in late 1944.

The Yamatos were the pride of the Japanese fleet, and the largest ships ever built (at 70,000 tons) until well after the war. They were formidable, with armor up to 26” thick and main armament of 18” guns. They were also surprisingly fast, at 27 knots, because of an excellent hull form that also gave them beautiful lines. The Yamato herself was just being completed when war broke out, and the Musashi was completed a few months later.

However, the Yamatos may not have been the most cost-effective battleships ever built, though since they never met another battleship in combat, we will never know. Their armor was slightly inferior in quality, due to the deficiencies of Japanese metallurgy, and its arrangement was faulty, so that when Yamato was hit by a single torpedo from a submarine, it lost nine knots of speed and could never really be properly repaired. Its huge guns had a very low rate of fire and unremarkable ballistic performance, and fire control was not up to American standards. The Iowas probably got similar performance out of their smaller but superbly designed 16” guns and shells and similar protection from their well-arranged belt of high-quality Class “A” armor, and they were five knots faster. An encounter between the two Yamatos and two of the Iowas could have gone either way. In a daylight encounter in good weather, the Yamatos probably would have had the edge; at night or in foul weather, the advantage probably would have been with the Iowas.

But their greatest fault was that they were designed for a kind of war that was never fought. Both were lost to air attack (though it took the attention of 300 aircraft to do each of them in) and they never met another capital ship in battle. Their secondary guns were useless against aircraft and, while their light antiaircraft armament was substantial, it was based on the mediocre 25mm antiaircraft gun and was never really adequate. The Japanese would have been far better off to have built three or four more carriers, with their air groups, than to have built these monsters. But this was not obvious at the time of their construction.

Units in the Pacific:

Yamato	Completed 1941-12-16 (Kure)	Sunk by aircraft 1945-5-7
Musashi	Completed 1942-8-5 (Mitsubishi-Nagasaki)	Sunk by aircraft 1944-10-24

References

CombinedFleet.com (accessed 2007-12-5)

Jentschura, Jung, and Mickel (1977)

Worth (2001)