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The final phase of the Pacific war during World War II saw a terrible new
tactic: massed kamikaze attacks on American ships by Japanese planes. But the
biggest kamikaze attack of all was the suicidal mission of the super battleship
Yamato, the largest, most advanced warship of the day. In this program,
NOVA joins an international team exploring the grave of this magnificent vessel
to learn the secrets of her design, her final mission, and the violent events
that brought her down.
Yamato lies on the floor of the East China Sea, 200 miles north of
Okinawa, blown apart by one of the most massive explosions ever to occur at
sea. Altogether, more than 2,700 men went down with the ship or drowned after it sank,
making the loss of the Yamato one of the
greatest naval disasters of all time. Despite the destruction, the majesty of
the ship is unmistakable, symbolized by a six-foot-wide chrysanthemum crest,
icon of the Japanese imperial family, still gracing Yamato's prow like a
figurehead.
NOVA interviews two survivors of the sinking, who had to meet the most
stringent requirements in the Japanese navy to be chosen for the crew (see
Survivor Stories). Also interviewed is an American dive-bomber pilot who took
part in the attack.
Aircrews were astonished at the size of the ship, which had seen very little
naval action during the war. Built in total secrecy and launched just after the
attack on Pearl Harbor, Yamato may have been almost twice the size of
her American counterparts, with the largest guns ever mounted on a warship (see
Anatomy of Yamato).
Most of her engineering drawings have disappeared and few photographs survive,
making Yamato's exact dimensions and design a mystery. One of her junior
designers tells NOVA he was completely in the dark about the scale of the
vessel that he was helping to create: "I was building the biggest ship in the
world, and I didn't even know it until after the war."
Japan's secrecy was due to her inability to match U.S. naval power ship for
ship. Instead, military leaders decided to build a secret weapon that could
engage many enemy ships at once. Her main guns were designed to attack at an
unprecedented distance of 25 miles, well beyond the range of American
battleships.
Had Yamato ever encountered an Allied battleship group, she could have
floated safely out of range, while destroying each ship in turn. Instead,
Yamato was obsolete the day she was launched, as the Japanese themselves
proved at Pearl Harbor and elsewhere by sinking Allied battleships with airpower. World War II
would see the aircraft carrier emerge as the key to naval supremacy,
supplanting the battleship.
Forced to wait out much of the war due to her vulnerability to air attack,
Yamato was committed in a last, desperate gamble during the Battle of
Okinawa in April 1945. As waves of kamikazes took to the sky to defend the
island, Yamato was ordered to sea on a mission to emulate the suicide
planes and take out as many American ships as possible.
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A computer-graphic-animation rendering of the
Yamato, the most sophisticated battleship ever built, shows its
formidable armament.
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