Yamato's Final Voyage

An astounding series of explosions onboard Yamato produced the mushroom cloud seen here shortly before she sank. Yamato settled on the seafloor 1,200 feet down and about 50 miles southwest of Kyushu, Japan. Experts believe that a fire raging in the battleship's aft secondary magazine caused tons of ammunition to ignite almost simultaneously, producing the blasts that tore the ship in half and sank her. These blasts were perhaps the largest ever to occur at sea.