Her secondary armament was significantly altered during the war by removing two of her four triple 6.1-inch turrets in favor of increased anti-aircraft armament, which, by 1945, included 12 dual 5-inch gun mounts, 54 25-mm triple mounts (162 guns), and smaller machine guns. They had already lost the battles of the Philippine Sea, Leyte Gulf, and Iwo Jima. By this point, Yamato was firing main-battery beehive shells set to detonate after one second (about 3,000 yards) from the ship, which U.S. aircraft just blew through. 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. Both Rear Admiral Komura and Captain Hara survived. WORLD WAR II. Legendary Lost Japanese WWII Battleship Found by Billionaire Paul Allen.The search was funded by Paul Allen, the Microsoft co . (Although U.S. carrier air groups complement had been changed to have a mix of about three quarters fighters to defend against kamikaze and only one quarter bombers and torpedo planes, the fighters had been trained and gotten pretty good at being used in a fighter-bomber role, and, with no Japanese air opposition, had the freedom to do so.) Here, an Weighing 72,800 tons. Although born a U.S. citizen, he had been studying in Japan when the war broke out and had the choice of execution or serving in the Imperial Japanese Navy.). ), and when they were lost.the bu numbers listed as lost on 4.7.1945 is very extensive!!!!! The fire in the area ofher forward 6.1 inch turret can be clearly seen (L42-09.06.05). One of the final photographs of the supership shows her severely damaged hull She and her sister ship, Musashi, were the largest and heaviest battleships ever constructed, displacing 72,800tonnes at full load, and armed with nine 46cm (18.1inch) main guns. Breaking the news to the Emperor, a Japanese admiral was asked, what about the fleet? The admiral had to admit, the Japanese fleet had ceased to exist as a fighting formation. Torpedoes explode against Yamato's port side The task force was spotted south of Kyushu by US submarines and aircraft, and on 7 April 1945 she was sunk by American carrier-based bombers and torpedo bombers with the loss of most of her crew. Additionally, 1,178 people were wounded. YAMATO starts a turn starboard to course 230 degrees. 2 gun mount. Shinano () was an aircraft carrier built by the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) during World War II, the largest such built up to that time. During the night, this plan morphed into sending six new battleships detached from TF 58 into blocking position. >. Quickly spotted by Allied aircraft, Yamato and its consorts were subjected to a series of heavy air attacks that resulted in the loss of the battleship and most of its supporting ships. Though incredibly powerful, Yamato suffered from a relatively low top speed as its engines were . Read Next: The Ultimate Gunfighters! Yamato carried only enough fuel to reach Okinawa, as the fuel stocks available were insufficient to provide enough fuel to reach Okinawa and return. Very interesting or happy to read about the Yamoto sinking as I was there as radioman aboard an Avenger off of the USS Langley. The destroyer Isokaze attempted to come to her aid but was heavily damaged and driven off. The American invasion fleet had, besides a heavy battleship contingent consisting of six battleships (Massachusetts, Indiana, New Jersey, South Dakota, Wisconsin, and Missouri), seven cruisers (including the large cruisers Alaska and Guam) and 21 destroyers. YAMATO turns hard to port. The battleship and its sister, Musashi, were the only battleships ever constructed with 18.1" guns. Although the battleship was in no danger of sinking at this point, the list meant that the main battery was unable to fire . To buck up morale, many captains of capital ships received a accelerated promotion to rear admiral in 1944. [25][26] Damage to the battleship, however, was light,[25] due in part to the base being defended by elite veteran Japanese fighter instructors flying Kawanishi N1K Shiden or George fighters. 129 Japanese soldiers were killed. Vice Admiral Ito retired to his stateroom to go down with the ship. Hit by at least 11 torpedoes and six bombs, Yamato was sunk, along with Yahagi and four of the destroyers. Japan started the war with 63 ocean-going submarines (i.e., not including midgets), and completed 111 during the war, for a total of 174. The force would transit to Okinawa on 7 April (with only a few hours of minimal air cover), to arrive in daylight hours in the U.S. transport area off southwestern Okinawa on 8 April. American aviators received orders to drop their When the details of the mission were finally briefed on 5 April to the Japanese ship captains who would carry it out (it had been kept secret from them), it provoked the closest thing to a mutiny in the Japanese navy. Ito was posthumously promoted to full admiral. The Attack Force changes course to 100 degrees. But the mission was approved and the Japanese ships set sail for Okinawa. Her waterline armor belt was 16 inches thick. By noon, the Corsair and Hellcat fighters arrived over the Yamato group, looking for fighters protecting the Japanese, and finding none waited for the dive bombers and torpedo planes to arrive. The emperors question clinched it. One of the torpedo planes took a hit in the wing, pulled up in flames, then plunged into the sea. 1 magazine causing a huge explosion with a mushroom smoke cloud that was visible for 100 miles away. My dads name is Ronald R. LeFebvre (Ding). YAMATO is hit by two AP bombs. Their solution was to bolt a shit load of 25mm open AA gun mounts where ever they could which left the sailor's firing them very exposed to enemy MG's. The USN would rake the hell out of just one side of a BB like Yamato and soften up the AAA for the torpedo planes and dive bombers to attack. The fighter issued a contact report at 0832. VA-6B (1946) See what made the ship both seemingly unsinkable and highly vulnerable to attack. YAMATO stops zigzagging and increases speed to 24 knots. She takes on a heavy list to port and her speed drops to 18 knots. The executive officer reported to Captain Aruga that the damage control officers were dead and that counter-flooding could no longer correct the list, and recommended the ship be abandoned. Embarking from Kure, Yamato was to beach herself near Okinawa, and act as an unsinkable gun-emplacementbombarding American forces on Okinawa with her 18.1-inch heavy-guns. The aft secondary battery fire control, secondary gun turret and the air search radar are knocked out. Box 378 Red Hook, New York 12571 United States, a battle group of eight aircraft carriers, her enormous hull to the converging torpedoes. Asashimo was first attacked by aircraft from Bunker Hill and then, a few minutes later, by aircraft from San Jacinto, which scored killing hits with torpedoes and bombs. Yahagi lost 446 of about 1,000 crewmen. The Yamato group cranked up speed to 25 knots. He saw four Avengers go in low, dropping their torpedoes in a spread on Yamatos beam. The extremely large number of antiaircraft guns, added during a refit, were meant to keep the ship afloat in the face of American airpower until it could close within striking range of enemy. With robust designs and vintage classic style, discover the heritage of military timepieces today! The chief of staff of the Combined Fleet, Vice Admiral Ryunosuke Kusaka, flew in from Tokyo to ensure that Ito would comply with Admiral Toyodas orders. Aircrews were astonished at the size of the ship, which had seen very little naval action during the war. Another 110 aircraft from Task Group 58. 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. YAMATOs No. Fuyutsuki was hit by two dud rockets. How many US planes were lost sinking the Yamato? At 2:10pm Yamato rolled over and began to sink with fires from her aft 6.1" turret reaching her no. The first attack wave retires. At 1232, lookouts in the Yamato force sighted the first incoming strike wave. 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. Smoke rises from the vicinity of the mainmast and a bomb explodes in the same area. As later described by the captain of Yahagi, Captain Tameichi Hara, the meeting was quite contentious. One Helldiver is shot down, another is damaged badly. Updated on July 03, 2019. The result was arguably the largest suicide mission in history. An attack of 36 Japanese dive bombers and torpedo planes against the heavily protected USS Hornet with her escorts took down over 20 Japanese planes. Before getting underway, the Surface Special Attack Force put ashore 67 recently arrived midshipmen of the Etajima Naval Academy Class No. Though many Japanese naval leaders considered Operation Ten-Go to be a waste of their remaining resources, it moved forward on April 6, 1945. Aruga receives a rare double promotion posthumously to Vice Admiral on the request of Admiral Toyoda. Constructed from 1937 1940 and formally commissioned in late 1941, Yamato served as the flagship of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto throughout 1942, first sailing as part of the Combined Fleet during the Battle of Midway in June 1942. Agroup of five low-flying Avengers (VT-17) from HORNET (CV-12) start a torpedo run from the port, bearing 70 degrees. Meanwhile, about 34 Hellcats and Corsairs and 22 Helldivers and Avengers worked over some of the other Japanese destroyers. YAMATO starts a sharp turn to port but three torpedoes rip into her port side amidships. As a Minnesota teenager when the war started,. At 2144, the submarine issued a detailed contact report with an accurate force disposition. Listing heavily to port, YAMATOs exposed hull is hit by several more torpedoes. At 1302, Yamatos remaining air search radar detected a second inbound wave. Japanese Battleship Yamato - minutes before sinking. Mitscher correctly assumed that the Japanese were operating without air cover and would be sitting ducks for his huge airwing. As Yamato and escorts were transiting the Bungo Strait between the Home Islands of Kyushu and Shikoku on 6 April 1945, submarine Threadfin (SS-410) sighted the force at about 1745 and issued a contact report in the clear that was intercepted by Yamato. Eight Japanese destroyers and one cruiser, the Yahagi (left), tried to assist Yamato in fending off her attackers. TOKYO Seventy-six years ago, on April 7, 1945, the Imperial Japanese Navy vessel Yamato, the world's largest battleship, was sunk by U.S. military aircraft. Captain Hara on Yahagi reported that the large formations of aircraft circled around the task force just outside anti-aircraft range for a number of minutes, some in clockwise rotation and some in counter-clockwise rotation, as strike leaders organized strikes on particular targets free of interference from Japanese fighters. Spruance gave orders to Rear Admiral Morton Deyo, commander of the Bombardment Force, to take his six old battleships and set up a blocking force northwest of Okinawa (as Yamato was circling around in that direction with the intent to stay as far from TF 58 as possible). The pride of the Imperial Japanese Navy, the Yamato was said to be the most powerful warship in history, but it was also beautiful, "like something in a tapestry.". While the Americans' 1,000-pound bombs held fearsome destructive power, as seen in 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. Her secondary armament . US warplanes sank the Musashi on 24 October 1944 during the Battle of Leyte Gulf, believed to be. Although 16 warships were hit, Yamato sustained only minor damage from a number of near misses and from one bomb that struck her bridge. I have his flight logs (as he never talked about the war except the death of his brother and his friends) so it is nice to get the big picture of this action. torpedoes such that they would penetrate Yamato below the waterline near The ship was split in two and was found resting at a depth of 1,120 feet (340 m). Yamato had been fitted with multiple air and surface search radars, as well as radio-intercept capability. 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. Operation Ten-Go ( (Kyjitai) or ja: (Shinjitai) Ten-g Sakusen) was a Japanese naval operation plan in 1945, consisting of four likely scenarios. Design and construction Main article: Yamato-class battleship Had Yamato ever encountered an Allied battleship group, she could have floated safely out of range, while destroying each ship in turn. But in 'one of history's greatest salvage jobs,' many of the sunken ships rose to fight the Axis. Thus, its possible Aruga was selected, but not yet promoted. In keeping with Japanese practice of posthumous promotion for death in battle, he was promoted to vice admiral after Yamato was sunk, that much is fact. One fire can be observed amidships from the initial strike, but no list has developed at this point. The Japanese fighters were unable to make contact before they left at 1000. It says that the Kikaigashima Island lookout station saw 150 carrier planes heading northwest. About 1,187 crewmen of Yahagi and the four destroyers were lost. Six Yorktown Avengers attacked from the starboard side, with their Mark 13 torpedoes re-set for a 20-foot depthseveral hit. The Americans lost 10 aircraft, while one aircraft carrier, one battleship, and one destroyer were damaged. The most powerful battleship in the world was no match for 390 U.S. carrier aircraft. At this point, the Japanese task forces location had been picked up by American PBM flying boats, which kept the American fleet apprised of the Japaneses position and direction. XIV: Victory in the Pacific by Samuel Eliot Morison, Boston: Little Brown and Co., 1969; Japanese Destroyer Captain by Tameichi Hara, New York: Ballantine Books, 1961; Combined Fleet Decoded: The Secret History of American Intelligence and the Japanese Navy in World War II by John Prados, New York: Random House, 1995. All Rights Reserved. This would be carried out in conjunction with a mass aerial kamikaze attack by over 350 airplanes (Kikusui No. The morale aboard Yamato was described as not being very good, especially after the crews were informed they were on a one-way mission. The Imperial Japanese Navy ceases to exist as a fighting force. Another 110 planes appeared ready for the kill. At 1830, destroyer Isokaze sighted Threadfin on the surface. 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