Japan’s Battleship Yamato Is a Warning to Modern Naval Planners
Designers of the Yamato intended for this monster battleship to defeat any counterpart from the United States Navy. But the advent of aircraft carriers ensured that no such battle would ever occur.
Launched in 1940 and commissioned into the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN), the battleship Yamato stands as the largest battleship ever built—and one of the most iconic and formidable warships ever constructed.
Built during the twilight of the battleship era, the Yamato embodied the IJN’s ambition to dominate the Pacific through pure naval power. With its unprecedented size, armament, and astounding engineering, Yamato was meant to outmatch every adversary it encountered at sea. Yet the ship was a victim of circumstance as much as it was a strategic asset on the losing side of a world war. While it was an iconic boat, it never quite fulfilled the ambitions of its designers.
The Yamato Was Built for the Wrong War
Yamato was the lead ship of her class, constructed under extreme secrecy at the Kure Naval Arsenal in Hiroshima Prefecture. Ordered in 1937 as part of Japan’s rapid naval rearmament following Tokyo’s abrogation of the Washington Naval Treaty, the ship was intended to counter the growing power of the United States Navy in the Pacific.
She was completed on December 16, 1941—only eleven days after the successful Japanese surprise attack on the US Navy and Army Air Corps bases at Pearl Harbor.
But Yamato’s timeline reflects how rapidly sea warfare changed during the war. Even in the earliest days of the war, it was notable that the vaunted battleships, with their massive displacements, heavy armor, and long-range weapons, were not the ships that defeated the Americans at Pearl Harbor. It was the relatively new technology of aircraft carriers that won the day there.
As the Pacific Theater of the Second World War would unfold, for both the Allied and Japanese sides of the war, aircraft carriers would quickly become the decisive strategic asset and the battleships would be relegated to support functions.
Japan’s Biggest Battleship Was Armed to the Teeth
Still, the Yamato was no shrinking violet in the annals of modern naval warfare. Displacing 71,659 tons when fully loaded, its massive size necessitated a drydock widened specifically for her construction, underscoring the immense resources tiny, resource-strapped Japan had dumped into the Yamato development program.
Her armament was the battleship’s defining feature. Nine 18.1-inch Type 94 naval guns, mounted in three triple turrets, were the largest ever fitted to a warship, capable of firing 3,218-pound shells over 26 miles. These guns outranged and overpowered anything in the American arsenal, reflecting Japan’s doctrine of decisive, long-range engagements.
Her secondary armament was just as impressive as her primary armament package. This included 12, six-inch guns and an array of anti-aircraft batteries—initially 12, five-inch guns and 24, 25-mm guns that were drastically expanded as the air threat posed by carrier-launched fighters and bombers became more pressing over the course of the war.
Yamato’s armor was astonishingly thick, with a 410mm belt along the waterline and 650mm on the main turret faces, designed to withstand massive 18-inch shell impacts hurled from rival American battleships.
The great battleship’s propulsion came from 12 Kampon boilers driving four steam turbines, generating 150,000 shaft horsepower and a top speed of 27 knots (or 31 miles per hour). While this speed was fast for a battleship of Yamato’s size and strength, this top speed was slow compared to aircraft carriers—thereby proving just how fast the times had changed from a battleship-driven age of war to an aircraft carrier-dominated one. The Yamato carried a crew of over 2,700 men which Tokyo’s naval planners envisaged anchoring its fleet with a climatic set top battle against American warships.
So much of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century wars influenced the Yamato design.
As an example, the legendary Battle of Tsushima during the 1904 Russo-Japanese War, in which Japanese battleships “crossed the T” against the purportedly superior Russian Navy fleet, sending those iconic Russian battleships to the bottom of the drink, thereby ending that war in a complete victory for Tokyo.
The U.S. Navy Knew Not to Fight the Yamato Head-On
Designers of the Yamato intended for this monster battleship to win a similar victory in any engagement with the United States Navy. But the advent of aircraft carriers ensured that no such textbook battle would ever occur. The Americans would not make the same mistakes the Russians had made four decades earlier in the Russo-Japanese War.
Even though one could argue that Japan grasped the importance of aircraft carriers far earlier than any of the other great powers of its day, Japanese naval planners still dreamed of waging a classical battleship war against America. Not only was this view a byproduct of Japan’s recent history, but it was furthermore a result of Japan’s staggering lack of resources. Between its finite resource base—in terms of actual resources, money, and human capital—as well as the onerous American economic sanctions imposed upon it for years before the war began, Tokyo’s industrial capacity was hampered.
To overcome these complications, Tokyo built fewer but technologically superior warships, betting that quality could offset quantity. Yamato and her sister battleship, Musashi, were the ultimate expressions of these notions in the minds of Japan’s naval leadership.
But quantity usually overcomes quantity. Just ask the survivors of the German Wehrmacht who fought against the Soviet Red Army on the Eastern Front. Or look to the Sino-Dutch War between 1661-1668, in which numerically superior Chinese forces overwhelmed the technologically superior Dutch East India forces stationed at Formosa (Taiwan) with sheer numbers. Similar examples abound throughout history.
The Yamato’s Disturbing Parallel to Today’s Navy
As an interesting aside, the United States today finds itself in a very similar position to that which the Japanese found themselves in over 80 years ago, at the start of WWII. Unable to mass produce warships or other necessary systems for winning a modern war, the Americans rely heavily upon their technology being superior in quality, not necessarily quantity, than that of their enemy. This is usually a losing proposition.
It was for the Japanese.
Indeed, in the case of the Yamato, it remained a perennial sideshow when compared to the importance ultimately placed upon the IJN’s carrier force. Even when Yamato served as the flagship of the IJN fleet at the Battle of Midway in June 1942, it was kept out of the bulk of the heaviest fighting.
When the IJN’s four carriers were lost in the war, and Japan’s priority shifted to national defense instead of offense, the Yamato was held in reserve—earning the nickname “Hotel Yamato,” as the IJN leadership did not want to risk losing this important asset when it was needed to defend against the advancing Americans.
Yamato would not see combat until 1944 during the Battle of Leyte Gulf. In the Battle off Samar,Yamato fired its main guns in anger for the first time—four years after she was commissioned. Even though Yamato sank the U.S. Navy escort carrier USS Gambier Bay, the Yamato was overwhelmed by American air attacks, forcing the battleship’s captain to retreat to fight another day.
The Yamato’s Inauspicious End
By April 1945, with the war all but lost, Japan’s leadership sent Yamato on what amounted to a suicide mission to Okinawa, where the warship would be beached and used as fortress by defending Japanese troops to stave off the American onslaught toward the Japanese Home Islands. Yamato was intercepted by over 300 U.S. Navy warplanes from multiple aircraft carriers. Lacking air cover, the battleship was overwhelmed by bombs and torpedoes.
The Yamato endured a two-hour onslaught, sustaining at least 11 torpedo and six bomb strikes. She was sunk after a catastrophic magazine explosion occurred, tearing apart the ship, sinking it with a loss of 2,498 crewmembers—leaving a paltry 269 survivors.
Yamato was both ahead-of-its-time as well as a throwback to a bygone era. Its armaments and armor made it likely the most advanced warship in the Pacific Theater. Although, it was meant to fight a battle that would never again be fought. It was the aircraft carrier’s time now. No amount of firepower from Yamato could change that reality.
The tragedy of the Yamato is a lesson for modern navies that have become comfortable in their strategic assumptions, while not building sufficient quantities of forces to counteract those of its enemies. Let us hope that the Yamato-ization of American naval thinkers today ends before the next great power war erupts.
About the Author: Brandon J. Weichert
Brandon J. Weichert, a Senior National Security Editor at The National Interest as well as a contributor at Popular Mechanics, who consults regularly with various government institutions and private organizations on geopolitical issues. Weichert’s writings have appeared in multiple publications, including the Washington Times, National Review, The American Spectator, MSN, the Asia Times, and countless others. His books include Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower, Biohacked: China’s Race to Control Life, and The Shadow War: Iran’s Quest for Supremacy. His newest book, A Disaster of Our Own Making: How the West Lost Ukraine is available for purchase wherever books are sold. He can be followed via Twitter @WeTheBrandon.Image: Wikimedia Commons.
