大和型戦艦

[merc4ulfate]

大和型戦艦 (Yamato-gata senkan)

A look at her time and demise.





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[Dread Knot]

The story of a white elephant. A beautiful white elephant to be sure.

I can't recall sources off the top of my head, but I've read of disparaging comments by IJN personnel at various, and often senior, levels about the Yamato being, in essence, a floating hotel for senior staff. When Yamato entered service she was used as Admiral Yamamoto's personal command ship, usually moored in a safe place away from danger, hardly a fitting role for the most powerful ship afloat. She sailed for the big Midway operation, but played a secondary role, being hundreds of miles behind the carrier fleet and forced to keep radio silence. Her involvement in the operation was almost detrimental.

After Midway Yamato was uninvolved in combat for many months, used as a “palace” for Yamamoto and his officers first at the anchorage in Harashima, then in Truk, the major naval base in the Caroline islands. Other than a few abortive sorties and ignominiously being used to ferry troops and supplies she wouldn't see actual combat until 1944.

Yamato illustrates the problem about building an asset that is deemed too valuable or expensive to risk on its intended task, so it would have been better not to build it at all and to divert the resources to vessels which could have been used to keep Japan's lifelines open, such as destroyers and escorts.

[merc4ulfate]

I would have spent 100% of her resources on submarine or carrier weapons platforms.

I found it short sighted of the command structure to show how vulnerable Battleships can be at Pearl and then to build one instead of the weapons that sank them.