THE ECLIPSE of the JAPANESE NAVY
As a result of the Battle of Leyte Gulf in October 1944, the Japanese Combined Fleet could no longer be recognised as the proud and efficient fighting force which had gone to war with the USA and Allies in December 1941. It was by this stage, largely immobilised by lack of fuel and almost a mere shadow of its former self. The Americans went ahead with the last major offensives of the Pacific war, Luzon, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa, secure in the knowledge that the Japanese Navy would never pose a serious threat to them again. After Leyte the Japanese Combined Fleet was incapable of concentrating significant strength to fight the carrier task forces of the Allied Pacific fleets. But the surviving Japanese warships still had a part to play, and they remained high priority targets until the end of the war.
The Midway disaster of 1942 had caused the Japanese to adopt an accelerated and expanded carrier building programme, but, they were never able to replenish the losses of Coral Sea and Midway. The programme was a dual affair, including the construction of brand-new carriers from the keel up and the conversion of merchantmen and suitable warship hulls. Typical of the former category was the Taiho, lost in her first battle in the Philippine Sea on 19th June, 1944 during the Marianas campaign. Taiho had actually been laid down before Pearl Harbour, but for months work on her had proceeded at a crawl. She displaced 29 300 tons, compared with the 25 675 tons of Shokaku and Zuikaku carriers. She could achieve 33 knots and carried 74 aircraft (53 of them operational and 21 spare). The manner of her fate reveal the very great changes, which had affected the Japanese carrier force since Pearl Harbour, when the American submarine Albacore put a single torpedo into Taiho on the morning of 19th June.
At first there seemed very little to worry about; two fuel tanks had been ruptured and the flight-deck elevator jammed shut, but Taiho could still maintain full speed. The immediate hazard was the spreading fumes from the spillage of oil and aviation spirit. By 1944 the Japanese fleet was forced to use crude oil, due to overall shortages. Taiho’s ventilators were put on full blast in an attempt to dispel the fumes, a fatal decision. The fumes were spread throughout the vessel and continued to accumulate. The inevitable end came when a spark on the hangar deck detonated them. The effects were cataclysmic. A tremendous explosion shook Taiho from stem to stern, blowing out the hangar walls, ripping the flight deck, and perforating the ship's bottom. She sank within minutes, the victim of an elementary hazard of carrier life which had been obvious for years.
As for the second category of the ‘last generation’ of Japanese carriers, a typical example may be cited with Shinyo. She started life as the German luxury liner Scharnhorst, which had been at Kobe since the outbreak of war in 1939. Scharnhorst was purchased by the Japanese Government in the months after Midway; she was renamed Shinyo, and her conversion was begun at the Kure Naval Yard in November 1942. Parts were cannibalised from the uncompleted skeleton hull of the fourth Yamato class super-battleship (significant of the change from Japan's pre-war obsession with the big battleship as the prime naval weapon). Scharnhorst's original electric turbines were retained; they were in fact only the second set to be used by a ship of the Imperial Navy. In her new guise, Shinyo finally joined the fleet in mid-December 1943. She was not present at the Battle of the Philippine Sea but was given a further eight 50mm A.A. guns after that action, increasing her total to 50. Shinyo had a best speed of 22 knots and carried a maximum of 33 planes (27 operational and 6 spare), before she fell victim to the far-ranging American submarine arm. Being torpedoed by the Spadefish in the China Sea on 17th November, 1944.
The mightiest battleships in the Imperial Japanese Navy were also Japan’s doomed giants. The 64 000 ton Yamato was, along with Musashi, built to be unsinkable. Her 23 500 tons of armour could withstand direct hits which would sink lesser craft. Yet, on 16th December 1941, only days after Pearl Harbour and the sinking of the British capital ships HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse, the first ever capital ships sunk at sea by air attack. Admiral Yamamota C-in-C of Japan's Combined Fleet predicted; “These battleships will be as useful in modern warfare as a samurai sword”: When the Imperial Japanese Navy took delivery of the 64 000 ton Yamato, she was already obsolescent.
The first, Yamato-class designs envisaged ships 965ft in overall length with a standard 69 500 ton displacement. By July 1936, the 22ND design since the project's beginning in 1934, plans were for a 64 000 ton ship 860ft long. Two pairs of propellers, one steam-turbine driven, the other diesel powered, would give a 27-knot speed. The heavier diesels were compensated for by lower fuel consumption. However, trouble with experimental diesels led to only steam-turbines being adopted for the new battleships. The 23rd and final design was finished in March 1937, and Yamato's keel laid at Kure Navy Yard on 4th November in that year. Advance preparations included deepening the building dock; providing a crane able to lift 100-ton armour plates; erecting 20ft high fences, protective roofing and rope screens to hide construction. Similar precautions were taken at the Mitsubishi Company's
Nagasaki yard where the keel of Musashi was laid on 29th March 1938. Her launching weight of 35 737 tons (surpassed only by the liner Queen Mary) necessitated a 13ft wide slipway, the world’s largest. The keel of a third vessel, Shinano, later converted to an aircraft carrier while building, was laid in Yokosuka Navy Yard on 4th May 1940. These were the only ships of the class to be launched.
A striking feature of these ships was the great width of her beam 127ft 8in. There was a need for the shallowest possible draught in Japan's coastal waters. Fully loaded, displacing 72 809 tons, they had the relatively shallow mean draught of 35ft 6in. Vital machinery was crammed into a length representing only 53.5 per cent of her total waterline; achieved by arranging the 12 x 13 500hp boilers in four rows of three, each headed by and linked to one of the four turbines. This area was protected by 16inch plates of Vickers armour, the largest weighing 70 tons. Side armour extended all the way from the 7 inch armoured deck down to the bottom hull plates. Sloping slightly outwards to minimise shell impact. The ships had two rudders, provision of a second fairly late in building, perhaps influenced by the fate of the German battleship Bismarck in May 1941. The 16 inch plates could withstand an 18 inch shell hit from 13-18 mile ranges. The 7 inch deck was proof against anything under a 2 2001b armour piercing bomb dropped from 10 000ft.The heaviest armour of all, 22 inch front plates on the main gun turrets, could withstand an 18 inch shell travelling at 550ft per second.
Japan spent a vast amount of money on increasing steel production and developing hardening processes to make the ships supposedly 'unsinkable'. The total 23 500 tons of armour protection on Yamato was about 34 per cent of her total tonnage: they were the most heavily armoured ships ever built. Both ships could certainly take punishment and could most certainly hand it out. Their 18 inch guns threw 3 400lb shells (1 000lb heavier than 16inch shells) 25 miles. The triple turrets each weighed 2 775 tons. They were handsome ships with good handling qualities, a comparatively small turning circle and a freedom from excessive heel. The ships had air-conditioned officers' cabins and ample crew quarters designed for a two thousand two hundred complement, but more often housing a wartime two thousand five hundred. In comfort Yamato was reckoned inferior to Musashi which sailors nicknamed 'The Palace'.
Both ships were launched as secretly as they had been built. Men working on Musashi were not allowed to leave Nagasaki Yard before the launch; they worked a final 24-hour shift to ready-her, while troops sealed off the yard from Nagasaki city. The Imperial Navy's officers, like most contemporary naval officers, still saw battleships as the major striking force, with carriers in a secondary role.
On 12th February 1942, Yamamoto hoisted his flag in Yamato, the new flagship of his Combined Fleet. As she lay in Hiroshima Bay, the C-in-C called senior officers aboard to decide Japan's next move. The decision was to capture Midway atoll, a move that Yamamoto hoped would lure the US Pacific Fleet out to battle, and destruction. This attack was considered all the more urgent after Doolittle’s raid in April. However, with the cracking of Japan's top-secret naval code, Nimitz was able to establish where and when the attack would come. It would be in early June.
Nirnitz's advance knowledge gave him a clear picture and, from his HQ in Pearl Harbour. He exerted effective overall command. Unlike Yamamoto, keeping radio silence in Yamato some 10 hours behind his carriers: Lacking radar, three carriers were surprised and sunk whilst planes jammed their decks. A fourth was sunk the next day. Yamamoto displayed unwonted emotion on hearing of the mortal damage inflicted. Wary American manoeuvring, ruled out a night action: leaving the Japanese commander to consider the risk of a daylight attack without air support. The risk was too great. Shadowed by US aircraft, Yamamoto led his force back to Japan, spending the voyage in the seclusion of his cabin. Worse than the loss of four carriers was losing 250 aircraft with most of their highly trained crews.
However, Imperial Headquarters had not lost faith in the battleships. Late in August, Yamamoto's flag flew in Yamato as she headed a strong force bound for Truk atoll, from which the Navy was to support the Army's struggle for Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands. Musashi, having joined Yamato at Truk replaced her as flagship. A top-secret cable reached Major Mitchell, commanding No 339 Fighter Squadron on Guadalcanal, at 17 00 hours on 17th April, 1943. It came direct from Navy Secretary Frank Knox in Washington, and it told Mitchell that Naval Intelligence had decoded the next day's itinerary for Admiral Yamamoto.
The admiral and his staff would be flying from Rabaul to Bougainville in two 'Betty' bombers escorted by six Zero fighters, and would land at Kahili airfield at 09 45 hours. Knox ordered that Mitchell's P38 Lightning fighters 'must at all costs reach and destroy Yamamoto and his staff’. Bougainville was 500 miles away to the north-west- beyond the P-38s' range. But Knox had already organised fuel drop-tanks to be flown in from New Guinea. These arrived at Henderson Field at 21 00 hours in torrential rain. Mitchell and his pilots spent the night preparing their planes. Haggard and unshaven, 16 pilots took off at 07 20 hours.
They raced just above wave height for 2 hours, sighted the island at 09 35 hours and were busy gaining height to look for Yamamoto's flight when one pilot broke radio silence to announce briefly: 'Eleven o'clock’. There, sure enough, above and slightly left, was the target. The pilots ditched their drop-tanks and climbed to intercept. Lieutenant Lanphier had just got one 'Betty' in his sights when three Zeros came at him. He turned to meet them, fired a burst, and then saw the 'Betty' below at tree-top level. Diving at 400 mph, he fired a long burst into it. One wing and engine burst into flames and the bomber fell into the trees and exploded.
Lanphier had got Yamamoto, though the Americans could not be sure until Lieutenant Barber downed the second 'Betty' - the admiral had to be in one of them. All but one P-38, shot down by the Zeros, made it back to Henderson for a very quiet celebration. The coup was kept top secret so that the Japanese would not realise that their code had been broken. At the end of April 1943, a small white box was carried aboard Musashi, carrying the ashes of Admiral Yamamoto. On return to Japan on 21st May, headed by the Emperor himself, naval officers trooped aboard to pay their last respects. On Yamato, they found a poem by the Admiral. It began: 'So many are dead, I cannot face the Emperor, soon I shall join the young dead soldiers'.
After a spell in dry-dock at Kure, Yamato and Musashi joined the new C-in-C, Admiral Koga at Truk in the autumn of 1943. Yamato's first 'action' came late in December, as she prepared for Operation Ro, an assault on the central Solornons. As she entered Truk anchorage, a single torpedo from the US submarine Skate struck her aft on the starboard, pushing in the heavy side armour more than 3ft and buckling its brackets. Yamato shipped 3 000 tons of water, and was not operational until April 1944. Meanwhile Musashi joined her on the casualty list. Koga left Truk for the Palau islands with Musashi as his flagship; US carrier planes struck at Palau while 7 submarines ringed the islands to intercept ships flushed out by air attacks. On 29th March, the submarine Tunny torpedoed Musashi’s port bow. Koga ordered her back to Japan and himself boarded an aircraft and disappeared without trace.
Vice-Admiral Ugaki, commanding the 1st Battleship Division (Yamato, Musashi, Nagato), flew his flag in Yamato. His force made its base at Tawi-Tawi, off NE Borneo. In May-June 1944, Ugaki's battleships were ordered to the Philippine Sea. Here, it hoped to destroy the American fleet 'with one blow', but the blow was never struck and battleships played no part in the campaign which crippled Japanese naval airpower. Three carriers went down and almost 500 aircraft and their crews were lost in 'The Great Marianas Turkey Shoot’ of 19th June. Soon, the Philippines were threatened, while Yamato and Musashi, the hashira ('stay-at-home') fleet, as other snips' crews began to call them, were back in Japan.
For Yamato and Musashi, the build-up for the Philippines began in July 1944 when, after at last acquiring radar and radar-directed fire-control for their great guns, they underwent intensive training. The battleships resumed their role as the main striking force; Japan's carriers could no longer spearhead a battle. Therefore, they were sent north of Leyte Island, the Japanese carriers were to draw off American air cover and give battleships a chance against the vulnerable American landing forces. On 18th October 1944, being informed of the initial landings in Leyte Gulf, Imperial Headquarters ordered Operation Shol (Victory) to begin. The 2 leviathans sailed with 3 other battleships, 12 cruisers, and 15 destroyers comprising Kurita's 1st Striking Force.
Early on 23rd October, off Palawan island, US submarines sank two of Kurita's heavy cruisers, one flying Kurita's flag. In the confusion of anti-submarine action, ten hours passed before Kurita could join Ugaki aboard Yamato and resume command; by then three US carrier task groups had regrouped. Determined to rendezvous with two other squadrons in the Sulu Sea, Kurita pressed on without air cover, telling his staff: 'It would be shameful for the fleet to remain intact while our nation perishes, you must remember that miracles do happen”. But he would never keep his appointment, the other forces were annihilated in or fled from Surigao Strait on the night of 24-25th October, and no miracle would save Musashi, main target of American aircraft for the next five hours.
At 10 26 hours, 12 Curtiss Helldiver bombers, 12 Grumman Avenger torpedo planes and 21 Grumman Hellcat fighters hit Kurita's force. The Japanese ships threw up a fierce barrage, knocking down 2 Avengers, but the Americans pressed home attacks on Yamato and Musashi. Bombs made little impression on their armoured decks; torpedoes would prove more effective. During the first 20 minutes Musashi took 4 torpedoes on the port side and 1 to starboard. But now the design proved its intrinsic worth: Musashi stayed on course without apparent difficulty. A second strike of 42 aircraft arrived around noon. Again Musashi bore the brunt, taking two bombs and two torpedoes, and began to show signs of slowing down. After a third strike by 68 aircraft at 13 25 hours, Musashi's speed dropped to about 20 knots. She had taken 9 torpedoes: her starboard bow holed into which water poured. Yet counter flooding kept her under way with only a slight list to port, while 7 hits and some 15 near-misses from bombs did little structural damage. Yamato took two more bombs without effect. Many of the attackers were launched as quickly as possible carrying only 500lb bombs.
Musashi kept going, but now her crew knew she was in bad shape. The AA gunners were ineffective, and Rear Admiral Inoguchi at first refused to allow the 18in guns to fire sanshiki-dan ('case-shot, with a 'shotgun' scatter of 20mm incendiary projectiles, supposedly effective over several thousand yards against aircraft) for fear of barrel damage. By early afternoon, as Musashi's bow sank lower and she began to fall behind, it became obvious he must change his mind if she was to survive. By 15 00 hours, after another 30 plane strike was not inhibited by sanshiki-dan. Musashi's speed had dropped to 12 knots. Kurita, about to reverse course hoping to lose the attackers, ordered her to drop out of formation. Only one cruiser remained with the stricken giant when more than 100 aircraft struck in wave after wave from 15 15 hours.
The death blows were dealt by 12 Hellcats, 9 Helldivers with 1 000lb bombs and 8 Avenger torpedo planes from Enterprise. They found Musashi well down by the bows, staggering along at 12 knots and leaving a broad wake of oil. As the Helldivers plunged, Hellcats hammered her decks with 0.5 machinegun fire and 5inch rockets. Eleven more bombs reduced the already battered upper works to twisted wreckage, and a low-level torpedo attack ripped her apart, all eight pilots claimed hits. At 16 50 hours, when the planes turned away, Musashi was listing 15° to port, her bows under water, and making only 6 knots. Admiral Inoguchi, mortally wounded, wanted to beach her on Sibuyan, but she was now so far over that use of the rudder risked an immediate capsize. Calling his remaining officers together, Inoguchi gave his sword to a young ensign, giving another a letter asking the Emperor's forgiveness. At 17 50 hours, the battle-flag was lowered and given to a strong swimmer, as was the Emperor's portrait. Abandon ship was ordered, but when Musashi rolled over to port and sank at 19 25 hours. Captain Kato, who had lashed himself to the compass binnacle, and one thousand and twenty three of her two thousand four hundred strong crew were still aboard. The battleship had taken between 11 and 19 torpedoes and at least 17 direct bomb hits. Kurita's ships had only downed 30 of their tormentors.
Although Musashi's sacrifice had saved all but one of Kurita's 28 other ships from significant damage, his reversal of course lent weight to American pilots' reports that he was retreating with heavy losses. The aircrews cannot fairly be blamed for an over-optimistic verdict, or for concentrating on a single prestige ship. But Admiral ‘Bull’ Halsey would not escape criticism: at 19 50 hours, believing that Kurita was finished, he led 15 fleet carriers and eight modern battleships on a chase after Ozawa. This left San Bernardino Strait unguarded, with only older battleships and light carriers to cover the landings.
At 06 45 hours on 25th October, having reversed course again and cleared San Bernardino Strait at night, Kurita made contact with the 6 escort carriers, 3 destroyers and 4 destroyer-escorts of Rear Admiral Sprague's 'Taffy 3' group. But instead of sending light cruisers and destroyers to make torpedo attacks, while manoeuvring his big ships into position. Kurita ordered 'General Chase'. At 06 59 hours, Yamato's great guns spoke in anger for the first time, at a range of 20 miles.
In spite of confusion among Kurita's ships, their gunnery was excellent. As Sprague ordered his carriers to make smoke and run, sending out a 'May Day' call in clear language, multi-coloured marker dyes from the Japanese shells blossomed near his vulnerable 'flat-tops'. A rain squall hid them for 10 precious minutes as they worked up speed to launch aircraft, Japanese radar proving inadequate, but at 07 16 hours the rain lifted. Desperate to buy time, Sprague's 7 destroyers raced towards a Japanese battle line that outgunned them by more than 40:1, weaving between shell splashes and closed to under 10 000 yards before launching torpedoes. The Japanese cruiser Kumano took crippling hits, while the American destroyer Heermann sent a torpedo spread at Yamato.
Swinging away, the Japanese giant found herself between torpedo tracks heading for her stern. She was forced to run at full speed out of the action for 10 minutes. By 07 42 hours, when the destroyers launched a second attack, Sprague's planes were up, swarming to the attack. Such determination seemed to confirm to Kurita his mistaken belief that he was engaging the heavy carriers of Halsey’s fleet. At 09 15 hours, when 3 US destroyers were sunk, 1 carrier ablaze, and Japanese cruisers within 10 000 yards of the remainder, Kurita ordered the battle to be broken off. Yamato and her consorts fled back to Brunei, harassed all the way, although 2 more bomb hits did no more significant damage than the 104 rounds of 18inch shells she had expended against Sprague’s ships. Heavy air attacks soon forced a withdrawal from Brunei; on 23rd November 1944, Yamato came home to Japan.
In the Battle of Leyte Gulf, Musashi had proved what tremendous punishment the class could take and still stay afloat. Musashi had been singled out as the main target for American air attacks as Kurita's battle fleet struggled through the Sibuyan Sea. Plastered by bombs and ripped by repeated torpedo hits, she had refused to sink, and her expert crew kept her afloat by skilful counter-flooding for hours until the end
But the biggest conversion job in the Japanese carrier programme was that of the giant Shinano, originally the third Yamato-class of the super-battleships. Shinano's whole story was one of monstrous error and wasted effort much like the giant Japanese 1-400 submarines. To start with, argument raged for weeks over what sort of aircraft-carrier she should be: an orthodox carrier or a giant floating depot ship and mobile base, carrying no aircraft of her own but able to supply and equip and provide an additional flight deck for an entire carrier fleet. The final result was a compromise. Shinano would be a carrier supply ship, but she would also have a few fighters of her own for self-defence and a hangar for storing them. This caused immense difficulties, because Shinano's hull had been completed up to the main deck by the time of the decision to convert her. The work crawled along as slowly, in fact, as did that on Germany's only aircraft-carrier, Graf Zeppelin in a dreary stop-go rhythm. When the builders were finally galvanised into an all-out effort, after the defeat in the Philippine Sea, it was too late. All the reserves of' trained aircrew had been whittled away to the point of extinction. Nevertheless, the work on the useless giant moved to completion and Shinano was ready for service in November 1944.
She was the biggest aircraft-carrier in the world, and the best protected. Her armoured flight-deck stretched 840 feet by 131 feet. She could steam at 27 knots, she bristled with defensive armament, and she could carry 47 aircraft. At last, the backbone of Japan's new carrier fleet was finished - but the carrier fleet did not exist. There were carriers; there were aircraft; but there was little or no fuel for either, and certainly no trained aircrew. Shinano was, in fact, an awe-inspiring but thoroughly useless white elephant. Shinano had begun and ended a career as inglorious as any in naval history. Shinano mounted a formidable AA battery of 16 x 5in guns, 145 x 25mm and 336 x 5in rocket launchers, and with her multiplicity of watertight compartments she was deemed unsinkable. And her end was little short of absurdity. On November 29th 1944, she left Yokosuka for a brief shake-down cruise, escorted by three destroyers. She had not been at sea 24 hours, and still within sight of land, when she was caught by the American submarine Archerfish.
The submarine Archerfish’s radar picked up Shinano and her 3 destroyers at 20 48 hours as they moved down the coast. Surfacing, the submarine took up a 20 knot chase in the darkness, able to keep in touch only because the ships zigzagged as an anti-submarine measure! At 03 00 hours on 30th November, a sharp change of course by Shinano made her a perfect target, broadside on to Archerfish at 1 400 yards. Commander Joseph Enright fired a full spread of six 21inch torpedoes at 03 10 hours. At least four struck the huge carrier. But Musashi’s ordeal had shown what punishment this class of ship could take, and although he could easily have made harbour, or at worst beached his ship, Captain Toshio Abe ordered course to be held at 20 knots. For seven hours water poured in, flooding ‘watertight' compartments and springing badly welded hull members. Too late, full peril was realized. At 10 55 hours, Shinano rolled over to starboard and sank stern first, taking down the Captain and five hundred of his one thousand four hundred strong crew. Her life as an operational warship had lasted only 17 hours.
Shinano was not vitally damaged at all by Archerfish's torpedoes and could still make 18 knots. But her inexperienced crew neglected practically every damage control rule in the book. The waters rose and spread from compartment to compartment; she kept on her course at full speed; and her captain would certainly have been court-martialled for gross negligence if he had not gone down with his ship, 7 hours after being torpedoed.
Early in 1945, the Imperial Navy's surviving warships swung at anchor in home waters, lacking fuel or air cover for effective sorties. At Imperial Headquarters, the Army angrily demanded that the Navy, in particular Yamato-'that floating hotel for idle, inept admirals', match the self-sacrifice of kamikaze flyers, submariners and the island garrisons fighting to the last man.
When the Americans cornered the garrison at Okinawa. Admiral Toyoda, could resist no longer. He must throwaway as many ships as could still be fuelled, Yamato among them, in an empty gesture to satisfy national honour and as an inspiration to the civilian millions soon to be called upon to make the final suicidal stand on the beaches of the homeland. On 5th April 1945, he issued orders for Operation TenGo. Vice-Admiral lto's 'Special Sea Attack Force' (Yamato, the light cruiser Yahagi and 8 destroyers) was, in Toyoda's words, to make “the most tragic and heroic attack of the war”. In support of a massive Kamikaze effort, the ships were to sail for Okinawa; draw off air cover from the landing areas; smash through the US Navy's screen; run aground and as armoured citadels hammer enemy occupied areas until ammunition was exhausted. Then their crews were to go ashore and fight to the death.
With fuel for a one-way trip and magazines crammed with more than 1 000 rounds of 18inch shells, Yamato sailed at 15 00 hours on 6th April 1945. Around 18 00 hours, shortly before clearing Bungo Strait, while the crew answered a patriotic exhortation with banzai for the Emperor, US submarines Hackleback and Threadfin sighted them. The US submarines flashed a warning to the fleet. The Japanese squadron had barely cleared Japanese territorial waters before it was spotted by American submarines. Three carrier task groups moved northeast into position off Okinawa, with orders for a dawn reconnaissance.
At 08 32 hours on 7th April, a scout plane picked up Yamato and her escort heading SW at 22 knots. Ordering battleships to “stand ready for any eventuality north of Okinawa”, Admiral Spruance told Vice- Admiral Mitscher: “You take them”. Between 10 00 hours and 11 00 hours, a dozen carriers from his Task Force 58 flew off 386 aircraft: 180 Hellcat and Corsair fighters, each carrying three 500lb bombs; 131 Avenger torpedo planes; and 75 Helldivers, each with one 1 000Ib bomb and two 250 pounders.
Next morning, 2 Martin Mariner flying boats sighted the Japanese squadron at 10 14 hours, just as it swung south to within 300 miles of Okinawa. The 2 aircraft were screened from Yamato by low cloud and frequent showers, while they guided in the carrier planes. Apart from two seaplanes that remained unlaunched aboard Yamato and Yahagi, no Japanese aircraft were to be seen. At 12 10 hours, the Japanese destroyer Asashlmo, which had dropped back with engine trouble, flashed a brief warning as around 100 aircraft found her. At 12 20 hours, Yamato's radar located the first attack wave 18 miles to port. At 12 32 hours, about 200 planes were in sight at 13 miles range. The Japanese had the weather squalls and low clouds-on their side, but little else. The Special Attack Force had no fighter cover whatever and the American bombers were able to make almost unimpeded practice runs as repeated waves swept in to the attack. The ring of Japanese destroyers soon broke up under the stress of constant manoeuvre to avoid torpedoes.
The first wave struck at 12 41 hours, as Yamato increased speed to 30 knots. With only 3 000ft cloud ceiling, the planes came down in small groups to make low-level attacks. Yamato's great guns soon fell silent; their blast made it impossible for gunners to operate her massed 25mm batteries, but a heavy barrage still met the Americans, to little avail. By 12 48 hours one destroyer was sunk, Yahagi was crippled and Yamato had taken two bombs amidships as well as a torpedo in the port bow. Two more torpedoes struck there minutes later. While bombs silenced more of the battleship's AA guns. But Yamato, taking water and listing slightly to port, was still full of fight when a strike of 120 planes arrived at 13 00 hours. In less than 15 minutes, five more torpedoes ripped open Yamato's port side, while bombs and machine-gun fire silenced almost every remaining gun. Soon the list to port was too great for the damage control tanks to correct. To bring his ship back on an even keel, Commander Ariga ordered the flooding of the lowest starboard compartments, the engine and boiler rooms: Several hundred men drowned or were scalded to-death at their posts as the sea rushed in. The cruiser Yahagi now sank after taking seven torpedoes and 12 bombs.
From 14 00 hours onwards, aircraft from Intrepid and Yorktown closed in for the kill. Yamato lay over at 35°, creeping at 7 knots in a circle with rudder jammed hard aport and only one working pair of propellers. Few guns spoke from her shattered deck. All external and internal communications were severed. The sick bay was gutted, doctors: orderlies and patients all dead. Coming in on the starboard side at the head of six Avengers from Yorktown, Lieutenant Thomas Stetson saw that Yamato's hull lay exposed beneath the armoured belt. At least five of the Avengers' torpedoes ran straight. The last struck home at 14 17 hours.
Aboard the doomed battleship, Admiral lto ordered the crew away at around 14 05 hours, shaking hands with his officers before retiring to his cabin to face death alone. Ariga saw to the safety of the Emperor's portrait, before having himself lashed to the compass mounting. The ship now listed so