THE DESTRUCTION OF JAPAN'S 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 reveals 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 50-mm 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