Thanks for watching. Experts believe that a fire raging in the Her main guns were designed to attack at an unprecedented distance of 25 miles, well beyond the range of American battleships. Turret #1 can also be seen upfront. They pounced on her like sharks in the water. There were few Japanese survivors. As luck would have it, he said, the big ship was turning to port, thereby exposing the full broadside expanse of her enormous hull to the converging torpedoes.. At 1322, an Essex Corsair hit Yamato in the port bow with a 1,000-pound general-purpose bomb. Yahagi lost 446; Asashimo lost 330; the seven destroyers, 391 officers and men. By this time, there wasnt much left of the Japanese navy that was still operational, and fuel was in critically short supply. None of the captains was afraid to diethey just objected to the sheer folly of attacking in daylight without air cover, believing that they wouldnt get anywhere close to Okinawa. I Served On An LST During This Period Of Time & Locations Mentioned In This Article , But I Still Like Too Hear Of The Actual Events That Took Part That Day In April 1945. During the night, this plan morphed into sending six new battleships detached from TF 58 into blocking position. Although 16 warships were hit, Yamato sustained only minor damage from a number of near misses and from one bomb that struck her bridge. The explosion was heard over 120 miles away. Twenty Avengers make a new torpedo run from 60 degrees to port. 1000 hour The Attack Force sights two large Martin Mariner PBM flying boats. Yamato produced the mushroom cloud seen here shortly before she sank. Vice Admiral Ito retired to his stateroom to go down with the ship. This photograph was taken in December 1941, shortly The force would transit to Okinawa on 7 April (with only a few hours of minimal. Her waterline armor belt was 16 inches thick. Of the 3,332 crew members aboard the Yamato, only 276 survived the sinking. The visibility was highly variable, but often not very good due to cloud cover. Cloud cover precluded accurate firing of the After all, she was the This force include battleships Massachusetts (BB-59), Indiana (BB-58), South Dakota (BB-57), New Jersey (BB-62), Wisconsin (BB-64), and Missouri (BB-63) (54 16-inch guns), the battle-cruisers Alaska (CB-1) and Guam (CB-2), five cruisers, and 21 destroyers. Altogether more effective were Japan's aerial suicide weapons. Had Yamato ever encountered an Allied battleship group, she could have floated safely out of range, while destroying each ship in turn. The Americans bloody island-hopping campaign, which had begun in the southern Solomon Islands in 1942, had grown as the Americans swept across the Gilberts, the Solomons, and, after the battles in Leyte Gulf and the Philippine Sea, were on the cusp of Japan herself. The Musashi and its sister vessel, the Yamato, were two of the largest battleships ever built. Isokaze, which had her steering disabled by a near miss, suffered 20 dead and 54 wounded, and had to be scuttled by gunfire from Yukikaze. Yamato (, lit. The arresting wire system can stop a 54,000-pound aircraft travelling 150 miles per hour in only two seconds, in a 315-foot landing area (a 24,500-kg aircraft travelling at 241 kph in a 96-meter landing area). Flagship of the Japanese Combined Fleet, she was lead ship of the Yamato class. . One of her junior designers tells NOVA he was completely in the dark about the scale of the vessel that he was helping to create: I was building the biggest ship in the world, and I didnt even know it until after the war.. Yamato avoided two, but the third hit her port side at 1245. She quickly shipped 2,235 tons of water, but the list was soon corrected with effective counter-flooding. April 7, 1945 Sinking of the Battleship Yamato. Thank you to all our WWII vets. Yamato was still more than 300 nautical miles from Okinawa when she went down. DANFS - Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Permitting Policy and Resource Management, The 9/11 Terrorist Attacks: 20 Years Later, "Ex Scientia Tridens": The U.S. The second penetrates the port side of the aft Command station and explodes between the 155-mm gun magazine and main gun turret No. At 1407, she was struck by at least the seventh torpedo, this time to starboard. The once-proud Japanese Imperial Navy that Americans feared would threaten the West Coast, was largely driven across the Pacific and now operated mainly from its home waters. 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. Of Yamato's crew of 2,747, all but 23 officers and 246 enlisted men were lost. The Yamato sank during a fierce battle for Okinawa on April, 7 1945. 129 Japanese soldiers were killed. The Mariners were subordinate to Patrol Bombing Squadron 21 (VPB-21), operating from the tender Chandeleur (AV-10), which had arrived at Kerama Rettoon 28 March. YAMATO, at 27 knots flank speed, heels to starboard in evasive action. In 1945 Carrier Air Group 17 consisted of VF-17, VBF-17, VB-17, and VT-17. How many planes were lost attacking the Yamato? Built in total secrecy and launched just after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Yamato may have been almost twice the size of her American counterparts, with the largest guns ever mounted on a warship. Yamato was essentially doomed by a question from Emperor Hirohito during a briefing on 29 March about plans for Japanese air opposition to expected landings on Okinawa. The carriers were among seven ships that went down in the Battle of Midway, a major air and sea battle fought between the US and Japan in 1942. One Helldiver was shot down. The others kept coming. Posted August 23, 2013. this photo from 1941 shows the construction details of the Yamato's rear aircraft deck, side 6-inch guns that were replaced by AA guns later in the war, as well as the aft superstructure and main turret #3. Though many Japanese naval leaders considered Operation Ten-Go to be a waste of their remaining resources, it moved forward on April 6, 1945. My dads name is Ronald R. LeFebvre (Ding). Japans secrecy was due to her inability to match U.S. naval power ship for ship. Survivor Stories He saw four Avengers go in low, dropping their torpedoes in a spread on Yamatos beam. What are they doing to assist in defending Okinawa? By 1408, Yamato had clearly begun to capsize and the ship was being abandoned. This particular image was taken during an earlier battle with American carrier aircraft on October 24, 1944 as Yamato transited the Sibuyan Sea. miles southwest of Kyushu, Japan. The aircraft are lost behind the clouds. 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. The largest battleships ever built were Yamato and Musashi of the Imperial Japanese Navy. 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. 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. Itos chief of staff, Rear Admiral Nobuei Morishita, was the senior survivor of Yamato. Five Helldivers are damaged by AA fire. The loss of these ships shocked the British government, and helped change procurement and employment strategies in both the United States and the United Kingdom. At 1423 as she began to capsize, the raging fires onboard ignited her magazines and the resultant explosion unleashed a huge mushroom cloud that rose to 20,000 feet and took out a few American planes that were overhead. Photographed from a USS Yorktown (CV-10) plane (NH 62581). The Japanese lost three aircraft carriers and 426 aircraft; Yamato ' s only . The first attack wave retires. Design commenced in 1934, construction began in 1937 (in great secrecy) and Yamato was commissioned in December 1941 just after Pearl Harbor. Aircrews were astonished at the size of the ship, which had seen very little naval action during the war. Vice Admiral Ito and Captain Aruga went down with the ship. 1). The Yamato, completed in Kure in December 1941, was the largest battleship in the world at the time. settled on the seafloor 1,200 feet down and about 50 Very interesting or happy to read about the Yamoto sinking as I was there as radioman aboard an Avenger off of the USS Langley. [1][26] Led by the man who planned the attack on Pearl Harbor, Minoru Genda, the appearance of these fighters, which were equal or superior to the F6F Hellcat in performance, surprised the attackers, and several American planes were shot down. blasts were perhaps the largest ever to occur at sea. This time, all attacks concentrated on the battleship. The Americans lost a total of only 10 aircraft four Helldivers, three Avengers, and three Hellcats and 12 men. 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. Japanese reports claim U.S. aircraft strafed survivors in the water, but also report that attacks ceased on destroyers that were picking up survivors. 7. Agroup of five low-flying Avengers (VT-17) from HORNET (CV-12) start a torpedo run from the port, bearing 70 degrees. The Japanese admiral in charge of Operation Ten-Go, Vice-Admiral Seiichi It, disagreed with the plan which essentially was to sail into teeth of the American fleet without the benefit of any air cover and then beach on Okinawa and operate as a static defense in support of the island. The Attack Force changes course due south to 180 degrees. 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. [27] While navigating the Bungo Strait, Yamato and her escorts were spotted by the American submarines Threadfin and Hackleback, both of which notified Task Force 58 of Yamatos position. photographed the destruction. The ship captains were then assembled on Yahagi and briefed. The age of the battleship was over forever. Thank you to all the brave men and women of the US armed forces! Torpedoes explode against Yamato's port side 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. Two other destroyers were heavily damaged, one, the Hamakaze later sank. The big carriers got all the credit. The fire in the area ofher forward 6.1 inch turret can be clearly seen (L42-09.06.05). At 1342, another Avenger was shot down, but four more torpedoes were inbound from the port side and two hit. To buck up morale, many captains of capital ships received a accelerated promotion to rear admiral in 1944. 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