Our two-parter on doomed Battleships comes to a close as we retell the fate of the Japanese Imperial Battleship Yamato. The single largest battleship ever built, this absolute monster boasted 18 inch guns and 57,000 fully loaded tons of superweapon. In the last months of the war, she sallied forth on a suicide mission to repel the US forces from Okinawa. Essentially, the only role she could play was as a Kamikaze battleship, choosing to go down fighting to save face at all costs, a fitting fate considering the apocalyptic nature of the war's end.
Research for this series came from:
The Destruction of the Battleship Bismarck by Holger Herweg
and
A Glorious Way to Die: The Kamikaze Mission of the Battleship Yamato by Russell Spurr