Shipwreck Monday-IJN Yamoto

 

The Ship IJN Yamato was named after the ancient Japanese Yamato Province. She was the lead ship of the Yamato class of battleships that served with the Imperial Japanese Navy during World War II. IJN Yamato and IJN Musashi were the heaviest and most powerfully armed battleships ever constructed, displacing 72,800 tonnes at full load and armed with nine 46 cm main guns. Neither ship survived the war.

IJN Yamato  laid down in 1937.  She formally commissioned a week after the Pearl Harbor attack in late 1941. IJN Yamato was designed to counter the numerically superior battleship fleet of the United States. Japan's main rival in the Pacific. Throughout 1942 IJN Yamato served as the flagship of the Japanese Combined Fleet. In June 1942 Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto directed the fleet from her bridge during the Battle of Midway. It was a disastrous defeat for Japan.

IJN Musashi took over as the Combined Fleet flagship in early 1943. IJN Yamato spent the rest of the year, and much of 1944, moving between the major Japanese naval bases of Truk and Kure in response to American threats. Although IJN Yamato was present at the Battle of the Philippine Sea in June 1944. IJN Yamato played no part in the battle. The only time she fired her main guns at enemy surface targets was in October 1944, when she was sent to engage American forces invading the Philippines during the Battle of Leyte Gulf. On the verge of success, the Japanese force turned back, believing they were engaging an entire US carrier fleet rather than the light escort carrier group that was all that stood between IJN Yamato and the vulnerable troop transports.

During 1944 the balance of naval power in the Pacific decisively turned against Japan and, by early 1945. The Japanese fleet was much depleted and critically short of fuel stocks in the home islands, limiting its usefulness. In April 1945, in a desperate attempt to slow the Allied advance, IJN Yamato was dispatched on a one way voyage to Okinawa. It was intended that she should protect the island from invasion and fight until destroyed. The task force was spotted south of Kyushu by US submarines and aircraft, and on 7 April 1945 she was sunk by American carrier-based bombers and torpedo bombers with the loss of most of her crew.

Because of the often confused circumstances and incomplete information regarding their sinkings, few wrecks of Japanese capital ships have been discovered and identified. Drawing on US wartime records, an expedition to the South China Sea in 1982 produced some results, but the wreckage discovered could not be clearly identified. A second expedition returned to the site two years later, and the team's photographic and video records were later confirmed by one of the battleship's designers, Shigeru Makino to show the IJN Yamato's last resting place. The wreck lies 290 kilometers southeast of Kyushu under 340 meters of water in two main pieces; a bow section comprising the front two thirds of the ship, and a separate stern section.