Killing the Yamato

Go find Obama and let him apologize.

Good article. Side note: Yamato's sister battleship, Mushashi, was sunk by US Navy carrier based aircraft on October 24, 1944 during the Battle of Leyte Gulf. A third hull in the Yamato class was converted to an aircraft carrier, Shinano, and was sunk by fleet submarine USS Archerfish in November 1944.

We have nothing to apologize for. Never. Hirohito was a god to his people. A false god. He led them to their deaths. They were under orders from him to fight to the last man, woman and child for their homeland. Our servicemen knew that. My late cousin, who was always my big brother, was onboard a landing craft that had been among the first on the beach all the way up from the Philippines, headed for invasion of the Japanese mainland, when the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nasaki, effectively ending Hirohito’s war. My cousin came home, never quite the same as he had been before he had lied about his age and enlisted at 17. But he was always my big brother. A wonderful 100% American man.

Nagasaki

The United States Navy. To find us you must be good. To catch us you must be fast. To beat us you must be kidding. ---old Navy saying. FunOne, Proud Navy Veteran.

Thrilling article.

Does it say something about our current circumstances the I found this column a welcome relief? Despite the loss of lives. Thanks for posting.

Good account of the end of Yamato. In the article it says, " For some unfathomable reason, the Japanese had deployed the task force with no air cover; ...". The reason was very simple. At the "Great Mariannas Turkey Shoot", officially known as the Battle of the Philippine Sea, US naval aviators had shot down an estimated 460 Japanese aircraft, which is now estimated to be more like 600 aircraft. They basically had no more carrier aircraft. In another of the subsidiary battles of the Oct 44, Battle of Leyte Gulf, we sank three Japanese aircraft carriers that could only launch a total of 75 aircraft, all destroyed. By April of 1945 there was no Japanese naval air capability left. Only two large carriers still floated and they had no aircraft left, and no naval pilots left, sat at anchor, useless.

In its own way an action of even greater historical significance occurred during a Navy torpedo bombing run on September 2, 1944 near the island of Chi Chi Jima. Perhaps author Gantz could be persuaded to write about it.

The Japanese Emperor is more akin to the Pope, than a military leader. Or the Queen of England. The military leaders pretty much did what they wanted, when they wanted, and it was up to the Emperor to bless the action - not approve it. This was why there had been Emperors and Shogun in the previous era. Whoever held the Emperor, held Japan. During WWII, Tojo, held Japan. Despite the opposition of most of their top SKILLED military minds, Tojo took the remnants of Samurai ideology, and drove Japan into the Fire.

#3, it sounds like your cousin was a warrior! Fighting in the Pacific was horrific. It's not surprising he was never the same. My thanks to your late cousin and your family who no doubt remember the boy who went in and the man who came out of the service. We owe them all a huge debt!

Re #11, thank you. He came home, lived a productive life. Was in Tehran the day the embassy fell and barely got out with his team of engineers, there working on a contract with Fluor. He made the last plane out if the Tehran airport for the UK; then came home. He was one of the most decent men I have ever known. As do many veterans who see horrific action, he didn’t tell us much. He tried to share the humorous sidelights, as our servicemen have always done. He had lost his mother when he was only 18 months old, so my Mother was his Mother. He didn’t want to scare her. Later, when I was a grownup, he told me that his best buddy had been blown up next to him on the beach as they landed on one of the islands they were engaged in liberating.

Re #2: The really instructive part of the sinking of the Shinano was that the carrier was brand new, did not have any watertight doors, and sailed from Yokosuka for Kure for final fitting out. No watertight doors! When the Archerfish put four torpedos into her she sank like a rock. The lesson: Don't send the last big CVN you will be able to build out to sea during wartime with no watertight compartments.

I imagine one last battle of the Dreadnoughts would have been grand with the USN crossing the T. In a way it's a pity they didn't get their last hurrah.

Thanks for this and the comments. I learned a lot. Back in Canada our history was focused on Europe. Great Britain, France, Germany , from the revolution through Napoleon to the two World Wars. My knowledge of the Pacific war is quite shallow. None of these people (including the Japanese) seem to be "snowflakes" do they?

#14, there was a "last battle of the battleships", at the Battle of Surigao Strait, one of the subsidiary battles of the immense, sprawling, complex Battle of Leyte Gulf. The Japanese brought their Southern Force of two separate fleets, converging on Surigao Strait, in the Philippines, with two battleships, four cruisers, and eight destroyers. The Japanese ran an ineffective night gauntlet of PT boats, then our destroyer groups launched their torpedoes, and finally our old battleships from Pearl Harbor crossed Admiral Nishimura's T. We had the sunk, refloated and modernized West Virginia, and California, and the Tennesse which had been badly damaged, but not sunk at Pearl, and rebuilt and modernized, plus Maryland and Pennsylvania lightly damaged at Pearl Harbor, and repaired but not upgraded, and Mississippi which had been in the Atlantic when Pearl Harbor was attacked, so undamaged. These six old battlewagons, led primarily by West Virginia, California and Tennessee with their modern radar fire control systems, decisively defeated the Japanese Southern Force in the Surigao Strait in a night battle. The Japanese considered themselves masters of night surface warfare, and had taught the US Navy some very hard lessons in night surface warfare earlier in the war. US Admiral Oldendorf pulled out after sinking most of the Japanese, to respond to Admiral Kurita's Center Force attacking north of his position at the Battle Off Samar, another of the subsidiary battles of the Battle of Leyte Gulf. Adm. Kurita with Yamato and three other battleships, 12 cruisers and 15 destroyers (!!) was attacked so fiercely by a US fleet of six tiny, slow escort carriers and IIRC, four US destroyers and two destroyer escorts that he thought he was engaging agressively handled cruisers and fleet carriers and turned tail and ran. The Battle Off Samar is memorialized in the wonderful book, The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors, well worth the time if you have any interest in WW2 naval battles. Surigao Strait was the last major battleship engagement that the world would see. Since there are none left except as museum ships, and zero chance that they will be ever built again, that is the end of the big naval rifles in sea battles.