Book Description

• Relive the dramatic final days of the world’s largest battleship as she embarked on her final and doomed kamikaze mission • Unveil the cloak of secrecy that surrounded Japan’s ultimate warships and what American intelligence knew and when • Beautifully illustrated with many rare and unpublished photographs • A must-have for military and historians, enthusiasts, modellers, gamers, and those interested in the complexities of naval warfare during the Second World War The Yamato and her sistership Musashi represented the ultimate development in the battleship during the Second World War and were the heaviest and most powerfully armed battleships ever constructed. Named after the Yamato Province, Yamato was designed to counter the numerically superior fleet of the US Navy. Built amongst a shroud of secrecy and deception – and commissioned shortly after the outbreak of the war in the Pacific – she was present at a number of engagements, including the Battle of Midway and the Battle of the Philippine Sea. Despite having been designed to engage and sink enemy surface vessels, the Yamato would only fire her unrivalled 18.1-inch guns at an enemy surface target on one occasion in October 1944 during the Battle of Leyte Gulf. In the final months of the war, as kamikaze aircraft targeted American landing fleets off Okinawa, the Yamato embarked on a one-way mission of ultimate sacrifice. In a last desperate roll of the dice in an attempt to wreak havoc on the landing forces around Okinawa, the last stepping stone prior to an invasion of the Japanese home islands, the Yamato finally succumbed to a mass aerial attack by carrier-based bombers and torpedo bombers. Despite being antiquated products of war from the moment of their construction, the Yamato and Musashi enjoy an iconic figure of Japanese might in mainstream consciousness such as films and anime.