Laid down in 1937 and formally commissioned a week after the
Pearl Harbor attack in late 1941,
Yamato was designed to counter the numerically superior battleship fleet of the United States, Japan's main rival in the
Pacific. Throughout 1942 she served as the
flagship of the
Japanese Combined Fleet, and in June 1942 Admiral
Isoroku Yamamoto directed the fleet from her bridge during the disastrous
Battle of Midway.
Musashi took over as the Combined Fleet flagship in early 1943, and
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 she was present at the
Battle of the Philippine Sea in June 1944,
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
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,
Yamato was
dispatched on a one way voyage to
Okinawa, where it was intended that she should protect the island from invasion and fight until destroyed. Her task force was spotted south of
Kyushu by US submarines and aircraft, and on 7 April she was sunk by American carrier based bombers and torpedo bombers with the loss of most of her crew.
