The Yamato !
Posted: Fri Apr 19, 2024 8:24 pm
The Yamato ! The Yamato displaced nearly seventy thousand tons. In the naval battle for Philippines, she alone matched almost exactly in weight all thirteen American ships facing her. Each of her three main gun turrets weighed more than an entire Fletcher-class destroyer. Her armor belts- sixteen inches thick at the waterline and more than two feet thick on her gun turrets- were impenetrable to an American destroyer's guns. Her nine 18.1-inch rifles were the biggest guns that ever went to sea, firing 3200-pound shells more than twenty-six miles. Their development was so secret that even Japanese Admiral Kurita did not know their true size. The super battleship's secondary battery of six six-inch guns packed twice the hitting power of anything American Admiral Ziggy Sprague's largest escorts had. The ship was a great gray beast whose bulk pressed down into the ocean and possessed it, displacing enough water to raise measurably the level of a small lake. At flank speed of twenty-seven knots, the Yamato sliced the sea and drew it back around her in a roiling maelstrom, leaving a wake that capsized small boats.
