yamato battleship world of warships uss iowa

Aside these massive main guns, the ship was generously dotted with secondary guns, dual purpose and AA artillery. This caliber had been banned by the Washington Treaty in 1922 anxious to avoid escalation, but the Japanese retired from the treaty in 1935. IJN Yamato (the former name of Japan) was literally designed around her record-breaking main artillery, of 18-inch (457mm) guns, dwarfing the average caliber of the time, comprised by treaty between 330 and 406mm (15-in – 16-in). The long vacancy imposed by the naval treaty was used to elaborate many designs, while the main caliber gun already had been worked out for 1920s designs. This was the first battleship class since 1918, when the last IJN battleships of the Amagi class were started. It was part of a massive naval rearmament plan begun in 1937. The IJN Yamato herself was the leading vessel in a whole serie of four “new generation” fast battleships. Yamato completed in Kure in September 1941. Was the concept behind her construction valid at the time ?

She definitely became an icon in today’s Japanese culture. A massive 1/10 model was made of her, now in The Battleship Yamato Museum, close to where she was built in Kure. This ship and her sister, still fascinates the world today, justified an underwater expedition, movies (such as “The men of Yamato” in 2005), as well as a quantity of books, comics, series and animes. Mysterious, because classified as highly secretive, it was known only by name by the US secret service in 1941 when she entered service. The last IJN battleships: IJN Yamato, like Bismarck, is the subject of a post-war myth.

Yamato battleship world of warships uss iowa