The Yamato was one of the most fearsome battleships in all of WWII.The Yamato belonged to the Japanese.Though it fought in only major engagment it still proved to be a very powerful warship.This vessel was equipped with with several large cannons and was easily capable of destroying an American destroyer.
Yes, but the Japanese lost the war, so it mustn’t have been that great.
It was a useless, hulking white elephant that flubbed its one chance to have an impact on the War at the (David vs. Goliath) Battle off Samar.
If only we had seen past the Kyokannkyohoushigi (big ships with big guns) Doctrine…
Speaking of useless hulk, it was one of the few Japanese vessels to be equipped with a Soda machine 
and was also called the “Yamato Hotel”…
Now the original poster has been banned for stupidity, this comment is kind of pointless. But does anyone else think a battleship NOT able to deal with an American destroyer is kind of useless?
That does suggest a certain deficiency in its capacity. 
I can’t recall sources off the top of my head, but I’ve read of disparaging comments by IJN personnel at various, and often senior, levels about the Yamato being, in essence, a floating hotel for senior staff, as Major Walter Schmidt has indicated. It spent most of its time in WWII at anchor in Japan at the IJN main base or at anchor after non-combat trips to Truk and so on.
Yamato illustrates the problem about building an asset that is too valuable to risk on its intended task, so it would have been better not to build it at all and to divert the resources to vessels which could have been used against the enemy, such as subs and destroyers.
There’s more to it than that. Japan was critically short of fuel for the entire war - so could never afford to fill it up. On the mission when it was finally sunk, it was never intended to return - the fuel bunkers didn’t have enough in them for it to get back to Japan, largely because they didn’t have enough to spare.
Which says something about Japan’s failure to exploit its gains, in this case the oil production in the NEI.
Can’t recall the exact proportion, but the NEI contributed a significant part of the world’s oil before the war (a third??).
Some, maybe all, NEI oil also had the unusual virtue of being able to fuel a ship without being refined.
Japan’s oil problem related, as do so many of Japan’s problems in losing its war, to its lack of merchant shipping and the steady reduction of the merchant fleet, largely by the Americans, as the war progressed.
There is a great irony in Japan being impelled to war in part because its oil reserves would not survive the embargoes by the soon-to-be-Allies so that it would be unable to fight after a year or so of embargoes, and then ending the war unable to fight because it could not exploit the great oil reserves it had gained in the NEI, and to a lesser extent in Burma.
Sounds a bit like the B-2…
thank you for telling us something we already knew…
The sinking of the Yamato was the largest single loss involving a warship in history.
3665 died.
That depends on how you define “warship”. More than 4,000 (nobody really knows how many) died on the RMS Lancastria off St Nazaire while it was being used as a troopship, and at least 7,000 (most estimates are at around 9,000) died when the MV Wilhelm Gustloff was torpedoed in the Baltic in January 1945. The Gustloff was being operated by the Kriegsmarine but mainly transporting civilian refugees at the time.
Shit, I didn’t know that; thanks PDF. I was researching the Yamamoto and nobody told me what you told me. Thanks for that input. Thats why your the Man!
…Yamato dammit, it literally means “Japan”…
Yamamoto happens to be a common Japanese name…
I didn’t hear you the first time. What was it about the Yammamotto you were trying to explain to me?
Not Yammamotto, YAMATO 大和! YA-MA-TO!
Ok Ok I get it Ya-Ma-TO
Thanks Walter Shcmidt! Won’t happen again!
Yamato was conceived as THE most powerful battleship ever to take the seas.
Period.
The vessel was badly employed, and as has been mentioned, was effectively fueled by the last remaining stocks of marine boiler oil available to Japan.
From memory her main batteries were three 19 inch naval rifles in each of three turrets, two forward, one aft.
Displacement in battle trim was, as far as I recall, 96,000 tons. That’s as near as damnit Bismarck AND Hipper in one ship.
Regards, Uyraell
I dont know about displacement, but in metric, its 46cm guns, and yes, three turrets.