Yamato

Victory at Sea: Yamato

The Yamato and her sister ship Musashi were constructed just before the outbreak of World War II. They were the heaviest and most heavily armed battleships ever built; armed with nine 18.1” Type 94 main guns – the largest guns ever fitted to a warship.

The battleship’s design was a response to the numerically dominant US Navy – Imperial Japan’s primary threat in the Pacific. Though laid down in 1937, the battleship was not commissioned until late 1941, one week after the fateful attack on Pearl Harbour. She served as the flagship of the Combined Fleet. From her bridge, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto directed the fleet at Midway in June 1942, though this was a catastrophic defeat for the Japanese. Thereafter, she was replaced as flagship by the Musashi and spent most of 1943 and 44 moving between ports in a responsive role.

October 1944 was the sole occasion Yamato fired her main guns in anger at the Battle of Leyte Gulf. Yamato had been tasked with repelling the American forces invading the Philippines. Though success was within reach for the Japanese, such was the ferocity of a counter-attack by a light escort carrier group of the US Navy’s Task Force 77 that, in the mistaken belief that they were facing a much larger carrier force, the Japanese elected to withdraw.

By early 1945, naval superiority in the Pacific firmly rested with the US Navy. In an effort to delay the Allied advance, the Yamato was dispatched to Okinawa in April 1945 with no expectation of ever returning. Her orders were to beach herself and fight until destroyed. This was not to be as she was sunk on 7th April 1945 by US carrier-borne dive bombers and torpedo bombers, losing the vast majority of her crew.

Contains one ship in Warlord Resin.
Model supplied unassembled and unpainted.