WWII B&W Photo IJN Yamato at Dock 1941 WW2 World War Two Imperial Japan / 7044

Description

IJN Yamato
This is a nice reproduction of an original WW2 photograph showing the Japanese Battleship Yamato being fitted out in early 1941.
Size is about 4" x 6".
Yamato (
大和
?
), named after the ancient Japanese
Yamato Province
, was the lead ship of the
Yamato
class
of
battleships
that served with the
Imperial Japanese Navy
during
World War II
. She and her sister ship,
Musashi
, were the heaviest and most powerfully armed battleships ever constructed, displacing 72,800 tonnes at full load and armed with nine 46 cm (18.1 inch) main guns. Neither ship survived the war.
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
Battle of Midway
, a disastrous defeat for Japan. 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
. The Japanese were unaware that Admiral Halsey's entire massive fast carrier task force with battleships had been successfully lured away by a feint. Left behind was only a slow
escort carrier
task force armed against ground forces with no hope of protecting vulnerable troop transports from the Yamato. But as the American light ships resembled larger cruisers and carriers, the Japanese believed they were fighting the main fleet. The massive guns of Yamato would not be turned against battleships, but in the
Battle off Samar
would instead be a seemingly mismatched showdown against the industrial production of small and inexpensive light ships and carriers. Nevertheless desperate sailors and aviators delivered accurate shellfire and torpedoes from ships as small as
destroyer escorts
. These attacks wrought enough havoc on the Japanese surface force to turn them back, but only after inflicting losses comparable in ships and men to the Battle of Midway.
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. The task force was spotted south of
Kyushu
by US submarines and aircraft, and on 7 April 1945 she was sunk by American carrier-based bombers and torpedo bombers with the loss of most of her crew.
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7044
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