World War II battlefield, except for the atomic bomb that emerged at the end of the war, if you ask which weapon is the most cost-effective, powerful but the most failed, it should be the Japanese Yamato battleship .
As the largest displacement battleship in the world, Yamato was once a national symbol and pride of Japan, and it still appears frequently in Japanese movies and anime. However, the performance of this battleship itself in World War II has become a cold joke that implies that its motherland has fallen behind the times.
1853, when American General Perry led his four " black ships " that scared the Japanese, anchored outside Yokosuka Port in Tokyo Bay, he might not have thought that in just 90 years later, the Japanese would build the largest battleship in history, and in turn intimidate the Americans. "Black Ship" has caused Japan to fear and worship of giant cannons since its founding, and this worship has become a distant reason for Japan to focus on creating the totem of the "Yamato".
The so-called cannon giant ship theory believes that whoever conquers the ocean can control the world, and the only way to control the ocean is to have larger ships and cannons with larger caliber and longer range.
Influenced by this theory, since the end of the 19th century, one round of naval arms race has become a common occurrence among the great powers. Japan, surrounded by the sea, has great ambitions on the ocean, and has the psychological shadow of "black ship", has become the most bet player in this crazy game.
Of course, Japan's ambition to expand its naval military equipment was originally subject to constraints. The " Washington Naval Treaty " signed in 1922 stipulates that the displacement ratio of the five major battleships of the United States, Britain, Japan, Italy and France (battleship and battlecruiser 1 is 5:5:3:1.75:1.75. The displacement of a single major battleship shall not exceed 35,000 tons, and the caliber of the gun shall not exceed 406 mm.
However, after the expiration of the treaty in 1936, Japan refused to participate in the negotiations on restricting arms of the London Navy aimed at extending the treaty, and secretly proposed the strategy of intercepting imaginary enemy U.S. naval fleet formations at the Western Pacific Ocean.
Japan's shipbuilding plan has adhered to the purpose of "quality wins quantity" from the beginning. When the cannon giant ship tyrants were rampant. In the past, larger caliber artillery often means longer range and stronger attack power. Under this idea, Japanese Navy began to prepare for the construction of super giant battleships long before the abolition of the treaty.
During the days of building the Yamato, there was a saying within the Japanese Navy that " Egypt has a pyramid, China has a 0,000-mile Great Wall , and Japan has a Yamato battleship."
Indeed, judging from the size of the Yamato battleship, it may not be an exaggeration to say that it is a miracle made of steel. Especially for a country that has just been modernized for less than a hundred years, building a ship with a displacement exceeding the previous largest ship The giant battleship that nearly doubled the ship is undoubtedly a crazy move that cannot be endured by the country's overall strength and industrial level.
For this reason, Japan did not hesitate to use a large amount of strategic materials, including more than 100,000 tons of high-quality steel, and spent a lot of money to add a large amount of new equipment to its shipbuilding industry, and even deliberately deepened the dock of the naval factory by 1 meter.
According to statistics, during the entire construction of the Yamato and its sister ship Musashi, the Japanese spent 150 billion yen, and the average weight of each ton was needed to spend nearly 2 million yen. You should know that the Yamato was in 1937, and the Sino-Japanese War had begun. At this time, Japan really tightened its belt and was building the Yamato with its might.
In December 1941, shortly before the Pacific War officially started, the Super Battleship No. 1 ship was officially completed. The hull was 263 meters long and the ship was 38.9 meters wide. The standard displacement was 65,000 tons when it was completed, the main gun was 460 mm in diameter, and the effective range was more than 40 kilometers. The huge body made the Yamato still sail for 4 kilometers after the entire ship was fired before it could finally stop. This ship was named "Yamato", which is also the name of the Japanese people for their own nation.
Faced with this ship built with the strength of the whole country, there were also doubts within the Japanese army. The Japanese Navy Command Minister at that time replied: "The empire needs a spiritual symbol."
So, the Yamato battleship was worshipped as a spiritual totem cast by steel.
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Ironically, the seemingly powerful Yamato has been outdated since its birth, and what proves this is the Japanese Navy itself.
On December 7, 1941, the Yamato ship carried out its first main gun shooting during a trial voyage, hitting nine giant shells weighing one and a half tons to the waters 20,000 meters away.
And on the same day, the Japanese aviation fleet that took off from the Japanese Combined Fleet aircraft carrier air strikes the US Pearl Harbor , destroying and injuring almost all the battleships of the US Pacific Fleet . html The success of ml3's sneak attack on Pearl Harbor not only kicked off the Pacific War, but also gave the world another enlightenment - the era of relying on battleships heavy artillery to bomb against bombing has passed, and aircraft carriers will become the maritime overlord in the new era.
Although the overlord's position has been lost, the battleships in World War II are not completely useless. In fact, while the Japanese built the Yamato, the world's major naval powers, even the socialist Soviet Union, did not give up building battleships. The United States, which is believed to have fully realized the role of aircraft carriers after the Pearl Harbor incident, built 10 battleships before and after the incident, and most of the ships' main construction period was carried out after the Pearl Harbor incident.
The difference is that the Americans have a clear understanding of the role of battleships in the new era. During the entire Pacific War, US battleships were widely active on various battlefields, carrying out tasks such as escorting aircraft carriers, destroying traffic lines, and providing firepower support to landing army.
However, when US battleships repositioned their functions, the Japanese Yamato ship was placed in the south mountain and was parked in the port for a long time. Japanese military headquarters always stayed at the hope that Yamato would participate in the "final In the dream of decisive battle, he was reluctant to put this "spiritual symbol" into small fights. During the entire Pacific War, the Yamato, the flagship of the Japanese Joint Fleet, played a role everywhere. In the 1942 Midway Battle , four main aircraft carriers of the Japanese army were wiped out under the attack of the US military, while the Yamato was followed hundreds of nautical miles away and did nothing.
The Japanese army, which lost air supremacy in the Battle of Midway, dared not let the Yamato attack at will. The Japanese Navy Command even issued an order to "not use the Yamato to fight without its permission." The commander of the Japanese Joint Fleet Yamamoto Irosaki happened to be a useless argument for the battleship. By chance, from 1942 to 1944, the Yamato was not only subject to the U.S. military In addition to the two sneak attacks of the submarine , it has been idle in the berthed port for a long time. The officers and soldiers of the ship enjoyed the unparalleled logistics facilities of this top-class battleship. The fluorescent lights, Hitachi air conditioning, Mitsubishi elevator , and ice cream maker built this battleship like an Imperial Hotel. The Yamato also received the nickname "Yamato Hotel" and sat down day after day to day to see its country demise.
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Yamato had the only battle in World War II where he had the opportunity to show off his skills was the Leight Bay naval battle in 1944.
In this last and largest battleship battle in human history, the Yamato and its sister ship Musashi set sail with their intention to rush to the Bay of Letter in the Philippines to participate in the battle.
Unfortunately, before the two ships reached their combat position, they were discovered by the US carrier-based aircraft . Two giant Japanese battleships were chased by them and were forced to constantly adjust their bulky hulls to avoid the torpedo dropped by the US military. In the end, the Musashi sank due to the torpedo and bombs dropped by 36 US carrier-based aircraft in a row. The Yamato was also hit by three bombs falling from high altitude, and the ship was tilted.
The next day, when the Yamato finally entered the Wright Bay War Zone and had the opportunity to launch a test fire of the 460mm cannon, the Japanese commander Lieutenant General Su Tian was already scared by the overturning of the Musashi, and was afraid that the Yamato would be attacked by the US carrier-based aircraft group again, so he ordered the Yamato to withdraw from Japan and continue to stay in the port and survive.
However, even with such a humiliating retreat, the Yamato finally did not accompany the Japanese Empire it symbolized to complete its final journey.
In April 1945, the US military launched the Okinawa Battle. A large number of US warships surrounded Okinawa. The Japanese base camp, which was premonitioned that the doomsday had arrived, was determined to make the "imperial symbol" Yamato a vanguard of "the total of 100 million people broken", and ordered the Yamato to venture out, forcibly rush through the waters controlled by the US military, and devote themselves to the battle to defend Okinawa . Of course, this whimsical crazy idea of
has not been realized.
On April 6, Yamato loaded only 2,500 tons of fuel that was only enough for its one-way sailing, and headed for Okinawa from the anchored Seto Inland Sea . In the evening of that day, this movement was discovered by a US submarine lurking outside Japan. The US military sent more than 300 carrier-based aircraft to rush towards the Yamato in the early morning of the next day. At noon that day, US aircraft caught up with the Yamato warship 300 kilometers north of Okinawa and launched attacks in turn.
Yamato is heading south at full speed, and while starting all anti-aircraft guns fires in the air. However, the bulky battleships had almost no power to fight back under the agile attack of the carrier-based aircraft. In order to kill the Yamato as soon as possible, US fighter jets deliberately dropped bombs on the port side of the ship. In the end, the Yamato capsized due to excessive water inlet on the port side, and 2,000 officers and soldiers on the ship were buried together with this Japanese "country treasure" on the eve of the fall of the Japanese Empire.
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After the end of World War II, someone had estimated the gains and losses of the Yamato battleship. The conclusion was that if Japan saved the production capacity, manpower and funds for the construction of the ship and its three sister ships, it would be approximately enough to produce 12 Feilong-class or 6 Shochi-class aircraft carriers. Even if it achieved half of the expected effect, the Japanese joint fleet would be enough to pose an overwhelming advantage to the US military in the early stage.
The Yamato, a steel totem made by Japan, eventually accelerated Japan's failure. In a deeper sense, Japan was actually defeated by the dream that had long been eliminated by the times in the Pacific War.
