Yamato-Class Battleship

The Yamato-class battleships were built by the Imperial Japanese Navy at the Kure and Yokosuka naval arsenals and the Mitsubishi shipyard in Nagasaki, with the lead ship Yamato commissioned in 1941 and her sister Musashi in 1942. At nearly 72,000 long tons fully loaded, they were the heaviest battleships ever built, and their nine 460mm main guns, the largest naval artillery ever mounted on a warship, could fire a shell more than 42 kilometers. Musashi was sunk by American air strikes at the Battle of Leyte Gulf in October 1944 after absorbing 17 bomb and 19 torpedo hits, and Yamato was sunk in April 1945 during Operation Ten-Go by a strike of 386 American carrier aircraft, with the loss of roughly 2,498 of her crew; a third hull intended for the class was instead completed as the aircraft carrier Shinano, which was sunk by the American submarine USS Archerfish in November 1944 within days of entering service.