Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 237 - The Dumb Life and Dumber Death of the Battleship Yamato

Episode Date: December 5, 2022

the Empire of Japan built the largest battleship the world had ever seen and then decided to use it in the dumbest way possible. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys Sources: Russel Spurr. A Glorious Way to Die https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/supership/last-nf.html https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/yamato-was-hell-sink%E2%80%94and-it-went-out-bang-nuclear-blast-192257

Hey everybody, Joe here from the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. If you enjoy what we do here on the show and you think it's worth your hard-earned money, you can support the show via Patreon. Just a $1 donation gets you access to bonus episodes, our Discord, and regular episodes before everybody else. If you donate at an elevated level, you get even more bonus content. A digital copy of my book, The Hooligans of Kandahar, and a sticker from our Teespring store. Our show will always be ad-free and is totally supporter-driven. We use that money to pay our bills, buy research materials that make this show possible, and support charities like the Kurdish Red Crescent, the Flint Water Fund, and the Halo Trust. Consider joining the

Legion of the Old Crow today. And now, it is working. And welcome to the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. I am Joe, and with me, hopefully, is Liam. Yeah, I'm here, buddy. Standing by you. You're thick and thin, and Zen caster just taking a fucking dump everywhere for a little peek behind the scenes here at the lineswood by donkey studio uh my headphones broke uh which um the same pair of headphones i've been using since we started this podcast they finally died died. Rest in peace, homie. I'll never forget you. However, that left me with a small problem of not having any other kind of headphones

other than my workout Bluetooth headphones, which are not good. And my normal recording setup does not allow me to use Bluetooth. So I am now using my backup laptop, which i never used to record um which also meant that i did not have the uh hell of a way to die uh uh lines led by donkeys joint zen caster account password saved uh everything is really going fucking great for us honestly it's so bad um and then the link wouldn't work zen caster kept crashing so we can is it for people who don't know anything about podcasting zen caster is a platform we use so we can record uh because we're thousands of miles apart it sucks but somehow it

is the best platform at what it is because like zoom takes up too much too many resources discord sucks for it um so now we're finally recording um and jesus fucking christ it is too early for me to be doing this i'm too angry i'm ready to go back to bed and like an angry old man i need my nap um liam how are you doing buddy tell me something better uh well your uh your alma mater just knocked off number four, Kentucky. That's a shame. College basketball, if you care about that. I know you do. Well, yeah.

I wish nothing but bad things happened at university. Something good. What's something good that happened today? I left work early. Chris left to work early. There you go. We hung out while I had a migraine. We had to dig, but we found something good, despite the fact it's because there's a migraine.

On the bright side, Liam, we do have something that is a bigger disaster than this podcast currently is. Is it the Imperial Japanese Navy getting owned, Joe? It is. It's always a fun one to go back and beat the drum to. But we're talking specifically about the japanese battleship yamato um and the reason why is because it is the biggest dumbest goddamn battleship to be built and it died in the most japanese navy during world war two way possible um now i think we've made it something of well-known fact here on the show that we like dumb stuff it doesn't it doesn't matter like especially when it comes to weapons like obviously everybody knows

i was a tank crewman so like i obviously you don't become a tank crewman because you like tanks a little bit um you're like you're you're a full-blown tank nerd it's kind of like my name is so conceivably that this is war thunder actually never played war thunder before i don't believe you people in the podcast discord constantly try to get me to play it i think i've played one game with them a couple of times and i just fucking hate it um like a long time ago when alice was on the show we gushed for probably about 30 minutes about how much we like dumb old battleships. And this is like,

this is the king of dumb old battleships, except it's dead. So we're going to talk about the Japanese battleship Yamato. And the main source for this episode is Rushel Spurs A Glorious Way To Die, which is a solid name.

I did use other sources, so please check the full bibliography uh for all for everything also the book is from 1981 um so it reads kind of weird uh but it's probably still the best book about the battleship yamato and the very dumb way in which it died um so what do you know about the battleship Yamato other than it keeps making appearances in anime for some reason? It's really big, right? And then the idea was, didn't it fire like one time during, was it late at golf maybe? That's mostly correct. Yeah, I will say that is correct because the other times it fired it

was not supposed to but we'll get to that and then it got sunk uh in 45 that's basically what i know about it yeah i mean you're not wrong um now the yamato began life as most military weapons platforms of its kind kind of do as a giant fuck you to someone else um which you know that's always solid solid solid ground in which to build our beautiful battleship guard yeah yeah uh it's it's always it's always nice to build things out of spite isn't it folks but this is like imperial spite so it's the worst kind of spite. Now, after the Russo-Japanese War and World War I, Japan was the premier imperial power in the Pacific along with the United States. And in case you aren't entirely sure of how the story ends, spoiler alert, World War II.

Now, after World War I, where the US and Japan were on the same side, and pretty much everybody else who aren't really allies but allies of happenstance rapidly building up naval forces while scrambling over former german colonial territories it's gonna end in a war right um now they expanded their navies to the extent that people began to get a little worry that uh guys uh we can't pay for all of this shit. We should probably cut it out. Don't worry about it. Don't worry about it. Shut up. That's a future problem. Which is kind of funny, because if you turn back time just a couple years before,

there was the dreadnought arms race was another cause for the build-up up to World War I. So it's like, you guys just did this. History's dumb as shit. It a it's a big dumb flat circle yep a big dumb flat circle and the train that is running on that circle is being driven by the dumbest man possible probably a habsburg of some kind um however you know

everybody knew that building up naval forces this way was untenable in a long period of time, but nobody wanted to be the first one to blink because empire makes people dumb. Oh yeah, as well as many other things, yes. Yeah, today I learned imperialism. Dumb? Question mark? Bad? Deep thoughts on the lines of my donkey's podcast. We're very tired uh the the the the computers that we are working on fucking hate us just let us have stupid takes um actually you know i am a little upset that my headphones broke

that those headphones and this mic that i'm currently using are the last remaining things from day one of the show. Uh, so the mic is still going strong. I have no complaints with it, but now I have to go buy a new headphones. Um, the, uh, my old headphones will be buried in full lines led by donkeys, regalia and a military ceremony, which is fire. That's right. Yeah, that's right. Um's right um but you know uh finally the world powers came together in a joint disarmament agreement uh at the washington naval conferences of 1922 uh this was the first arms control meeting in history and arguably probably the most successful uh because well for like 10 years anyway, right? Because if it was that successful, we wouldn't be recording this because it wouldn't have happened.

The United States, China, France, Britain, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Portugal were all invited. Germany was not invited due to being forcefully disarmed because of World War I. And the Soviet Union wasn't invited because the Russian Civil War literally ended like a week before this. So nobody was really... Yeah, like, no real point to, like, call them to the table. The Soviet Union isn't going to be slapping together huge naval fleets anytime soon, you know?

They're too busy putting the fire out in the house, which has also been exploded for like 10 years um at the end of the conference the parties actually did agree to a standard naval displacement size which is one of the things that people worried about right like ships are getting bigger and bigger and more expensive and more complicated more powerful um and for for people who aren't aware of of speak, which I count myself amongst you, displacement is the overall size of a ship. Now, it also limited aircraft carriers, submarines, and virtually everything else. It also allotted each nation a certain naval size they could keep.

It sounds like a treaty that a defeated nation gets forced upon them after they lose a war right um it's it's also why treaties like this really don't exist anymore um now it was a 10-year agreement uh and everybody hoped that if nobody built any nightmares sea monsters monsters, super carriers, aircraft carriers, stuff like that, maybe this whole world peace thing might last because it would force it. It would force parity on everybody. If you can't build this dominating Navy, why would you go to war with someone who has the same size and kind of Navy that you do? It'd be pointless. That was kind of its goal. However, in practice, it didn't really work out that way. For instance, Japan still kind of came out on top. This is more of a political win and

also a military one, but mostly political. Because if anybody remembers back to maybe their high school World War I history, if that is a subject that you had in high school, I don't know. But at the end of World War II, Japan was kind of treated like shit. Despite being a member of the victorious allies, they weren't treated like their peers in Europe or anything. Wow, that's crazy. I can't believe they would do this. Yeah, they weren't part of the the victorious allies they were just kind of like a sideshow on the pacific and they consider this like a pretty big insult to their own imperial glory as one does uh because when you have imperial glory you tend

to be insulted over dumb things um now to be completely honest despite japan being awful and all of the countries in europe also being terrible and also the united states everybody's bad um most of this boiled down to just good old-fashioned european racism uh you're like it's the same reason why everybody's like i can't believe that uh you know we didn't know how much killing power all of these weapons had in world war one and like we did a series on the russo-Japanese War where Europe just willfully ignored everything the Japanese learned during that conflict

with the idea of like, well, that couldn't happen to us. No, not with us. Right. Yeah, genius. It's very stupid. But in this agreement, they were treated like a peer to the other colonial powers of the world. Hell, even better than some of them.

For instance, they were allowed to maintain a larger navy than France, traditionally an imperial power. This is the first time a non-white, non-Western empire was ever treated as an equal in any kind of way, really. non-Western empire was ever treated as an equal in any kind of way, really, and arguably the last time. Because obviously, after the Japanese empire gets the atom split above their heads, there's no empires that aren't really considered non-white and non-Western anymore. I mean, depending on who you ask about Russia, et cetera, et cetera. But anyway, however, just limiting the size of fleets and anybody's desire for more sweet, sweet, succulent dirt as both the US and Japan continue to expand into the Pacific. Though I should asterisk this one a little bit. The US was pretty much already done expanding into the Pacific. This is the 1920s.

Soon we'll take Singapore. Yeah. The Brits might be mad about that one at the time. It's ours now. Scoreboard. Look at me. Look at me. This is my island now. By the 1920s, the US was pretty much done expanding.

Instead, they were solidly in the hold what you got type situation. Because they took the Philippines, took several Pacific Islands. Virtually all of that was from the Spanish-American War. And then the wars that followed were more of like putting out colonial fires like the Philippine-American War and the Moro Rebellion and stuff like that. Japan was new on the scene because Japan's a new imperial power. They're the ones rapidly

expanding. They had just crushed Russia. Russia had also just crushed itself. Japan had taken over a lot of former German colonies. Japan is rapidly attempting to take things over, which of course runs directly into the American Empire and the Pacific and also the British and the French. And fucking everybody has an empire. Yeah.

And now during this time, the Japanese Navy doctrine also began to change or at least it tried to uh because if there's one thing the japanese military really likes it's hating on itself um you know infighting is notoriously bad during the the japanese imperial era of military history the army hates the navy the navy also hates the, depending on what kind of ship you're on. The air wing hates the boat guys. It's kind of incredible. Now, the Japanese doctrine at the time had been the same. It had been used in the Russo-Japanese War almost two decades before, which literally boils down to big ships, big guns, which worked, obviously, legendarily so at the Battle of Tsushima. And if you're new to this show, go listen to our Russo-Japanese War series. A lot of people consider it our best.

I don't know if I agree with that, but at least listen to the Tsushima episode. I would recommend it. Who can blame them for believing they can continue running like that, right? But there is a new thing, aircraft carriers and naval air power. But there is a new thing, aircraft carriers and naval air power. And most people, most forward-thinking people that were part of an imperial power with a large, kind of knew that the inevitable war between the US and Japan wouldn't be fought over the seas as much as it would be fought over the skies in the sea. But kind of how I pointed out, if there's one thing that is a constant in the Japanese military at this time was infighting. These two groups were the battleship guys versus the carrier guys.

And this happened within the halls of the government. And even the government is militarily factional. Japan effectively operates as a military dictatorship with an emperor. So the army has their guys in government, the navy has their guys in government the navy has their guys in government and then people also have their battleship and carrier guys um so this war began to happen in the halls of the government into the 1930s when the japanese government bear with me here actually got more nationalists and expansionists wow wow that's actually impressive yeah it's i mean we talked a lot more about this during our Nanking episodes. So go listen to those series, those three episodes if you really want to.

wanted a few islands around Japan, but always wanted China and Korea. But now they're thinking the empire should stretch virtually all across the Pacific Ocean and Southeast Asia. This would have been thousands upon thousands of miles of mostly ocean, which would require a huge navy in order to conquer, defend, and then police. Right. But this was immediately punched in the face by this Naval treaty, which they were still a party to.

It meant they had not been building any new ships since like 1921. And everything they had been doing was pretty much just upgrades to what they had. And everybody kind of knew in order to build this huge empire and maintain it, they would need to build a much bigger fleet. And they found their way out in the Manchuria crisis. Now, Japan, to make a long story short, fabricated a reason to invade Manchuria. And then they called it an act of self-defense.

As you do? Thankfully, that is not something that happens anymore in the world, right? But the whole world got pissed off at them. This is like the League of Nations era. Everyone was telling them they were a bunch of assholes, and it was very

obviously not in self-defense. So to kind of counter everybody telling them they sucked, they withdrew from the League of Nations. And with that, all international treaties. This included the naval treaty that was holding them back. So now they're free and clear to build the freakish battleships of their dreams. To build the freakish battleships. Of their dreams. Enter the. Yamato class battleship. Which is kind of.

Rightly called a super battleship. Super battleship. And since this is a. Japanese super battleship. I assume this means it's eyes turn blue. And it's hair turn blonde. After screaming for three episodes. Oh wait. I actually have a drop

for that. Thank you. Now, as soon as those trees were gone, they started working on this battleship. Now, here's some raw numbers here for people who want to know the numbers nerds. I know you're out there. Fucking freaks.

You disgust me with your love of arithmetic. like the numbers nerds. I know you're out there, but you're just, you disgust me with your love of arithmetic. Now they looked over 20 different plans and they settled on a final design by 1937. And just keep in mind of these dates and remember what they're building and just like kind of hold onto that in the back of your head. So they come up with the final design in 1937. The final design called 1937 um the final design called for a standard displacement of 64 000 long tons um a full load displacement of 69

988 long tons um and it was armed with a main armament of nine 460 millimeter naval guns mounted in three different three gun turretsrets. Each one of those turrets weighed more than an entire fucking destroyer. As you do? Jesus Christ. Yes. In case you're wondering, yes, it is the largest battleship ever made with the largest guns ever installed in a

ship. And that is a record that will almost certainly never be broken because why the fuck would you do that? Congratulations Imperial Japanese Navy navy you did it now this the super battleship concept was thought of because at this rate japan knew that they were going to fight the united states they considered inevitable because they they just knew they were eventually going to invade uh american territories or uh because the u.s finally get sick of them fucking around in China, which that had happened already. No matter what kind of super racial ideology the Japanese Empire subscribed to.

When I say it that way, it sounds like the world's worst fucking Patreon. They knew that when the war came, they would never be able to build as many ships as the US did once the US got onto a war footing. So the idea was to build a couple of these monster battleships that would be so powerful that they would support the rest of the Japanese fleet to engage the American Navy in a single decisive battle and win the war. Kind of like- A hundred horse-sized ducks. Yeah. Yeah. They're like... A hundred horse-sized ducks.

Yeah. They're doing the hundred horse-sized ducks thing. They kind of thought the same thing about Pearl Harbor because like, aha, when we destroy all of their Pacific fleet, they'll have no choice but immediately capitulate to us, which means that despite a lot of Japanese officers training in the

United States, they clearly didn't know anything about the United States of America. If there's one thing that you can consistently describe the US as, it's too stupid to quit. And of course, for Japan, the US is operating on a different doctrine of shipyard, just go brr, and you spit out

chips like a game. The US just spits out spit out like a game. Yeah. And the U S just spits out warships, like a game of empire, total war with cheats running. But this is what they thought. And when you think about it, it also makes Pearl Harbor make a lot more sense in context when they,

they never saw this as a total war as much as we're going to fight for a little bit. And then we're going to get terms like they didn't, they didn't think this ended with the home islands being fucking nuked. I mean, likewise, Japan is a lot like the United States in the way that up until then,

all of their wars had been somewhere else. They've been fighting in China, they've been fighting in Korea, they've been in Korea, whatever. It's like, Japan will be fine. Japan never gets attacked. Come find out why our healthcare isn't free. That's right.

Now, five different ships of this size were planned and quickly approved by the government with very little dialogue. It really pissed off the air wing portion of the Navy who said, hey, we need more fucking aircraft carriers. And man, would those guys be right in a couple of years? However, only two of the ships would ever actually be finished the yamato and the musashi and we'll talk a little bit about the musashi as well today but we're mostly talking about the yamato um work began on the yamato in hiroshima 1937 so okay just for starters went from approved to working on in the same year um the ship was comically large to the point they had

to haphazardly expand their shipping yards in order to fit it in there and build it. Something you think would have planned out ahead of time. But the thing is, the Musashi class, or sorry, the Yamato class was meant to be a secret, like a state secret. It was considered

so secret that workers only learned how big it was going to be and the full details of what they were actually building when they showed up to work. That's probably not conducive to great construction ability, but I honestly have very little to say

about how bad the construction of the ship went. But we'll talk about that a little bit. The Japanese also built a giant canopy over the dry docks where it's being built as if to hide it from view. It's so goddamn big. What else could it be?

This is like a Clifford, the big red dog situation. Like, you know that we know that's a dog. Like, why are you hiding it under that? It's 20 feet tall and red. Right.

We know what's happening. Clifford, the big red battleship. I feel like Clifford is more of a Gundam situation. He's being driven by a, by something that's happening. Clifford, the big red battleship. I feel like Clifford is more of a Gundam situation. He's being driven by something in his head. That's my conspiracy theory. I believe Louise or whatever her name is. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Now, construction was done in 1941. So, four years. Not even a full four years to build the largest battleship ever made. Could you imagine that happening now? Hey, man, we built the Empire State Building in a year, you know? Shut up. Yeah, but it's like the same fucking era. Like, back in the day when nobody cared about safety and

everything was just slapped together with steel, you could put together a lot in a very short amount of time. There's probably like three Japanese workers just fused into the hall of this fucking thing due to workplace accidents. That rigidity remember fellas the emperor does not believe in ocean safety starts with you as i as i'm sealed into the battleship it's it's a poster that says safety starts with you and uh it's a guy just like committing seppuku for fucking up his job remember workers at first

you don't succeed kill yourself so it doesn't happen again no and like this is launched only nine days after the attack on pearl harbor and months ahead of schedule um which i like i'm honestly quite confused here because for the first time in the history of the show, this happened without any real problems or cost overruns. And all of the tests went according to plan. Yeah. To be fair, you're just scaling up a boat, Joe. I mean, this isn't the first boat we've talked about. Like, remember the the the monitor from the Civil War, like during the trial, it's all get towed around.

That's a new boat. This this is a new boat this this is a refined boat sir yeah like the uss iowa uh during its testing after being refitted exploded and killed a whole turret crew you know this is the part where i say like the yamato exploded and wiped out like a nursery or something but like nothing happened it passed all the tests without any problems um and ironically that one of the men who hated the the yamato more than anybody else in its very existence upon this cursed earth isoroku yamamoto uh because he wanted more aircraft carriers had it assigned to him as his flagship

he's a motherfucker yeah now this is when the yam enters the Pacific War, but not really. Despite being the combined fleet flagship with Isoroku Yamamoto on board, it was kept far away from any danger. Because you don't want your admiral slugging it out with the enemy fleet and getting clapped between the shoulder blades by a cannon. Bad for morale and shit. The Pacific War at sea was fought in such a way that it proved Yamamoto completely correct about the future of naval warfare and rendered the Yamato relatively useless.

There's a battle of Midway and the battle of Coral Sea that happened at such a range that the two fleets never actually saw or fired on one another, which rendered cartoonishly large battleships kind of as an you know a dinosaur right and we're eventually going to talk about midway and coral sea and all

that we're going to every battle that we talk about during this episode at a later time is definitely going to get its own episode or series but you know the yamato's there so we have to bring them up um now it's the the Yamato sat through all these campaigns without ever really doing anything, and then was parked near the Caroline Islands and effectively just parked there and done nothing with. Because while the Japanese

thought its Acme-ass-sized guns were really cool, they hadn't actually thought about how hard it would be to make bullets that size. So they didn't have any. It had turrets the size of destroyers but had no ammunition. Great. Don't make me tap the sign about

logistics. That's good foresight. That's good foresight, boys. I got an even dumber one for you. So this is during the entire Guadalcanal campaign and there the Yamato sat unable to support the Japanese ground forces because they had no fucking ammo. Also, a bigger problem that Japan really could never fix, which again, they should have known from the time they drew this thing in a napkin in a bar somewhere.

The Yamato uses a lot of goddamn fuel and we do not have enough fuel to actually use it. So they literally parked it there because they didn't have gas much like your shitty broke friend in high school this japanese empire did not have five dollars for gas um now probably this is again probably something they should have thought about while they're on the drawing board uh as a country without any fuel reserves of their own and most of the entire reason why this war started in the first place you know the lack of fuel from the united states but you know who am i i'm not the emperor of japan you moron there was there

was also an even more basic problem that the japanese had never actually charted the waters around guadalcanal and they were afraid they're just going to run their giant monster ship aground which to be fair whatever well this is it a spoiler about me eventually becoming the emperor the waters around Guadalcanal, and they were afraid they were just going to run their giant monster ship aground. Is it a spoiler about me eventually becoming the Emperor of Japan? I don't know. I don't know what you're doing. I got some things in the oven. At best,

all I can hope for is Imperial side piece. It's not a bad place to be. It's just the podcastcaster to concubine hey uh emperor uh emperor's wife who i named i can't remember slide in my dms if you're listening to the show please i believe the show has just been banned in japan um oh we had a good run now all of those things are logistical reasons are very stupid. But one more is actually even is a secret, secret dumb sauce to this overall dumb gumbo that we're building here. I don't know soups.

It's politics. All right. Just for a fucking. Politics. The Yamato class is something of a thing of national pride for Japan. Nobody wanted to be the guy who commanded it and got it fucked up. If your dad had a really nice car, you don't want to be the one that borrows it and, I don't know, hits the mailbox or something. Scraps it short, right.

Yeah. Nobody wanted to be like... Isoroku Yamamoto purposely never committed it to combat for reasons of it was his flagship and also i don't want to be the one that scratched the paint on this fucking thing but in 1943 yamamoto died uh in a very weird american assassination plot involving fighter planes which is very fun and we will talk about it at some point in the future but the rest of the combined fleet commanders were just as reluctant to actually use the fucking thing. So it sat at the Caroline Islands for two years, not doing anything.

And despite that, it's sitting there for two years. It broke like it had all sorts of mechanical problems because one part. Yeah, because one of the magical things about military equipment vehicles ships planes whatever it is is they have a mysterious and and powerful ability to break without doing anything and just sitting there it's like every monday when i was in the army and you have to go like check your vehicles uh for uh pre-maintenance checks like how the fuck does this thing have a have a like an oil leak it hasn't moved like it just randomly spring an oil leak like parts parts fall apart the things things fall apart joe the center cannot hold

now as if to further underline how kind of useless such a large ship was after repairs were completed she was turned to a transport ship uh rather than a bear like being used for her original intention uh ferrying soldiers around to different islands during the island hopping campaign. And while doing this off the coast of the Admiralty Islands, she was hit with a torpedoed fire from the USS Skate, because this is back when the US pretty much just named all of its submarines after fish.

There's quite a few weird US submarine names in this episode. It's a submarine with an illustrious history that was only in service for three years before being used as target practice for the nuke test at bikini atoll uh outstanding yeah go uss skate um but the torpedo opened a 16 foot wide hole in its side um because it turned out that the amato was not armored for torpedoes whoops uh they had talked about yeah big uh big oversight there for a

battleship in in the 40s um they had almost installed it but it was it was decided that it was not important uh and it weighed too much um but uh the ship was also so huge that this this torpedo would have killed a smaller ship um but the Yamato is so fucking big that it could take on 3,000 tons of water and not sink. Jesus Christ. Yeah. Once again, it was used as a troop transport and ferried supplies and men for the Battle of the Philippine Sea. This is a battle that went so badly for the Japanese that the Americans jokingly referred to it as the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot. Yeah.

426 Japanese planes were shot down and three aircraft carriers were destroyed. So things are not going great. Not going great for the Japanese Empire. However, this is where the Yamato finally fired its guns in anger by accidentally shooting a friendly transport ship and missing before then wildly opening fire with its AA guns and friendly planes as they flew by. Solid work, everybody. You did it. Getting that campaign star.

Seriously, I found a detailed log of all of the Amato ship's movements and this is the first time I could find outside of gunnery practice that they had fired any of their weapons. But I did find a really fun little gem from the memo. Quote, November 1st,

1942, aboard Yamato, a festive dinner is held for all skippers. So that's nice. They had a festive dinner. You deserved it, shooting at your own people. Yeah. Big boy needs to eat.

It's hard work. After that, the ship underwent more refits, and these ones are much more extensive, and seem to have been made just because life in the Japanese military has to be as miserable as it possibly can be at all times. For example, while under refit, everything

flammable was removed from the ship. This included all bedding, sheets, blankets, everything. So you're probably asking, like, okay, so what the fuck do they sleep on? Well, from here on out, the crew aboard the ship, all 3,233 of them would sleep on planks of wood. No thanks. Yeah, without any pillows or blankets. And if you're wondering, what's the upside here, well, it's that the plink of wood could be used as a repair kit

should something happen aboard the ship. That was it. Imagine, if you will, you're in the Japanese Navy. You've somehow managed to survive late into the war. And you're like, man, we've just been torpedoed. My last ship got blown up. All of my friends who became pilots are dead.

We barely have anything to eat. What could possibly be worse? Hey, boys, go throw all your blankets overboard and sleep on this plank of wood like, motherfucker. I don't want to be here. Could someone just kill us

already? Now, finally, the goddamn thing would be used as originally intended on October of 1944 at the Battle of Leyte Gulf, one of the largest naval battles of all time. But, you know, just kidding. It didn't actually get to be used as originally intended

because it got ambushed by two submarines, the Darter and the Dace. They ambushed the Japanese convoy as it passed through the Palawan Passage as it was on its way to the battle. Virtually every other ship around the Yamato got hit and went down. The Yamato actually managed to struggle through the ambush

without getting too messed up. Once again, the Yamato never fired a shot. The next day, the Musashi was sunk during the Battle of the Sibion Sea. And then the Yamato made it into the centermost battle of the larger battle of the Leyte Gulf, the Battle of Samar. Now, this is the one where the Yamato finally actually fights. And we'll almost certainly cover this in detail at some point. And it's one of the few places outside of Pearl Harbor that the Japanese caught the Americans by surprise.

And that's with the heavily armed Yamato and 22 other large ships coming up against the somewhat hilariously named Task Force Taffy 3 for the US Navy. Great name at least. navy they were made up like task force taffy sounds like uh like a government investigation into taint a tainted taffy factory like we have we have looked into the source of the contamination why is there gunpowder and all the candy because it's good this is how candy should be you bite into it too hard you blow your fucking teeth out that's right the task force taffy 3 was made up out of a dozen destroyers and destroyer escorts none of which had the firepower to counter something like the or really even dent its dent its bumper you know that's of course if requiring that the

amada was good at its job because it wasn't um another thing with um you know not having a ton of ammo right like they're still struggling to have uh surplus ammo and fuel for that matter is it's kind of hard to train people if you don't have that kind of stuff so the amada's crew despite many of them being there for years at this point, were pretty much brand new sailors. Outstanding. If you think about it, all they've been doing is ferrying people and supplies around. They have fired their guns maybe like five times. So they're not exactly an experienced crew. And this is where the Yamato trained its guns on an enemy ship for the first time and opened fire.

The battleship's official record states that it sank a destroyer, which the crew actually mistook for a cruiser. But this claim is completely unsubstantiated. Nobody else ever saw it. Also, there's no evidence that it killed one. Horrific. Other than their own crew, who, remember, were quite inexperienced, just kind of eye-fucking it. Like, oh, we totally hit that one. then their own crew who remember were quite inexperienced kind of I fucking like oh

we totally hit that one and the Japanese fleet during the battle of Samar was badly confused oftentimes getting turned around and lost and firing on themselves as the task force Taffy three ships kind of did their best to run around and fuck with them

because they were you know having a they're having a one hell of a last stand here. So there's also a very good chance that the Yamato did hit a ship. It just happened to be one of their own. Also, this would be the last time the Yamato would fire its guns. That's it.

Good job. Terrific work. A+. Morons. Japan built the largest ship in the history of battleships. Only for it to fire its gun in anger precisely twice. Hit nothing, except maybe also its own ship. So,

that's cool. I do need to point out here, there's probably some people that are getting mad at me that I'm not going into the Battle of Samar the Task Force Taffy 3 story in depth, because that's absolutely a story for a series or an episode or the Battle of

Late Takeoff in general. That's going to be something else at some point. I don't want to tell it all here and have to retell it later. During the Battle of Samar the Amato was once again forced to pull back not from battle damage or anything else.

It ran low on gas again. Again, probably not hitting anything. But remember, this was 1944. The fuel shortage in Japan is hitting critical levels. So at this point, they put the Yamato in dry dock for over a year because they just don't have gas for it. At which time, very few people outside of the psychos within the imperial court, meaning high commanders for the military and a few politicians, everyone knew all well that Japan is truly fucked and the war was not going to be won. Unfortunately for, you know, the Japanese and most of the world,

one of the psychos who, who still truly believed in the concept of a Japanese victory, or at least a negotiated defeat was Emperor Hirohito. You know, oftentimes he is. Yeah. Oftentimes he skips criticism. If anybody has listened to our, our Nanking episodes, you will know that that should not be the case. He very much had an active hand in the war, and he's a fucking asshole.

heroes or whatever but he believed that japan still had the ability to win just one decisive battle in such a way that the americans would decide to negotiate rather than to like continue kicking them in the teeth and laughing about it repeatedly which has been going on for about two years now you know i won't negotiate motherfucker yeah negotiate with my boots uh it's it's one of those things that like they obviously they weren't going to retake the empire or anything but they also didn't realistically believe that they had to worry about Tokyo being invaded but now they really did because this is happening during the battle of Okinawa

and that's where Hirohito decided that this is where the decisive battle would need to be hence the horrific kamikaze wave attacks unleashed by the 5th Air Fleet, which had been given responsibility for defending the island. We talked more about this during our episode on Kamikazes a long time ago,

but the Okinawa Kamikaze attacks were insanely damaging to the American fleet. Hundreds of ships were fucked up by it. But the problem is you eventually run out of kamikazes, right? Yeah. It's an expendable resource. When people are your bullets.

Also, the kamikaze, we're never going to be enough to turn the tide of the war. Emperor Hirohito then instructed the Imperial Navy to join the island's defense. Now, many people in the senior Navy ranks were shocked at this. They considered a huge waste of the Navy's remaining warships and resources, as they barely had enough to defend the home islands.

Should it come down to that, which at that time, they absolutely were thinking it would. come down to that, which at that time, they absolutely were thinking it would. The once great Imperial Japanese Navy was less than a dozen or so operational ships at this point. Everything else had been destroyed. And mind you, they don't have gas. They don't have fuel. They barely have ammo. That is not right.

Yeah. And they pointed this out. And point out another very important part is like the naval force might not even be able to reach okinawa as they had no more aircraft carriers or planes so like the entire convoy would have to go towards okinawa without any air cover directly towards the massive uh american navy parked off of okinawa and bombing at the ship. And then there was, oh, by the way, we did find some gas. However, there's only enough for a one-way trip to Okinawa,

meaning it was, by default, a suicide mission. Outstanding work. Yeah, that's what you like to hear in the planning phase of operation. Hey, well, you're not coming back boys see ya yeah uh the plan went forward because having an emperor is not exactly the best form of government um it was dubbed operation ten go or heaven one as opposed to the sequel which we all know is much worse this is put with uh put under the command of vice admiral cg ito who was tasked with leading a fleet composed of the Amado, the cruiser Yahagi, and eight destroyers. The entire plan

looked more like something you might try in World of Warships or some other video game than in real life, which also might be why I never had a hope of actually succeeding. The plan was literally to just crash through the American fleet that was off the coast of Okinawa, aim for mostly

supply ships, hit the beach, run aground, and then become the world's most expensive pillbox until it got destroyed. Sure. At which point, the survivors, if there were any, were to jump out of this burning wreckage of the world's largest fucking battleship and

run onto the island and join the army in defending it. Flawless plan, right? Bulletproof. This plan was written with a crayon. Like, Emperor Hirito making explosion noises and stuff.

It's like, no guys, it's totally gonna work. It's the original and I'll give you that. A whole bunch of admirmirals are like, we're going to fucking die, aren't we? I haven't seen this in three days. Let's do this! I don't know how many of my sailors the Emperor is going to kill,

but I know how many I have and it's not many. Well, the crew was not super happy about this mission. People often like to frame the japanese military as like brainwashed etc because it's you know very simplistic and you know that may have been the case for large groups because obviously peer pressure is a huge thing um but a poor the yamato people were not fucking happy um and that on a mission that was like they weren't told, like, we're going to die for the

emperor, etc., etc. But once everybody heard the details, the mission was like, oh, so we're going to die, huh? Okay. Well, I have things planned for the future, but I suppose I'll fucking die instead, guy. Thanks. And it was such an obvious death sentence that the captain of the Yamato

kicked all the naval cadets off the ship before they set off because they were considered too young. A few guys were able to fake being sick and got transferred to a different ship. However, this also meant other sailors had to be transferred onto the Yamato so they could die.

I'm really sure they were not excited about it. Oh, well. Look, I'm just saying, if I excited about. Oh, well. What are you going to do? Look, I'm just saying, if I was on the Yamato bike, man, my butthole is burning. Can I please go to a different ship? Look how big it is. I'm dying.

I am bleeding out of every oar. Just pulling out your pants to show someone. Love to show my prolapsed anus and get off the cursed battleship. You leave that in, Nate. I would drink fuel to fake an illness, but we don't have any of that either. I made it here. This place sucks.

All I have is this plank of wood getting splinters. The captain even took pity on older sailors, some of whom were over 40 years old, and sent them home with the excuse was they sucked at their job anyway, so they might as well send them back to their families. Mind you, the rest of the crew, some of whom

were only 17 years old, again, probably not super happy about that. Like, why the fuck do I get to die? I'm 17. That old fuck has had an entire ass life. Let him stay. Then on the night before the mission was set to go, the Japanese military did have one thing in copious amounts.

Sake. So they just loaded barrels of sake onto these fucking ships and let everybody get shit-faced. Because if there's anything worse than going on a suicide mission, it's going on a suicide mission with a hangover from sake. Though I would also like to believe that they just kept drinking through the whole thing to make it more like tolerable like look our skills don't actually matter here we might as well be fucking drunk now this operation it required the entire uh convoy of ships now called the surface attack special force or surface special attack force,

depending on how you read it, which middly cool name, I guess. Um, just, I feel like they could be a band name, but not a good band. Like it would be like,

Hey, do you remember warp tour in 2009? Did you see surface special attack force on the fourth stage behind the fucking beer tent? Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh,

and I got kicked in the pit there i assume yeah someone in that band has been me too'd you know like like every other band they have it they have it don't worry yeah damn it i hate this scene man uh every every time i hear something else about some band i enjoyed like 20 years ago or 10 years ago like yeah fucking Of course they did. He's a pervert. That's great. Now, this required the Special Surface Attack Force to surprise the American

forces and take them unaware. However, this is something that Japanese kind of knew they couldn't do that great as the American codebreakers had been owning their shit for years at this point. Though having your plans being openly transmitted to the enemy have never really stopped the Japanese Navy before.

The Americans wouldn't know exactly what was going on, but they did hear that the Japanese Navy was moving out. There's only one place you're going to go. Okinawa is the

only show in town at the time. So, of course, they didn't know that the plan required the Japanese to Leroy Jenkins themselves directly into the American fleet. But they knew the fleet is setting off. They could only be coming here. Admiral Raymond Spruance, the commander of the US Fifth Fleet, ordered a pack of submarines to station themselves off the southern approaches to Japan's inland sea. This is because everybody knew at this point that the vast majority of the Imperial Japanese Navy was docked.

And if they set out, there's only one place they could go. So yeah, they found out quite quickly, like, okay, they're going this way one of the subs cited the amato and spruance is about to order six battleships to go and fight it until admiral mark mitcher got pissed off and demanded that he be allowed to kill the ship with his carrier-based planes and i would really like to think he did this as a fuck you to the japanese navy given that the amato was literally built for ship on ship fighting he's like no we're not even gonna get it we're not gonna give them the satisfaction of dying in a ship battle. Let me use my planes.

Fuck you. Spruance, after getting yelled at by his subordinate, finally just said, you know what? Quote, fine. You take them. I don't care. That's sad. The Japanese fleet ran directly into Admiral Mark Mischer's Task Force

58, which was waiting for them. It was made up of 16 fast carriers and escort battleships, cruisers and destroyers. So the Amado is well and truly fucked. At first, rather than directly assault the Japanese ships, the Americans sent in fighter aircraft to clear away Japanese air cover, assuming like anybody else. Why the fuck would you send out a naval force without carrier-based planes covering them and uh they found out that there simply were none um and so they could kind of like flow flew around in circles like uh what do we do now guys um yeah like uh are they are we are we punked are we being punked right now? Where are the Japanese planes? All of the pilots are...

It's just some guys. Ashton Kutcher flies a fucking Japanese Euro into the fray. You're all punked! The last episode of Punk'd got really dark. I don't really understand why they went with that angle. Now, at this point, the carriers began spitting out dive bombers and torpedo bombers. Eventually,

300 American planes took the air to attack the Japanese convoy. Shortly afternoon, the Yamato detected incoming aircraft, and at 12.32, the first wave of Americans attacked. Knowing how important the Yamato was to the overall but very, very stupid plan, the Yahagi peeled away, trying to pull the attention of the attacking planes onto themselves and give the Yamato time to keep going, but that didn't even work for 10 minutes. From this point on, the Yamato is pretty much in a shooting gallery. A pair of 1,000-pound bombs struck the starboard side near the aft tower, destroying the aft radar room of the Yamato. side near the aft tower destroying the aft radar room of the yamato minutes later two more bombs hit and set dozens of fires across the ship which according to the book uh that for this that they used for this episode the crews didn't even attempt to put them out like yeah whatever let it burn who

gives a fuck fuck i don't fucking care man me and my prolapse another bomb exploded below deck while still another annihilated the aft 155 millimeter turret um and then the turret exploded sending burning fragments into other magazines and exploded a different turret melting the turret crew to the wall like a fine coat of paint then it got hit with three torpedoes along the port side, tearing a giant hole down the side of the ship and flooding the outboard port engine. Another torpedo hit the auxiliary steering room and caused more flooding.

Another ship was listing a full six degrees. This is generally known in sea life as bad. However, the captain hit them with a pro-gamer move of simply flooding the other side of the ship on purpose to bring it back to level. Then the second wave arrived at 1259.

So all this has happened in about 20 minutes. The incoming planes kept attacking the damaged port side, but missed, but had been so badly damaged that the shock waves of their bombs exploding into the ocean still caused damage to the inside even though the ship's anti-air defenses had been upgraded it really didn't matter because the aa crews were swamped with enemy planes as the u.s utilized the tried and true zerg rush strategy 300 american planes circled the dying Yamato like vultures.

That's a lot of planes. Yeah. If vultures dropped the thousand pound bombs on their prey, which would be cool, honestly. Arm the vultures. The massive main cans of the ship had been also firing AA shells. They're called the Sanshiki shells. This is effectively carpeted the sky with burning shrapnel that hung up there and could set planes on fire and stuff it didn't matter um another explosion

caused the ship to list so much the main cans couldn't even be used anymore more and more bombs hit this goddamn thing it refused to die at so far it had been honestly i know right like that's the thing it worked great until i got hit with eight torpedoes and 15 bombs in 20 minutes i'll never go down me and my prolapse butthole are gonna butt chug this sake you come out and take me

it's it's literally that that picture of the dog on fire and it's like this is fine it's like a japanese yeah it's a japanese admiral holding a cup of sake in a burning ship like we got him right where we want him boys this is fine one of the uh one of the bombs blew up

the power to the a.a guns crews of this thing called a gun director um so it's kind of a power cell that moves the a. aa guns because they're huge right otherwise you have to manually crank them so now all the japanese anti-aircraft crews are moving in slow motion because they have to manually crank these giant aa guns um which thankfully for them uh it was the least of their worries because by 1 p.m the ship was listing so badly to the port side they couldn't even use

their AA guns anymore it was listing to 18 degrees but still moving somehow it was still moving more than 18 knots they had flooded so much that the captain was running out of places to counter flood to bring the ship back level and at this point he said

fuck it and counter flooded the starboard engine room so now the ship is barely moving um but it's still moving it's kind of like if you out if you're put in a situation you have to outrun a grizzly bear and for some reason your only option is shoot yourself in the kneecap that's what he did this worked for about another 10 minutes as the last wave of american attack planes began to make it rain it was hit with four more bombs three hit the port side at midship and one on the bow power to most of the ship's guns was already completely severed and then another torpedo

flooded its uh one of its last two engines and a different torpedo uh honestly did the funniest thing it could do explode under the ship's rudder, jamming it in place. So rather than killing it, the ship is still moving forward under one engine at like five knots or something, but it's locked into a counterclockwise turn because the rudder is now dead. So it's in a literal spiral, but still going,

just fire gutting out everywhere in a limp dead circle refusing to die now the ship was listing so badly that its unarmored underbelly was now exposed above the water oh sucks to suck i guess so they fired a torpedo into that and it still didn't fucking die uh it was listing at 22 degrees and going at eight knots and in a un like uncorrectable circle of death and but like the cat was like fuck you i'm still going i still got this baby all gas just me and the whole cast no brakes except the gas is sake Except the gas. We ran out of gas. Yeah, there's no gas because we're all in a sake. Let's do this. At this point, virtually everything is on fire.

The bridge had just about every alarm that could be screaming at them was screaming at them. But the most important one was the main magazine was overheated and it was going to explode. This is generally known as how you kill a ship, right? Even a ship as big as the amato at 2 p.m the captain finally gave the order to abandon ship so this has been going on for two hours at this point um and at that they they tried to flood the magazine with seawater to prevent an explosion therefore giving the crew more time to escape unfortunately they found they'd been hit with so many goddamn bombs and torpedoes that the mechanism used for flooding the magazine was broken so they couldn't i'll just go back inside i'm just going back inside whatever tell him i'm here it's that scene from titanic where the guy

just said the captain just watches the ocean crash through the window it's just another fucking torpedo probably at this point the ship is listing so badly a goddamn torpedo could launch into the captain's estate room um now uh the captain and fleet commander went down with the ship but as honorable as that sounds pretty much everybody else did too because he waited so fucking long to

order the uh the ship to be abandoned only 20 minutes after the ship was abandoned or was ordered abandoned the the Yamato exploded, putting out a fireball so large that it could be seen from the Japanese city of Kagoshima, 180 miles away.

That's good, right? Yeah. And probably the biggest explosion anyone in Japan would see for at least a few more weeks. Oh. Now, out of the Yamato's 3,322 crewmen, 3,055 of them died.

Only 23 officers and 246 enlisted men survived. Now, you're probably wondering, wow, the American losses for taking out that ship must be a lot. Nope. The Americans lost 10 aircraft and 12 men. And that's not just the attack on the Amado, but

the entire fleet, including the Ahagi and the five destroyers. So, in the end, the world's largest and most powerful battleship ever built died in two hours after a short lifespan of doing absolutely nothing.

But it still holds the record. It can claim that. Congratulations, boys. You did it. Now, Liam, thank you for joining me here today. You're welcome. We do a thing here on the show called Questions from the Legion. If you would like to ask us a question from the Legion,

donate to the show, ask us on Patreon or our Discord. I just asked the discord before we started recording and we will answer it on air what's the dumbest way you almost died that's a good one this could go this could go the distance

for both of us because we're both very stupid yeah I was trying to distill moonshine when I was trying to distill Moonshine when I was 19 or 20 and the still blew up. Did you jump in a time machine from the

fucking 20s or something? Shut up, man. It was working so good. You'll be the first motherfucker to die in a still explosion since Al Capone was machine gunning people. You have a TBI. Now,

mine actually, anybody who's ever read The Hooligans of Kandahar probably already knows this one. Once upon a time when I was in Afghanistan, I was having to lead the patrol as the point man, and I was really mad at my lieutenant at the time. I don't

exactly remember why, to be completely honest. When you pick someone to be point man you pick someone you trust to be point man you can't micromanage appointment right like you have to leave them alone because you trust them to not like lead the patrol into a bomb or whatever so you're walking around checking everything making sure there's no suspicious wires plates whatever whatever and but like the whole time he's micromanaging me i'm like this guy's fucking and this is like we're walking for 12 fucking hours right like i this is driving me insane so to spite him i i saw like whenever i saw

anything suspicious i'll just go and jump on it like i literally just kick it like uh do you see sir i'm checking it do you see i'm checking it as i'm kicking all these things that could very easily be bombed and killed you're very dumb yeah i was i was not a smart person i'm i'm not a smart person but i also wasn't then either anyway that is today's questions from legion i would like to thank everybody for listening today i'd like to thank liam for struggling through technical problems which seems to be a theme now we didn't normally have. No, now we do. Yeah. Liam, plug your shows.

10,000 losses. Well, there's your problem, Seder. Screw it. Listen to those. Put those in your ear holes. And everybody, thank you for listening. If you like what we do here on the show, consider supporting us on Patreon.

You get a ton of stuff, episodes discord access stuff like that you get this episode before anybody else and if you if you don't want to do that that's fine I'm not going to tell you how to spend your money but leaving us a review is free and it helps us so maybe consider doing that again everybody Liam

thank you and until next time build the giant stupid battleships and then do nothing with them