The Yamato was the largest and most powerful battleship ever built. She played a minor role in two battles before being ordered, in the final months of World War II, to launch a Special - suicide - Attack against the American fleet assaulting Okinawa. This mission was not expected to have any success, rather, it was intended to distract the Americans and provide an opening for a simultaneous kamikaze sortie. The Yamato was tracked from the moment she left the Inland Sea and sunk barely halfway to her destination. Over two thousand Japanese sailors died with her. The attacking American planes suffered minimal losses.
In her brief, lyrical account, Jan Morris describes the Yamato as a beautiful ship, "a Dreadnought of Dreadnoughts", but obsolete before she was even finished. The pride of the Imperial Japanese Navy, she was too valuable to be risked in battle, and so conserved until the war was lost, then sacrificed in a futile gesture. Sacrificed with her were the imperial ambitions of the homeland whose name she bore.
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