Operation Ten-Go - The bigger they come, the harder they fall

[Music] [Music] 19:45 was apparently a good year if you're making Bordeaux wine but it was decidedly poor a year for the axis as spring came around the Russians were just over an hour's peace time driving from Berlin and the Japanese were faced with an Allied invasion of the last defensible position before mainland Japan itself the island of Okinawa whereas less than half a decade earlier the Imperial Japanese Navy had boasted the largest operational fleet in the Pacific the past few years had seen a decided reversal of fortune their great overseas Fleet bases such as truck had fallen attempts to stop various invasions had ended up costing them more ships than they'd managed to sink and much of the fleet both the ships late started with and those that completed since the start of the war we're now decorating the ocean floor of the two largest battleships in the world one had been taken out by enemy aircraft without ever seeing a hostile surface vessel and the other was sitting at home with the remnant of the Japanese fleet as fuel and equipment shortages saw most of the available resources devoted to the escort forces that were needed to keep vital supplies coming to the embattled island nation of the 12 capital ships that Japan had possessed all but three were sunk with two more turned into hybrid carriers that lacked any aircraft the Haruna Nagato and Yamato were hardly a force to challenge the alloy plates that were ranged against them which were detailing twice or thrice that number of battleships to Shore bombardment duties on a regular basis whilst also keeping a force 3 at 2 or 3 times larger than the Japanese available capital ship fleet at sea escorting their own carriers the once mighty carrier fleet of the Kido butai was confined to a handful of carrier hulls in various states of disrepair or near completion and the squadrons they were designed to carry simply didn't exist there weren't enough experienced pilots to hand to populate the flight decks and most of the Imperial Japanese his remaining aircraft were either being expended in kamikaze attacks on the Allied fleets or being held back for the final inevitable battle on Japanese soil itself the closeness of Allied forces to the home islands and the range that was built into most Japanese aircraft further rendered these remaining carriers a largely academic proposition in any case since the aircraft could reach their destinations from airfields in Japanese home territory that the Allies were going to invade Okinawa was not exactly rocket science to work out and in March top Japanese officials were briefing Emperor Hirohito on the plans for defense the Imperial Japanese Army was planning to throw hundreds upon hundreds of aircraft at the invasion fleet including massed kamikaze strikes the Imperial Japanese Navy looking at the balance of naval power were planning on keeping their remaining assets at home for the final showdown but the Emperor would now supposedly ask but what about the Navy what are they doing to assist in defending Okinawa have we no more ships one did not count a manned or contradict the Emperor and so the Japanese Admiralty began to look at the possibility of sending a naval force to count the invasion it hadn't worked particularly well at Leyte Gulf and the balance of power was vastly more skewed now even than it had been at that engagement there was practically no chance of a conventional naval operation succeeding and it either was precious little chance of achieving anything at all but there was a small chance they concluded a kamikaze operation using ships might accomplish something and thus save the honour that they felt the emperor had called into question but which ship to send there was no point sending a ship that was almost certain to be destroyed on route the Kongo class had proved highly vulnerable to air and submarine assault despite their speed which ruled out sending Haruna Nagato was in poor shape and was also the slowest of the three remaining operational capital ships she was tougher than Haruna but the US Navy would have far too much time to it her that left yamato she was big relatively fast and tough her sister ship Musashi had taken dozens of hits to take down and Musashi had possessed relatively little anti-aircraft fire power compared to the forest of guns that now populated virtually every inch of yamato's deck space that wasn't in the direct blast radius of its main guns with a luck and good timing as well as a small escort she might be able to sneak up on the Allied forces much like she'd done once before at the Battle of Samar then she would need only a matter of hours to make it to the island shell any assault ships that were in range and then Beach herself along with any escorts that somehow had managed to survive she would then be used as a stationary fortress on the island unable to sink until blasted apart she'd the idea was to fight and kill Allied forces until rendered a non-operational the remaining crew would join the rest of the defenders on land and she might just survive long enough to make it and so she was selected for the mission with a small group of escorts pulled together largely to provide additional anti-aircraft capacity and absorb a few bombs and torpedoes on behalf of the battleship it was a desperate if spectacular plan but one that didn't meet with all that much enthusiasm from those who were actually tasked to carry it out it was all very well for the higher-ups to save face by sending their juniors to their deaths but Vice Admiral Ito and his men whilst they did not especially mind dying for their God Emperor did find a number of issues when it came to dying for merely the sake of some senior officers pride especially as it might not actually accomplish anything and they also had the rather pragmatic view that their lives might well be better spent in defense of the home islands where the enemy would come to them and thus the June time from port to engagement and thus the time for the US Navy to send in swarms of aircraft would be relatively minimal it was only the message perhaps somewhat disingenuous Leary worded that the Emperor himself expected this plan to go ahead that persuaded Ito to take it forward the crew when briefed to this effect also agreed to go on ahead with the idea although new cadets and the sick and infirm were taken off the ship as it was not thought they would materially add to the mission and so their deaths wouldn't serve any purpose the remaining crew would now brig in intense drilling in working the anti-aircraft guns and also improving damage control procedures with the direct aim of keeping the ship alive and afloat for as long as humanly possible the force would depart at 1520 hours in the afternoon of the 6th of April 1945 the formation consisting of the battleship yamato accompanied by the light cruiser yahagi and eight destroyers the choice not to bring Nagato along almost immediately bore fruit as to US Navy submarines the thread fin and the hackleback spotted them soon after departure ass around 1830 but they were unable to position themselves to attack due to the formations high cruising speed of 22 knots still it remained an unlucky break since unlike the Battle of Samar the presence of the huge battleship was now known to the US Navy who could begin the appropriate preparations escorting Scout aircraft spotted the submarines and radioed a warning to the fleet which was able to take evasive action as well as keep up its high speed but they were unable to attack the US sub successfully and at 2144 the Japanese formation was treated to intercepting a radio report from the threadfin detailing their precise movements in painful detail early the following morning several contingents of zeros escorted the formation for some time but on the surface one of the destroyers the Asahi mo mahat to drop out with engine problems and annoyingly persistent American aircraft began to shadow the force shortly after the zeros had to turn back nothing the Japanese could do would shake the American Scouts not even a full salvo of type-3 eighteen point one inch anti-aircraft rounds and the fleet would then lose time making a false diversionary move away from Okinawa which likewise failed to fool the observing flying boats and the only bright spot was yahagi managing to jam their transmissions forcing one of them to drop back out of range to make its own report the ever hopeful and persistent hackleback was also seen trailing the formation desperately waiting for somebody to slow down the Japanese had their own scouts out and were informed at 1017 that the US Navy's task force 58 was east of Okinawa about 250 miles away from their own position over in the Allied fleet meanwhile reports of the Japanese Navy task force were coming in and various Admirals started to react albeit without telling each other immediately Admiral Spruance in overall command ordered Rear Admiral adios bombardment force made up of just under a dozen older battleships including a number of expo Harbor veterans to make ready to sail to intercept however Spruance is subordinate Vice Admiral Mitch sure leading the carrier elements of the fleet began preparations for a massive air strike instead only informing his superior once the aircraft were already in the process of launching off the decks of his ships now is of interest here that a number of sources actually disagree on who exactly ordered these carrier strikes some of them just attributed to meetcha whilst others say that Mitchell was indisposed due to illness at this time and his own subordinate Commodore arleigh Burke acting as his chief of staff ordered the attack in his boss's name but either way the strikes were being dispatched it was a huge assault more aircraft than the entire strike and fighter complement of the Kido butai on the day the war had begun were launching from the decks of USS Hornet Bennington Bella wood San Jacinto Essex Bunker Hill Hancock and Bataan a total of just under 400 aircraft in several waves and now began their journey towards the Japanese this would effectively be the equivalent over the Pearl Harbor attack if that attack had used up all three waves of aircraft and this time was pretty much all aimed as a single target the strikes were made up of a 180 fighters armed with 50 Cal machine guns 20 millimeter cannons and 500 pound general purpose bombs 75 SBC to see Helldiver dive bombers armed with a mix of 1,000 pound semi imperial purpose bombs depending on the squadron along with a pair of 250 pound at general purpose bombs nestled alongside the main payload rounding out the force were 31 Avenger torpedo bombers armed with mark 13 torpedoes when he heard about this aerial strike that was being assembled Spruance decided to let them go ahead and replying to Mitch's signal will you take them or shall I with you take them but just in case Atmel do was still ordered to set up his battle line to receive any survivors this consisted of his pick of six of the old battleships along with seven cruisers and twenty-one destroyers in the offing were another six battleships the fast South Dakota and Iowa class ships operating as escorts to the carrier's along with the large cruisers Alaska and Guam however these ships remained with the carrier task forces and were not ordered to position themselves to intercept the Yamato back at the Japanese fleet at 1107 the Yamato zaire search radar spotted a large formation of aircraft splitting into two just over 60 miles away they were heading north straight towards them a few minutes later a message that had spent entirely too long in the decoding room was finally brought up to the bridge it was from a lookout station between Okinawa and the Japanese force reporting that around 150 carrier aircraft had been spotted heading Northwest the Japanese increased their speed to 24 knots to try and close the distance with the enemy a bit faster but by 11:15 the two groups of aircraft that had been spotted a few minutes before had closed 244 miles away and removing in a high-speed whilst at much higher altitudes above two flights of Hellcats were orbiting annoyingly spotting their every move as launch time approached the first major formations of carrier aircraft consisting of more Hellcat as well as corsair fighters began to appear in the skies directly over the Japanese formation they were somewhat faster than the strike aircraft but expected to be clearing the skies of Japanese air cover after a little bit of searching it quickly became apparent that there wasn't any what as there had been around earlier having had to return home for fuel a few hours ago instead they began to corral the arriving strike aircraft which began to circle like a giant carousel now afforded all the time they needed to set up textbook attacks on the approaching Leviathan just over half an hour after the first large formations of US Navy aircraft appeared the eighteen point one inch guns spoke again the type three shells sending great counts of fire through the skies and the Japanese force accelerated still further beginning evasive action and opening up with the rest of their anti-aircraft batteries as the US aircraft began to close in and they came into range this first attack wave consisted of 280 aircraft 132 fighters along with 50 dive bombers and 98 torpedo bombers a few of them mostly formations from the San Jacinto spotted an easy kill and pounced on the limping a sushi mo sinking it in fairly short order there was one immediate takeaway from the storm of anti-aircraft fire that was reaching out for them the USN pilots quickly realized that the Japanese Navy was still using a visual sighting and not radar direction for their anti-aircraft guns as the type threes fire trails and the many tracer rounds were all over the place still quantity has a quality all of its own and so to reduce the amount of incoming fire especially for the larger Avenger torpedo bombers which had to fly low and slow to drop their payloads the fighters led the way with their objective being to use their machine guns cannons rockets and small bombs to suppress the open and lightly shielded anti-aircraft batteries that made up the majority of the barrel count on the Japanese ships the Yamato started the fight with a considerable and he aircraft battery at least on paper her nine 18.1 inch guns could fire the type three anti-aircraft shell and there were also 24 heavy anti-aircraft five point one inch guns as well as a hundred and fifty two of the type 93 23 millimeter cannon on board that lost might not be the world's best anti-aircraft gun but a hundred and fifty-two barrels there's a lot of shells to dodge about the only armament of the Yamato that wasn't usable in at this stage were the two triple 6-inch turrets fore and aft as they did not possess any real anti-aircraft capability in theory the Helldivers would follow the fighters in to [ __ ] the ship further before the Avengers would administer the final blow with mast torpedo strikes lessons had been learned from the attack on the Musashi where an all-points attack had unintentionally resulted in Musashi staying afloat for far longer than anybody expected as various torpedo strikes had countered flooding from hits on the other side even after the breakdown of damage control this time torpedo strikes would be concentrated on the port side of the ship with the idea that mass flooding on one side and not the other would be much harder to counter and more likely to result in the ship rolling over such were the numbers of aircraft attacking that not only Yamato but also the escorts were subjected to numerous strikes but after half an hour of mayhem it looks like it was Spruance and not Mitscher who'd been correct in assessing what would be needed to put the Japanese flagship down the Yamato had come out of the assault appearing to be almost unscathed with most major ordnance directed at her having missed through a combination of a ridiculous numbers of anti-aircraft guns firing all the time and and mitad Lee a very impressive series of evasive maneuvers a single torpedo at 1243 appeared to have been eaten by the torpedo defense system and two bombs that had hit three minutes earlier had apparently accomplished very little beyond starting a fire aft on the other hand however the escorts had come off much worse three out of the seven destroyers the east of cars a hammer kaze an Isuzu tsuki were badly damaged in the first two fatally albeit that they were still currently afloat and the light cruiser yahagi had the first been crippled by torpedo hit and was now dead in the water additionally the damage to Yamato was a little bit more severe than it appeared the aft secondary battery fire control and one of the air search radars were both out of action and so was the aft triple 6-inch turret these efforts had cost the US Navy one hell diver and one Avenger shot down with another hell diver badly damaged Yamato had taken on two thousand three hundred and fifty tons of water along with at six hundred and four turns of additional counter flooding but was still able to operate at speed whilst this much water would have been a serious problem for most battleships at over seventy thousand tons displacement it was proportionally far less of a problem for Yamato that it would be for any treaty airship of about half its size yahagi however was completely out of the fight not that this stopped the US Navy from making especially sure that this was the case while she was dead in the water she would subsequently be subjected to half a dozen additional torpedo hits courtesy of the Avengers and a dozen successful Helldiver strikes eventually capsizing and sinking at 1405 but that all waited her in the future for the minute for 1302 the remaining air search radar aboard the Japanese flagship spotted a new attack wave and at thirteen twenty more US aircraft came barreling in fifty aircraft from Essex and Bataan joined by a hundred and ten from Yorktown intrepid and Langley a stripped of many of its escorting vessels and with a lot of the light in medium anti-aircraft positions knocked out by earlier fighter attacks Yamato was in far less of a position to resist and was now the primary target for all attacking aircraft she would now begin to take many more hits as bombs and torpedoes began to slam home the two new waves attacks would score hits with at least eight torpedoes and up to fifteen bombs the bombs had the most immediate cumulative effect as they demolished gun directors and smashed power cables and generators forcing the surviving anti-aircraft guns to abandon whatever central control had been available and switched to local direction aiming at whatever the gun captain happened to see and rate as the most immediate threat which vastly diminished their efficiency and allowed following craft easier tack runs the torpedoes as per the plan were mostly slamming home along the portside and here again the bombs were doing their work as water poured into one side of the ship and there was a high chance of the ship rolling over even if it had enough buoyancy to technically stay afloat standard practice was therefore to counter flood which involved voluntarily flooding sections of the ship on the other side evening out the center of gravity and giving the damage control parties time to shore up oak heads and pump out compartments Yamato included specially designed compartments for this purpose and in a pinch other parts of the ship could also be used but the water damage control station which would have primarily controlled this effort had been redistributed at high speed to a number of other parts of the ship courtesy of a Helldivers bomb making this course of action difficult if not impossible to carry out less than a quarter of an hour into this new assault the damage control teams were forced to instead flogged the ship's starboard engine and boiler rooms instead sacrificing half the ship's available power as well as hundreds of crew who had no time to get out in an effort to try and keep the ship on an even keel between the flooding and the loss of power the Yamato now began to slow and settle deeper into the water and to add insult to injury although unknown to them another hundred and ten aircraft were even at that moment being launched to finish the ship off almost two full squadrons of Avengers made a single concerted drop on the floundering ship from the port beam Yamato turned into the attack but was too slow to respond to succeed entirely three torpedoes hit and jammed its auxilary rudder in a hard turn to port now slowed and hard to control she became a sitting duck and further strikes began to target individual parts of the ship mostly trying to focus on the stern to completely [ __ ] her ability to control her direction of travel another Avenger was shot down at 1342 shortly after two more torpedoes hit the portside amidships but that - shoot-down was of little comfort to anyone by the time 1400 rolled around the American aircraft had succeeded in their aim and like Bismarck almost four years previously Yamato was wallowing out of control whilst drifting slowly forward with her radios destroyed and the ship definitely going down Admiral Ito ordered signal flags to be flown to bring the remaining destroyers alongside to take off survivors as well as the Emperor's portrait and then leave the ship to its fate during this time three of the bombs and three more torpedoes hit home including a lone torpedo to the starboard side completing the number of recorded meaningful hits a few minutes later the Yamato came to a stop lurched and then began a steadily accelerating roll to port from which she would never recover to add final insult to injury six more Avengers would drop torpedoes that slammed into the rising starboard side of the ship not that that changed much over the next fifteen minutes the ship rolled further and further over eventually settling on her side at 1420 and beginning to slowly slip beneath the waves but not for her who was a slow and drawn-out death as three minutes later her main magazines detonated most likely when fires started by the bombs reached the main magazines the explosion was so loud that it was reportedly heard back on the Japanese mainland and a number of survivors in the water saw several US planes that had been passing close by and knocked clean out of the sky the mushroom cloud from the explosion reached up into the atmosphere and eventually topped out a third of the height of that that would be reached a few months later by the detonation of an atomic bomb in the destruction of Hiroshima whilst the broken red plum added to the seafloor there was apparently according to reckon alysus another explosion which probably mercifully ended the lives of anyone who was left trapped inside nor with the remaining escorts be spared the Asahi mo had been bombed and sunk earlier as we mentioned the Kasumi was crippled and had to be scuttled and this left for you Sookie Yuki kaze and hatsue she mo as the only ones that were vaguely intact and able to rescue survivors Suzuki had wood also managed to make it home despite having had her bowel blown off by steaming in Reverse the entire way there would be only 280 survivors from Yamato along with 555 survivors from yahagi and just over 800 survivors from the various sunken destroyers between three thousand seven hundred and four thousand two hundred and fifty in Japanese naval personnel depending on the source had given their lives in service of the god Emperor and most of the force had been lost in exchange for slightly depleting the US Navy's ammunition stocks and the loss of around ten aircraft with twelve men killed this would indicate that seven aircraft were destroyed in the Yamato's explosion since only three are recorded to have been shot down in action despite the massive distraction that operation tango had provided the 115 aircraft that the Imperial Japanese Army had sent after the u.s. fleet at about the same time had failed to sink anything of any significance losing almost 100 of their number in exchange for damaging the carrier Hancock the battleship Maryland and the destroyer Bennett albeit the latter was relatively heavily damaged one wonders what might have happened if all of those aircraft had instead been available to provide air cover or the Yamato but they weren't and so passed into history the largest battleship that the world has ever seen sailing the seas along with any chance of one last great battleship jewel since the name Yamato is often used in Japanese poetry as a reference to Japan itself the sinking of the ship could also be seen as symbolically representing the final downfall of the Japanese Empire less than a month after the pride of the Japanese Navy slipped beneath the sea Germany would surrender and about three months after that so would Japan and the war would be over that concludes this brief overview of operation tango with one last thing to mention which is that this video would not have been possible without the assistance of a subscriber and member of the discord who prefers to go by a source in America with that knack for finding things so you know who you are and thank you very much for your help in putting together the material for this video that's it for this video thanks for watching if you have a comment or suggestion for a ship to review let us know in the comments below don't forget to comment on the pin post for drydock questions

Channel: Drachinifel

Views: 603,247

Rating: 4.9261384 out of 5

Keywords: wows, world of warships, Yamato, IJN, Yahagi, Okinawa, World War 2, Pacific Campaign, USN, Admiral Spruance, Admiral Ito, Essex class

Id: xCkfPeMls7s

Length: 29min 7sec (1747 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 11 2020