WELCOME TO THE INTERNET'S YAMATO & MUSASHI BATTLESHIP PHOTO ARCHIVE! (EST. 08/2008)
MAJOR UPDATE I - 08/2019 WITH DOZENS OF NEW HIGH RES PHOTOS!
MAJOR UPDATE II - 04/2024 & 07/2024 WITH 46 NEW PHOTOS AND DIAGRAMS ADDED. THEY CAN BE FOUND ON THE LAST 4 PAGES OF THE GALLERY
NAVIGATION INSTRUCTIONS:
INDEX PAGE LINKS ARE LOCATED ABOVE THE INDEX PHOTOS ON LEFT. TO SEE INDIVIDUAL PHOTOS, CLICK ON EACH THUMBNAIL, THEN CLICK AGAIN ON THE ENLARGED PHOTO IN THE LOWER RIGHT-HAND CORNER OF THIS PAGE AND FOLLOW THE DIRECTIONS.
READ ROBERT LUNDGREN'S BOOK ON LEYTE GULF:
'THE WORLD WONDER'D' - BATTLE OF LEYTE GULF by Robert Lundgren
YAMATO SHIRTS, POSTERS, MUGS, CAPS NOW AVAILABLE AT THE YAMATO ZAZZLE STORE:
BATTLESHIP YAMATO ZAZZLE STORE
Archive photos are from the USA National Archives & the USN, & are in the Public Domain.
LINKS:
IJN IN COLOR WEBSITE BY IROOTOKO_JR
IJN YAMATO - TABULAR RECORD OF MOVEMENT
THE ROBERT LUNDGREN HISTORICAL RESOURCE IMPERIAL JAPANESE NAVY PAGE (COMBINED FLEET) IJN SHIP DOWNLOADABLE 'PERSONAS' FOR FIREFOX BROWSER YAMATO'S FINAL BATTLE CGI FILM YAMATO AT THE BATTLE OF LEYTE GULF CGI FILM Historian Anthony Tully, (co-author of "Shattered Sword - The Untold Story of The Battle of Midway"), Forum: 3 indispensable books for any Yamato enthusiast: Janusz Skulski-The Battleship Yamato-Anatomy of a Ship Russell Spurr-A Glorious Way to Die - The Kamikaze Mission of the Battleship Yamato Yoshida Mitsuru-Requiem for Battleship Yamato (An incredible survivor's account of the battle.) Reconstruction of Yamato as she appeared during her Final Sortie in April 1945:
A chunk of human flesh, thin but the size of a man, hangs down from high atop an arm of the range finder and sways unceasingly.
Where did it come from? That's ten meters above the deck...Because of the excessive list, the shells of middle size and above cannot be moved. The carts carrying the shells would tip over; it is still more dangerous to carry them by hand.
The anti aircraft guns and the secondary guns are completely silent. Only the machine guns remain for the last desperate battle…
Countless bullets have poured in on the bridge. The attrition among the men is severe. A bomb falls at us from straight ahead, grows in almost no time - a black dot, a pebble, a spindle. Just as I hold my breath thinking it will land right on top of us, it whizzes past, barely missing our heads, and falls away."
Yoshida Mitsuru, "Requiem for Battleship Yamato"
Yamato is under attack during the third and final wave - note the geysers in the water near the aft of the ship, probably caused by US Navy planes' .50 cal machine gun fire. Look closely above Yamato - you can see 4 dots that are probably US Navy planes.
Photographed from a USS Yorktown (CV-10) plane.