WELCOME TO THE INTERNET'S YAMATO & MUSASHI BATTLESHIP PHOTO ARCHIVE! (EST. 08/2008) MAJOR UPDATE - 08/2019 WITH DOZENS OF NEW HIGH RES PHOTOS!
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:
This 1944 photo shows the radar antennae on top of the main fire control director.
The windows just underneath the masts near the top of the tower are to the main bridge where Yoshida spent most of the final battle; Incredibly, although equipped with massively thick bullet proof glass windows, the port holes on the bridge were kept open during the battle, as the Bushido Code demanded that the bridge crew be exposed to the same dangers as the unprotected machine gun crews on deck below.
This stupidity caused dozens of needless casualties on the bridge, vividly and graphically described by Yoshida in his book.
As he put it, each time that chunks of torn flesh and bodies were removed from the bridge, bloodstains remained on the floors and walls, "like birthmarks".