Yamato

Some folks on twitter highlighted an article in a 1953 issue of Proceedings (US Naval Institute Press) by a Japanese naval designer on the construction of Yamato and Musashi. The Japanese destroyed much of the documentation on the design and construction of the two ships at the end of the war, leaving US naval investigators with a lot of guesswork as to how the ships were conceived and built. Over time there’s been a lot of scholarship on the vessels, but apparently this article formed the basis for post-war analysis.

Extraordinary efforts were also made to reduce her launching weight as much as possible. From the standpoint of providing the necessary hull strength, the hull of the Musashi had to be completed up to the weather deck before she took to the water. In this case, it was feared her launching weight would be* excessive. It was then planned to install the armor deck after she was launched. But this was extraordinarily difficult because the decks above the armor deck were to be constructed on the armor deck. It was then necessary to install temporary bulkheads in the place of the armor deck on which to construct the upper decks. After she was launched, the deck armor plates were installed to replace those bulkheads. All this was accomplished only after extraordinarily hard work.

The hush-hush policy with regard to the construction of those battleships from the very beginning required the historical launching of the Musashi to be done by stealth. In the afternoon of the day preceding the launching, all the entrances leading to the slipway where the Musashi was being built were closed without notice and communications to the outside were severed. Workers, who were for the first time told the launching hour, labored throughout the night, and the Musashi was launched in the early morning of the following day with little of the ceremony which otherwise ought to accompany such an occasion. In Nagasaki city, too, especially on the opposite coast side of the shipyard, a heavy guard was maintained that early morning to keep people from observing the launching.