Battleship Musashi

[MartinJQuinn]

Just finished Battleship Musashi: The Making and Sinking of the Worlds Biggest Battleship, by Akira Yoshimura. It tells the story of the Japanese battleship Musashi, from inception to sinking. It's not a very big book, and it focuses mostly on the challenges the building yard at Nagasaki faced when building such a behemoth.

Some of the challenges involved the size of the ship and the fact it was being launched from a slip (Yamato was built in a drydock) and the fact the Nagasaki yard where she was built was right in the middle of the harbor, in plain sight of British and American consulates.

The portion of the book that deals with the building and launching is the longest, and frankly most interesting, part of the book. The portion of the book that deals with Musashi's service and sinking are dealt with more of an overview than much detail.

A quick and easy read, this is and interesting book, but I was disappointed at the lack of detail regarding Musashi's last sortie and sinking.

Next up: The Ultimate Battle, by Bill Sloan, which is about the Battle of Okinawa.

[bengtsson]

Did many survive the sinking of Musashi? Were they picked up or left to die at sea? Fewer survivors would have left few to tell the tale in detail. I did enjoy the book though. The building of these super BBs ate up a lot of resources.
A good account of the mechanics of the sinking are found in the Journal "Warship No. 45" January 1988. This is a pretty detailed study of the known hits and effects that sank Musashi by Tim Thorten. He looks at the mission, the AA armament of Musashi and the allied forces that confronted the BB. A classic story of mass naval air power versus the ultimate Battle Ship. Just a matter of how much punishment a hull can take before going under. A massacre best describes it.

Of course not everything is known about the sinking as the author makes clear in his article. " Not surprisingly, information on this attack is hard to come by, due to it's ferocity and the fact that centralised control of the damage control teams started to break down". So researching the sinking didn't provide all the answers about numbers of hits etc.
Bob B.

[MartinJQuinn]

Did many survive the sinking of Musashi? Were they picked up or left to die at sea?

Several hundred were picked up by DDs and cruisers. Many of them ended up being infantry in the defense of Manila. Others were sequestered in Japan once they came back - similar to what they did with Midway survivors.