16. The Imperial Japanese Majesty’s Ship Musashi was one of the largest battleships ever built
Commissioned in 1942, Musashi was one of two Yamato class battleships built by the Japanese, the largest and most powerfully armed battleships ever built by any nation. They carried nine 18 inch guns as their main armament, and their secondary armament was of a caliber relegated to the main battery of cruisers in most of the world’s navies. Neither of the ships survived the war. Yamato was sunk by United States naval air forces in April 1945 while conducting what was essentially a suicide mission against the American forces deployed before Okinawa. US carrier forces engaged the ship and its escorts at sea before they reached the island. Musashi was sunk by American forces during the battle of Leyte Gulf in October of 1944.
An indication of the power and strength of Musashi can be gained by the amount of weaponry required to sink it. At least 19 torpedoes and a like number of aerial bomb hits struck the massive ship before it rolled over and sank, taking about 1,000 of its crew with it, while about 1,300 were rescued by the Americans. In March, 2015, an expedition led by Paul Allen discovered the ship, or rather what remains of the ship, in several pieces more than 3,000 feet beneath the surface. Unlike its sister Yamato, the wreck of which was discovered decades earlier, there has been no discussion of raising the Musashi in the Japanese government. Consideration of raising the former to recover the bodies of sailors entombed within has been based on the esteem with which the crew of Yamato has been held since the end of the war, based on their suicidal sacrifice.
