



ARTICLE BY TIM THORTON

© 1987 WARSHIP MAGAZINE

© 2001 SPACECRUISERYAMATO.COM





Just before dawn on Christmas day 1943 the Gate class submarine USS Skate was patrolling about 180 nautical miles northwest of Truk. The main operational base of the Japanese Combined Fleet, when her surface search radar picked up three contacts at 23,0(X) yards steaming southeast at 19 knots. As the contacts closed, they showed themselves as one large vessel and two smaller ones, the latter apparently being escorting destroyers. In the growing light of the tropical dawn, Skates Captain, McKinney, dived his boat although he lay to the west in the darkest part of the horizon and fired a salvo of four torpedoes at the largest target. With his submerged speed limited to 10 knots he had no real alternativeCourse of action and although he was unable to identify it he was rewarded by the gratifying sound of one detonation. However, the ship did not stop and Skate continued her patrol unmolested and unaware that she was the first American vessel privileged to catch sight of the giant battleship Yamato, the pride of the Imperial Japanese Navy.



Such was the parlous state of the Japanese merchant marine, even at this stage of the war, that Yamato had been dispatched as a distinctly unusual fast transport from Truk to Japan on 12 December 1943. She had arrived at Yokosuka with out incident five days later and for the next three days was loaded with supplies and soldiers. With two escorting destroyers she then sailed for Truk and her meeting