Pacific Fleet, and it was intended that the big guns of the Combined Fleet would deliver the loop de grace. This planned scenario does much to explain why Yamato's designers changed emphasis towards favoring an anti-shell protective defense.



The unwillingness to wait for a suitable joint to he developed can also be understood in relation to the Imperial Navy's overall plans for the future. To establish her necessary technological lead, secrecy was vital to forestall any American response, but despite inordinate Japanese zeal some rumor of what was happening inevitably crossed the Pacific'. The US had, therefore, recommenced naval building and any delay in the construction of Yamato would have sacrificed the Imperial Navy's slender lead.



Rivalry between the army and navy also played its part, not only over fundingsuch items as expensive battleships, hut also in determining national policy. In such a climate delays in construction could have given the army the upper hand and so had to he avoided.



Two major ironies overhang this discussion. The obvious one is that all this time, effort and money spent on battleship construction was to prove virtually irrelevant. The future of naval warfare lay with carrier air power not the big gun. Both Yamato and her sister Musashi were to succumb to aerial attack, their main l8in guns virtually unused in anger. The second is that the torpedo fired by Skate was armed with a warhead of 635lb of a new explosive, 'Torpex'. This had twice the explosive power of TNT and with its introduction in 1943 it upset,