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Fuso-class Battleship (1944)

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Like Fuso, Yamashiro spent most of the Pacific War in the Inland Sea as a training ship, and sortied with the Combined Fleet for the Battle of Midway, where she was too far away to see any action. She entered Kure Navy Yard for a minor refit in August 1942 (during which her main gun barrels were replaced), and rejoined the fleet the following month. Her next refit came at Yokosuka in July 1943, during which she received a Type 21 air / surface-search radar and twenty-one (two twin- and seventeen single-mount) 25-mm. antiaircraft guns. Like Fuso, she was earmarked to participated in Operation: "Kon", but instead entered Yokosuka Navy Yard for another refit, which saw the installation of another Type 21 radar, along with two Type 13 air-search and two Type 22 surface-search models. Antiaircraft defenses were also increased with the addition of sixty-six (eight triple-, nine twin-, and twenty-four single-mount) 25-mm. antiaircraft guns and twenty-four single-mount 13.2-mm. machine guns. An air defense center was fitted on the "pagoda" bridge structure in an open-air platform one level below the main gun foretop, and all her lower-most portholes were closed over.

The disastrous Battle of the Philippine Sea all but crippled the IJN's carrier forces and sealed the fate of the personnel on the islands, but a group of Combined Fleet staff officers led by firebrand Captain Kami Shigenori loudly demanded that one more attempt be made to relieve the siege of Saipan. Combined Fleet Commander-in-Chief ADM Toyoda Soemu grew so tired of Kami's pressure for the relief of Saipan, he decided it was time for the outspoken officer to either put up or shut up. Yamashiro's CO, Captain Shinoda Katsukiyo was transferred to command of Tosa, and Kami - whose only sea command experience until now had been a brief six-month stint as CO of light cruiser Tama - was assigned as his replacement. While command of one of the Emperor's battleships was by no means a small honor, it also depended on which battleship one was assigned to command. By a general consensus, Fuso and Yamashiro were tied at the bottom of the list...the sisters were considered the ugliest ships in the IJN (those unsightly "pagoda" bridge structures could be thanked for that), and assignment to either vessel was considered the worst-possible seagoing post. Add to all of this the fact that both ships were nearly thirty years old and had not aged gracefully (one of Fuso's outgoing COs had let slip the old battleship was in such poor condition her hull plates actually leaked constantly).

Pressed into front-line service one last time, Fuso and Yamashiro departed Ujina (near Hiroshima) on 27 June 1944, bound for Saipan. Most of the higher-ups (including ADM Toyoda himself) had deemed the plan a suicide mission, but Kami would have been even more insufferable had the mission been scrapped. With only destroyer Yukikaze and the four Yamadori-class torpedo boats for escorts, the end result was but a foregone conclusion. The small task force was sighted while still nearly fifty miles from Saipan and overwhelmed by U.S. carrier aircraft. The only survivor of the group was (predictably) Yukikaze, who returned to Kure with her decks crowded with survivors. Out of the combined 3,260 officers and men from Fuso and Yamashiro, only twenty (ten enlisted from Fuso and two Warrant Officers and eight enlisted from Yamashiro) survived.
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These ships were wasted on worthless raid.