![]() The Japanese were unaware that Admiral William Halsey Jr.'s entire massive fast carrier task force with battleships had been successfully lured away by a feint. The only time she fired her main guns at enemy surface targets was in October 1944, when she was sent to engage American forces invading the Philippines during the Battle of Leyte Gulf. Although she was present at the Battle of the Philippine Sea in June 1944, Yamato played no part in the battle. Musashi took over as the Combined Fleet flagship in early 1943, and Yamato spent the rest of the year, and much of 1944, moving between the major Japanese naval bases of Truk and Kure Atolls in response to American threats. Throughout 1942 she served as the flagship of the Combined Fleet, and in June 1942 Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto directed the fleet from her bridge during the Battle of Midway, a disastrous defeat for Japan. Laid down in 1937 and formally commissioned a week after the Attack on Pearl Harbor in late 1941, Yamato was designed to counter the numerically superior battleship fleet of the United States, Japan's main rival in the Pacific. She and her sister ship, Musashi, were the heaviest and most powerfully armed battleships ever constructed, displacing 72,800 tonnes at full load and armed with nine 46 cm (18.1 in) main guns. ![]() Yamato, named after the ancient Japanese Yamato Province, was the lead ship of the Yamato-class battleships that served with the Imperial Japanese Navy during World War II. ![]()
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