The weather also gave aircraft places to approach unseen.
A ship's antiaircraft crews could lose visual contact with aircraft entering clouds.
The conditions therefore did not simply protect Yamato.
They created confusion for everyone.
The Americans possessed enough aircraft that losing part of the strike to navigation problems still left an overwhelming force.
That redundancy was another form of power.
Yamato's antiaircraft weapons looked stronger on paper
By 1945, Yamato carried a huge battery of Type 96 25-mm antiaircraft guns along with larger weapons.
The number was impressive.
The effectiveness was not proportional.
The Japanese 25-mm weapon suffered from several limitations.
Its sights and fire-control arrangements were inferior to later American systems.
The weapon vibrated heavily.
Magazines required frequent changing.
Gun crews were exposed.
American ships increasingly benefited from radar-directed fire and highly effective 40-mm Bofors and 20-mm Oerlikon guns.
Yamato's antiaircraft defense could still be lethal.
It was not enough to stop hundreds of experienced carrier aircraft arriving in waves.
NHHC's reconstruction repeatedly notes how visually heavy yet inaccurate much Japanese fire appeared to American pilots.
Ten American planes were lost.
The attacking force still destroyed nearly the entire Japanese formation.
The 18.1-inch guns could not solve an aircraft problem
Yamato's main battery could fire special antiaircraft ammunition.
These sanshikidan shells were sometimes called “beehive” shells.
They were intended to burst and scatter incendiary elements across a broad area.
In theory, an 18.1-inch gun firing into an aircraft formation sounded terrifying.
In practice, the system had serious limitations.
The massive turrets moved comparatively slowly.
The ammunition created impressive bursts but lacked the precision needed to destroy agile aircraft reliably.
Firing the main guns also created enormous blast effects around the ship.
The weapon was an improvised answer to a threat the battleship had never been designed primarily to fight.
The guns that justified Yamato's existence became almost spectators to her destruction.
Her armor performed better than many people realize
The fact that Yamato sank does not mean her protection failed immediately.
She absorbed multiple bombs and torpedoes.
She remained underway through repeated attacks.
Her internal subdivisions and armor prevented an immediate catastrophic loss during the first wave.
A less heavily protected ship might have sunk sooner.
The problem was cumulative damage.
No armor system makes a ship invulnerable.
Every torpedo introduces water.
Every bomb can destroy systems or crews.
Repeated hits can bypass protections already weakened by earlier damage.
Eventually the ship's ability to manage damage collapses.
Yamato reached that point.
Her armor bought time.
Task Force 58 had enough aircraft to keep attacking until that time ran out.
The torpedo concentration was more important than any single hit
Popular accounts often search for the torpedo that “sank Yamato.”
There probably was no single decisive torpedo in that sense.
The pattern mattered more.
Port-side flooding accumulated.
Counter-flooding became less effective.
Damage-control personnel died.
Pumps failed.
The list increased.
Steering deteriorated.
Speed fell.
Each failure made the next American attack easier.
The sinking was therefore a system collapse.
A battleship can survive a hole.
It cannot survive endless holes opening faster than its crew can isolate and compensate for them.