A torpedo stopped Yahagi early.
Once the cruiser became immobile, every later aircraft had an easier target.
Bomb after bomb landed.
Torpedoes struck.
The ship became impossible to save.
The sequence illustrates why speed matters to surface warships under air attack.
Armor protects.
Antiaircraft guns defend.
Maneuver keeps the attacker's aim uncertain.
Remove maneuver, and the other defenses face greater pressure.
Yahagi lost that advantage almost immediately.
Yamato lost it more gradually.
Both ended the same way.
The destroyers were required to make impossible choices
Japanese destroyer captains had responsibilities beyond saving their own ships.
They were expected to screen Yamato.
They needed to maneuver against aircraft.
They had to assist damaged vessels.
They had to rescue survivors.
A destroyer approaching a stopped cruiser to help it became a target.
A destroyer slowing to pull men from the water became easier to attack.
A destroyer staying near Yamato remained in the center of the air assault.
A destroyer leaving increased its chance of survival but abandoned men in the sea.
Those choices explain why escort losses were so severe.
Isokaze was damaged while attempting to operate near the crippled Yahagi.
Other destroyers spent precious time rescuing survivors after the major ships sank.
There was no safe role once the formation lost air protection.
American pilots were attacking more than famous ships
For the carrier aviators, Yamato was the obvious prize.
Her size made her unmistakable.
Pilots knew the significance of a Japanese battleship at sea.
Many focused on her.
Others attacked Yahagi and destroyers because the entire force mattered.
Destroyers could rescue men.
They could launch torpedoes.
They could screen Yamato.
They might still reach Okinawa independently.
The American goal was not simply to produce a photograph of Yamato sinking.
It was to eliminate the surface threat.
The result shows how completely they succeeded.
The Japanese formation never reached the halfway point to its intended battle
U.S. Naval Institute's account emphasized that Yamato went down less than halfway to Okinawa.
That fact strips away much of the romantic interpretation.
Yamato did not fight her way to the beaches and sacrifice herself under American naval gunfire.
She did not fire her main battery into troop transports.
She did not beach herself as a shore battery.
Her crew did not join the defenders on Okinawa.
The entire operational concept collapsed before the force came close to accomplishing its central task.
The ships died in transit.
The American surface battle line waited for an enemy that never arrived
The modern battleships prepared by Spruance never had to fire on Yamato.
This was probably the safer American outcome.
A surface engagement would have been dramatic.
It also would have exposed American ships to Yamato's enormous guns and Japanese torpedoes.
Carrier aviation destroyed the threat at long range instead.
That was exactly what naval air power was supposed to do.
The battleships remained valuable.
They simply were not needed for this particular enemy.
The battle therefore became an accidental demonstration of carrier doctrine.
The carrier commander could reach farther.
The battleship commander could only wait.
April 7 was almost the reverse of December 7
The comparison should not be pushed too far, but the irony is difficult to miss.