The Yamato
DQ reader Kwadwo Burgee sent me a link to an unbelievable website about a Japanese battleship named the Yamato. The documentary, Sinking the Supership: The tragic WWII story of the Yamato, the largest battleship ever built, was already shown on PBS on October 4, but this website has much of the information, including a section titled "Anatomy of Yamato" that documents its unbelievable size. Here are a few excerpts:--The hull was 863 feet long and displaced 70,000 tons of water.
--the ship had 150,000 horsepower and had a maximum speed of 32mph. At top speed, the propulsion system used 70 tons of fuel oil an hour.
--the range of her big guns was 25 miles.
--there were 150 anti-aircraft machine guns, a few capable of firing 440 rounds per minute.
--the steel armor alone weighed 23,000 tons. Her main guns were shielded by plates of armor 25 inches thick.
Those are some incredible numbers, and you can find out more here:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/supership/
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