Unlucky sisters, the younger Yamashiro

Yamashiro, the younger of the unlucky sisters, was launched on November 3rd 1915 (Taishou 4) and commisioned on March 31st 1917 (Taishou 6). Until the Battle of Surigao Strait in 1944, she had long service in the fleet.

The word “unlucky” seems to become the epithet of the Fuso class battleships. But, how unlucky are they actually ? There’s no list of it, so I will try summarizing them as much as I can.

• On completion, they are the largest battleship in the world, but… during trial run, a lot of defects are found (armour, cannon, speed). When her cannon are shot, the shockwave reached her bridge. Even after remodelling, she's still slow. Her armour is also thin.
• Her modification took a long time. It’s said that she spent longer time off the fleet than in the fleet.
• She was listed in the Midway campaign, but due to her slow speed, she returned to base without actually participating in any engagement.
• Her first engagement is the Battle of Leyte Gulf in 1944 where she got sunk by the enemy. ＊ Her sister Fuso was also sunk by torpedo in this mission.
• During the night of her sinking, American ships opened another attack. There's around 300 high caliber shots and more than 4000 medium and small caliber shots. ＊ There's only three IJN ships left during this attack. Mogami and Shigure are heavily damaged and is on their way to escape the battlefield, thus all those bullets are mostly aimed on Yamashiro.
• Out of her 1660 crewmembers, only 10 survived (2 officers, 8 crew).

* There are record that the squadron Yamashiro is assigned to is tasked to provide distant support rather to have direct engagement in the Midway battle.

Even so, all her cannons kept firing until fire reached her ammunition room and caused explosion.

Even though her bridge is built stronger than her sister Fuso, seems like after several remodelling, combat power is not something expected from them. So this made me curious, are they already stuck with such image even since their birth ? Then I found interesting article inside the book Fuso-class Battleship by Gakken. According to the article, during the early Showa era, IJN who’s in disadvantaged position due to disarmament treaty, is forced to modernize their fleet of heavy cruisers as much as they can to increase the capability of each individual ships.* Thus, in this modernization period, battleships without any achievements got the short end of the stick. During this preparation before Pacific War in Showa 10 (1935), the battleship in IJN’s fleet are reduced to only three operational battleship, Fuso, Yamashiro and Haruna. Having only three operational battleship is a serious problem. Even for IJN, battleships are highly regarded in naval warfare. Thus, after the modernization, Yamashiro and Fuso’s combat capability is exceptionally well regarded. (she even got reinstated in shifts with Nagato) * Japan had less ships and weaker industrial power compared to their opponents, so IJN’s naval doctrine is to cover the quantitative disadvantage with qualitative superiority (stronger and faster ship & tactics to face enemy with larger fleet).

leave the frontline to us

Cost of ship building and maintenance are well recorded in the "Navy Department Yearbook" that can be found in public libraries. Of course, Yamashiro is also listed along with other battleships and she’s spending a lot of budget. To pay back for that spending, Yamashiro had to do many work outside combat duty until the other battleships' modernization are finished.

Just an addition from me. In KanColle, after the modification, Yamashiro got more skin exposed when medium or heavily damaged. I think this is to reflect on her softer armour in exchange for speed. For me, she’s the number one ship girl for style balance.

Yamashiro / Battleship Displacement: 34'500t Length: 212.75m Beam: 33.8m Output: 75'000 HP Speed: 24.5 knots Armaments: - 36 cm guns - 15 cm guns - 12.7cm dual-purpose guns - 25mm triple AA guns Airplane carrier: recon Crew: 1'447 men Sister ship: Fuso Participated in: - The Battle of Midway - The Battle of Leyte Gulf

Yamashiro being cute when she scored MVP

Seaplane (Yokosuka E1Y2)