See This Battleship? It Took An Unthinkable Amount of Weapons to Sink It.

Robert Farley

Security,

Japan built one hell of a warship. 

Its loss was in vain; although an elaborate sacrifice of carriers decoyed American battleships away from Leyte, Kurita’s attack on U.S. transports and escort carriers was foiled by the extraordinary courage of a few American destroyer captains. In 2015, Paul Allen, cofounder of Microsoft and owner of the Seattle Seahawks and Portland Trailblazers, led a team of researchers who discovered Musashi’s wreck. It lies in several pieces at the bottom of Sibuyan Sea.

Japan withdrew from the London Naval Treaty in 1936. The chief Japanese negotiator, Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto, feared that concessions on the part of his negotiating team would lead directly to his assassination upon return to Japan. Japanese nationalists believed that the Washington Naval Treaty system was holding Japan back and preventing it from becoming a first-rate power. Freed from the constraints of international treaties, they believed that Japan could build a world-beating fleet that would push the Western powers out of Asia and help usher in a new era of Japanese dominance.

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