[katana]

Thanks for the link. Looking at that picture it’s easy to see that after we cancelled them the Japanese went ahead and built one, calling it the Yamato. Said boat is now a gigantic rusting fish haven on the bottom of the Pacific.

[JamesP81]

Thanks for the link. Looking at that picture it’s easy to see that after we cancelled them the Japanese went ahead and built one, calling it the Yamato. Said boat is now a gigantic rusting fish haven on the bottom of the Pacific.

While they'd have been magnificent ships, they'd also have been a colossal waste of money needed for aircraft carriers. Yes, they'd have been good for shore bombardment, but we had enough surface combatants for that already. Even the old pre-war era battleships' smaller 14 inch guns worked well as artillery for ground forces.

The end the Yamato met rather conclusively demonstrates that the era of the battleship had come to a decisive end.