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1 April - 22 June 1945Reputable sourceWell documented

A super-battleship's last voyage ends the age of the battleship

On the timeline · around 1 April - 22 June 1945 · Allied VictoryAllied VictoryA super-battleship's last voyage ends the age of the battleship1945

What happened

The largest and deadliest operation American forces conducted in the Pacific, the invasion of Okinawa put a field army of eight divisions ashore against Japanese defenders dug into the island's coral interior rather than its beaches. On 7 April, carrier aircraft sank the Japanese super-battleship Yamato as it sortied on what its own commanders knew was a one-way mission, a moment historians treat as the symbolic end of the battleship as naval warfare's central weapon. Kamikaze aircraft sank 36 US Navy ships and damaged 368 more, making Okinawa the Navy's bloodiest battle of the war, worse even than Pearl Harbor. Japanese commander Mitsuru Ushijima committed ritual suicide on 22 June as his defense collapsed; the campaign officially closed on 2 July, two weeks before the United States tested its first atomic bomb in the New Mexico desert.

Why it matters

American casualties above 12,000 dead against a relatively small, already-isolated island convinced planners that an invasion of Japan's home islands could cost casualties in the millions, a calculation that weighed directly on President Truman's decision, made just weeks into this same battle, to use the atomic bomb instead.

How we know

US Tenth Army after-action reports and Navy ship-loss logs from the campaign, along with Japanese 32nd Army records recovered after the war, together document both the land battle's grinding attrition and the naval kamikaze campaign in close detail.

Sources

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