Yamato and Musashi were the largest battleships of all time, with the heaviest naval guns (18.1in/46cm) and the thickest armour (25.6in/650mm armour on turret faces) ever put afloat. A third unit, Shinano, was completed as a carrier. Most Japanese naval documentation disappeared in August 1945; much was destroyed in American firestorms, some was taken home for safe custody by naval officers and constructors, to reappear slowly in the public domain. Accurate data and many details of ship performance and losses came from postwar investigations by the US Navy. The earlier published plans of the super-battleship pair were very crude: they were released by the USN after the war, appearing in jane's Lighting Ships 1947-48. Fukui's Nippon No Gunkan (1956) had a not-entirely-accurate single fold-out sheet (a lift from quarterdeck to hangar was claimed). A 1975 publication, Plans of Ships of the IJN - History of Shipbuilding in the Showa Era, contained 28 drawings of Yamato.
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