At nearly 72,000 tons fully loaded, with nine 18.1-inch guns in turrets that each weighed over 2,500 tons, more than an entire American destroyer, Yamato was the largest and most powerfully armed battleship ever constructed. Yet it fired its main guns at enemy surface ships exactly once, and today it is best known around the world as an animated spaceship. This episode traces how Japan's quality-over-quantity answer to American industrial might became a victim of the changing nature of warfare and a tragic symbol of a collapsing empire.

From the Kure Naval Arsenal, where the dry dock was deepened by a meter and a sisal rope canopy hid the hull from spy planes, the story follows the ship as Admiral Yamamoto's distant flagship at Midway, a heavily armored troop transport shuttling between Truk and Kure, a torpedo target for USS Skate in Decem ...