Japan's surface fleet was decimated during World War II. Of her battleships, only one was still afloat at the conclusion of the war.
It was the IJN Nagato. This was one of the ships the submarine USS Sealion fired torpedoes at that day it sank the battleship Kongo and the destroyer Urakaze. The famed battleship Yamato was also in the convoy that day.
From the August 14, 2015, Diplomat "Imperial Japan's last floating battleship" by Robert Farley.
It entered service in November 1920, displaced 33,000 tons, carried eight 16-inch guns and could make 26.6 knots, a combination that made her one of the most powerful warships in the world at the time.
The Nagato and her sister ship, the Mutsu were the first two ships of Japan's "eight and eight" program designed to provide the country with eight modern battleships and battlecruisers (the Kongo and her sisters which I have been writing about were four of the battlecruisers).
This fleet would insure Japan's dominance in her region, but the Washington Naval Treaty put a serious hold on battleship construction.
After a pair of interwar reconstructions, the Nagato served as the flagship of the combined fleet until the battleship Yamato was commissioned. Admiral Yammomoto (Yamamoto) gave the final word for the attack on Pearl Harbor from the bridge of this ship.
--GreGen
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