The Sinking of IJN Musashi — How Airpower Crushed the World’s Largest Battleship –

October 24th, 1944. The Sibuan Sea shimmerred under a flawless tropical sky, its gentle swells reflecting sunlight like shards of glass. From the shorelines of the Philippine Islands, the water looked peaceful, almost inviting. But below that calm surface, a shadow was cutting forward with relentless purpose.
It was the Mousashi, the Imperial Japanese Navy’s second Yamato class super battleship. A floating citadel of steel bristling with the largest naval guns ever mounted. She was the pride of Japan’s fleet, the embodiment of an entire nation’s faith in one decisive blow. On her decks, nearly 2,500 officers and sailors stood at their stations. the humid air thick with the weight of what lay ahead.
They were the core of Vice Admiral Teo Karita’s center force, the centerpiece of a last desperate gamble to crush the American invasion at Lea Gulf. The plan was audacious. Smash through to the vulnerable transport ships and slaughter them before they could supply Macarthur’s forces.
Success could change the course of the war. Failure would all but seal Japan’s fate. And yet, for all her power, Mousashi sailed under a cloudless, empty sky, no friendly air cover, no shield from the storm they all knew was coming. The lookouts were the first to sense it. A faint vibration in the air, too steady to be the wind.
The low, insistent hum grew louder, seeping into the bones. Then came the dots. Tiny specks on the eastern horizon. They multiplied quickly, dozens, then hundreds. They were the carrierorn aircraft of Task Force 38, the most powerful naval air arm in history, converging on a single target, the largest warship they had ever seen. Orders rang out.
The ship’s forest of anti-aircraft guns, more than 130 barrels, swiveled upward. Mousashi’s giant 18.1 in main batteries, so devastating against other battleships, were almost useless against planes. This would not be a duel of gunfire across the horizon. This was a battle between two ages. The Leviathan born of the Dreadnot era and the unstoppable reach of air power.
In a matter of hours, these clear, glittering waters would erupt into chaos. Bombs, torpedoes, and fire would tear at the Mousashi until even her colossal armor could not save her. But to understand how such a titan came to be and why Japan put so much faith in her, we need to go back to the beginning.
In the next part, we’ll uncover the grand naval doctrine that demanded her creation. In the early decades of the 20th century, the Imperial Japanese Navy clung to one idea above all others. A belief so deeply ingrained it shaped every ship they built, every battle they planned. It was called Kai Kessan, the decisive battle.
The roots of this doctrine lay in 1905 in the narrow waters of the Tsushima Strait. There a smaller Japanese fleet met and utterly destroyed the Russian Baltic Fleet, a force that had sailed halfway around the world. Japan’s victory was swift, stunning, and absolute. From that day forward, Japanese naval leaders became convinced that the shest way to win a war was to lure a stronger enemy across the ocean, weaken them along the way, and then annihilate them in a single climactic confrontation.
For Japan, the enemy of the future was obvious, the United States. America had the industrial power to outbuild Japan several times over. The Japanese plan was simple in theory. Let the US Pacific fleet come to them, harassed by submarines and land-based aircraft along the way.
Then, when the Americans were worn down, strike with the full force of the combined fleet in home waters and destroy them in one glorious afternoon. This strategy dictated everything. If you know you’ll be outnumbered, you don’t build many ships. You build a few that are unmatched in power. Every Japanese warship had to be faster, more heavily armed, and better protected than anything the Americans could put to see.
By the late 1930s, with tensions rising and war looming, this thinking reached its peak. Japan made a decision unlike any in naval history. They would build battleships so massive, so heavily armored and so powerfully armed that no single enemy vessel could stand against them. These would be the ultimate trump cards of Kai Kessan. The result was the Yamato class, two giants unlike anything else afloat.
Mousashi, the second of the class, carried nine 18.1in guns capable of hurling shells the size of small cars farther than any battleship before her. Her armor was so thick it was believed nothing afloat could pierce it. To her designers, she was invincible. But there was a flaw at the heart of this dream.
The doctrine assumed the next great naval battle would be fought as Sushima had been. Ship against ship, gun against gun. The reality of war was already shifting. In the next part, we’ll see how Japan built this steel colossus in the utmost secrecy, believing they were creating the future, while the future was already leaving them behind.
When the decision was made to build the Yamato class battleships, secrecy became as critical as steel. The Washington and London naval treaties had once limited battleships to 35,000 tons, but Japan had walked away from those agreements. Mousashi, like her sister Yamato, would be more than twice that size at full load, an open violation that the world could never be allowed to see until it was too late. in the Mitsubishi shipyard at Nagasaki.
Work began on March 29th, 1938. To hide her birth, the yard itself was transformed. A massive wooden enclosure rose over the slipway, draped with woven rope made from thick cyil fibers. From the sea or the air, it looked like nothing more than an industrial warehouse.
Inside, thousands of workers labored in a world sealed off from prying eyes. Their task both immense and dangerous. Every part of Mousashi was an engineering challenge. Her main guns, nine in total, were each 18.1 in in caliber, the largest ever mounted on a warship. A single barrel weighed more than an entire destroyer from an earlier generation.
Forging them required specialized facilities. Transporting them required meticulous planning, and mounting them onto the turrets was a feat of precision and raw power. Her armor was thicker than anything afloat, up to 650 mm on the faces of her main turrets, more than 2 ft of hardened steel. Below the waterline, her designers added torpedo bulges and compartmentalized voids meant to absorb and contain flooding.
Her bulbous bow, an innovation at the time, improved her hydrodnamic efficiency, letting the 73,000 ton ship reach an impressive 27 knots. Inside, Mousashi was so vast and complex that she needed directional arrows painted along her passageways to keep crew from getting lost. She was quite literally a floating city.
The launch of such a giant could not be a public spectacle. On November 1st, 1940, Nagasaki was placed under a citywide air raid drill, forcing residents indoors. At high tide, the massive hull slid into the water for the first time. The displacement wave it created was so large that it flooded nearby streets, an unintentional display of her sheer bulk.
When she was commissioned in August 1942, Mousashi was more than a warship. She was a symbol. She represented Japan’s technological prowess, its marshall pride, and the belief that the decisive battle doctrine would still deliver victory. The crew called her unsinkable, and perhaps they believed it. But the world was changing fast.
The skies were becoming the true battlefield, and the age of the battleship was already fading. Mousashi was entering a war that had begun to pass her by. In the next part, we’ll see her take her place as the pride of the fleet at Trrook Lagoon. An awe inspiring queen, but one destined to spend far too long waiting for a battle that would never come.
When Mousashi joined the fleet in August 1942, she was immediately crowned the new flagship of the combined fleet, replacing her sister ship, Yamato. Her arrival at Truck Lagoon, the Japanese stronghold in the Caroline Islands, was nothing short of a royal procession. Truck was often called the Gibralar of the Pacific, a vast natural anchorage ringed with coral and fortified with airfields, fuel depots, and repair facilities.
From here, Japan’s Pacific War was directed. Anchored in the turquoise waters, Mousashi looked like a city rising from the sea. She towered over the cruisers and destroyers clustered around her. Her massive turrets angled skyward like monuments to another age. Aboard her, Admiral Isuroku Yamamoto commanded the fleet until his death in 1943, followed by Admiral Minichi Koga.
From Mousashi’s spacious flag bridge, orders were issued that rippled across thousands of miles of ocean. Her crew trained constantly, rehearsing the great showdown they were certain would come. Gun crews drilled until their movements were almost mechanical. Lookouts scanned the horizons. Engine rooms hummed with readiness.
Every man aboard believed they were waiting for the moment. the decisive battle that would etch Mousashi’s name in history. But that moment never came. The Pacific War was shifting. Instead of battleship lines trading salvos, the war was being fought in jungle islands, in the skies, and beneath the waves. Carriers had become the true queens of the sea.
And Mousashi, for all her might, had no role in those long range duels of aircraft. Several times in 1943, she put to sea with a powerful task force, racing to intercept reported American carrier movements. Each time, the target slipped away before contact could be made.
The mighty battleship returned to truck without ever firing her main guns in combat. The crew began to joke, half in pride, half in frustration, that they served aboard the Yamato Hotel. Compared to the cramped, sweltering quarters of smaller warships, Mousashi was a palace. She even boasted air conditioning in some command areas, an unheard of luxury at sea.
But luxury was a poor substitute for purpose. For a ship built to fight, idleness was a slow torture. As 1944 dawned, the war’s tide was turning against Japan. American forces were advancing relentlessly, island by island, closing the noose. Mousashi’s first real combat would not come in a grand duel with an American battleship, but from an enemy she could not even see.
In the next part, we’ll watch as the unsinkable fortress finally comes under fire and learns that the deadliest blows can come from beneath the waves. Night had fallen over the Pacific on March 29th, 1944. Mousashi steamed away from the Palao Islands, her hull slicing through dark waters under a moonlit sky.
She had just completed an unusual mission for a battleship, delivering an army detachment to reinforce an island garrison. Her escort screen was thin, fewer destroyers than usual. It was a calculated risk. Beneath the calm waves, that risk was about to be tested. Patrolling the area was the USS Tunny, an American submarine commanded by Lieutenant Commander James A. Scott.
In the Tunny’s sonar room, operators picked up a deep rhythmic pulse, the unmistakable beat of massive propellers driving a warship of enormous size. Scott brought the submarine to periscope depth. In the green glow of the scope, a silhouette emerged, huge, towering over the waterline with the massive, unmistakable lines of a Yamato class battleship.
It was a sight few Allied submariners ever saw, and even fewer survived to tell about. Scott knew he could not sink such a ship with his limited torpedo load, but he could wound it, slow it, and send a message. The Tunny maneuvered into position. Six torpedoes left her tubes in a deadly fan.
On Mousashi’s bridge, sharpeyed lookouts caught sight of the phosphorescent trails cutting through the water. Shouts of warning rang out. The helmsmen heaved the great ship into a hard turn, engines roaring to life. Most of the torpedoes strearmlessly, missing a head or a stern. But one found its mark. The explosion was thunderous.
It struck forward on the port bow near the anchor chain locker. A pillar of water and steel erupted skyward, drenching the forward decks. The 73,000 ton Leviathan shuddered from stem to stern. Her crew gripping whatever they could as the shockwave ripped through the hull. Below decks, seawater gushed into the forward compartments.
Men scrambled in the darkness, fighting to secure hatches and pump out the flooding. The hit had torn an 18 ft hole in the hull, flooding nearly 3,000 tons of water into the ship. The bow rode lower, a slight list to port creeping in. Yet the Mousashi was far from crippled. The blow had landed outside her armored citadel, sparing her vital machinery and magazines. She maintained speed, her guns ready.
Damage control crews worked relentlessly to stabilize her. Within hours, she was heading back to Japan for repairs. But the lesson was clear and unsettling. The most powerful battleship afloat could be found, tracked, and struck by a single enemy it never even saw. At Cure Naval Arsenal, repairs to the bow were accompanied by a major upgrade. Dozens of new 25 mm anti-aircraft guns bristled from her decks.
Mousashi now carried over 130 barrels aimed at the sky, a steel curtain meant to keep her safe from air attack. The question was, would it be enough? In the next part, we’ll see that answer tested in one of the most lopsided air battles in history, the great Mariana’s Turkey Shoot, June 1944.
Mousashi steamed out once more, her decks now bristling with new anti-aircraft guns. She was part of Admiral Jisuru Ozawa’s mobile fleet, the force tasked with contesting the American invasion of the Marana Islands. For the Imperial Japanese Navy, this was the long- awaited chance, the decisive battle they had trained for over decades.
Mousashi and her sister Yamato formed the core of Vice Admiral Teo Kurittita’s Force C, a surface strike group that would move in once Japan’s carrier aircraft had blunted the American assault. The plan was simple in concept. The carriers would deal the first blow from the air, softening the enemy, and the battleships would move in to finish them.
But plans are only as strong as the forces that carry them, and Japan’s carrier air arm was no longer the terror it had been in 1941. Years of relentless attrition had gutted its ranks. Many of the pilots now flying for the JN had only a fraction of the training and combat experience of the men they replaced. The aircraft themselves were aging designs, increasingly outclassed by the new American fighters.
Facing them was the full strength of the US Navy’s Task Force 58. Dozens of fast carriers, hundreds of aircraft, and crews hardened by years of victory. Their primary fighter, the Grumman F6F Hellcat, was faster, tougher, and far deadlier than most Japanese planes. The Americans also had radar directed fighter control, giving them the advantage of seeing the enemy long before the enemy saw them.
On June 19th, 1944, the two forces clashed in what would become known to American pilots as the Great Mariana’s Turkey Shoot. Japanese aircraft launched in wave after wave only to be intercepted far from their targets. Hellcats tore through the formations with ruthless efficiency, downing hundreds of planes.
By the end of two days, Japan had lost over 600 aircraft and three carriers, losses that could never be replaced. And Mousashi, she never fired her main guns in anger. The battle was decided in the skies far beyond her reach. Her anti-aircraft batteries spat fire at a few distant specks, but the enemy never came close enough for her to make a difference.
She was a giant on the sidelines, irrelevant in the type of war that now decided the fate of nations. In the aftermath, a Japanese officer summed up the situation with grim finality. We have no more air. Without carrier cover, even the largest battleships were vulnerable.
From now on, ships like Mousashi would sail under skies controlled entirely by the enemy. In the next part, Japan will gamble everything it has left on one last desperate strike, Operation Shogo. The plan that would carry Mousashi toward her final battle. By October 1944, Japan was cornered. American forces had landed on Lee in the Philippines, threatening to sever the lifeline to the oil and raw materials of the Dutch East Indies.
If the Philippines fell, Japan’s war machine would grind to a halt. The Imperial High Command knew they had one last chance to turn the tide. A plan so ambitious and desperate it bordered on suicide. They called it Operation Shogo, the victory operation. It was a complex three-pronged assault designed to lure, distract, and destroy. Every remaining major warship would be thrown into the fight, no matter the risk.
The Northern Force under Admiral Jizaburo Ozawa consisted of Japan’s last four carriers. On paper, they were a formidable threat. In reality, they were almost empty shells carrying barely 120 aircraft manned by inexperienced pilots. Their mission was not to fight, but to act as bait, sailing north to tempt Admiral William Bullhally into chasing them with the powerful US third fleet.
If Hollyy took the bait, the real blow would come from the south and center. The southern force made up of older battleships and cruisers would push through Suruga Strait to attack the Lee beach head from below. But the main thrust, the hammer blow, would be delivered by the center force under Vice Admiral To Kurita.
This was Japan’s most powerful remaining fleet. five battleships, including the massive Yamato and Mousashi, 10 heavy cruisers, and a strong destroyer screen. Their mission was to steam from Borneo, pass through the narrow San Bernardino Strait, and descend on the American landing force at Lee Gulf, destroying the transports and their escorts in a storm of shellfire.
For Mousashi, this was the moment she had been built for. After years of waiting, after long months at anchor and idol sorties, she would finally sail into the decisive battle envisioned by the doctrine that had created her. But the plan relied on timing, deception, and the hope that Hollyy would be drawn away at exactly the right moment.
Every link in the chain had to hold. And there was one more grim truth. Success would come at enormous cost. Few in the fleet expected to survive. The crews received the Imperial rescript, its closing line chilling in its clarity. You are expected to give your all, even to the last man. In the next part, Mousashi will leave Brunai Bay and begin her final voyage, a journey into waters that would soon erupt with fire, steel, and death.
On October 22nd, 1944, the center force raised anchor in Brunai Bay. The air was heavy, the sky a dull wash of tropical blue. Aboard Mousashi, the mood was unlike any departure before. This was not another fruitless sorty. This was the decisive mission, perhaps their last. Before sailing, every crew in the fleet had heard the Imperial rescript. Its words were formal, but the meaning was plain.
They were expected to fight to the last man. Many took the opportunity to write hurried letters, knowing they would never be sent. Others polished their equipment in silence, each man alone with his thoughts. The pride of the fleet was finally going to war, and no one pretended it would be an easy return.
Two days later, in the darkness before dawn on October 23rd, the center force was moving through the Palawan Passage. The sea was calm, but beneath it lurked unseen predators. Two American submarines, USS Darter and USS Dace, lay in wait. Their captains could hardly believe their luck when they saw the silhouettes of Karita’s fleet. The attack was sudden and devastating. Torpedoes slammed into the heavy cruiser Atago, Karita’s flagship, tearing her open and sending her to the bottom within minutes.
Another cruiser, Maya, followed her down. A third, Takao, was crippled and forced to withdraw. In the chaos, Karita found himself swimming in the oil sllicked water, clinging to wreckage until a destroyer hauled him aboard. He transferred his command to Yamato, but the damage to the fleet strength and morale was undeniable. Still, the mission pressed on.
By the next morning, October 24, the center force entered the Sabuan Sea. The water was glassy, the weather perfect for flying. That perfection was their curse. At 8:00 a.m., lookouts on Mousashi spotted the first American reconnaissance planes high above. Consolidated PB4Y privateeers circling like patient hawks. The alarm bells rang out. General quarters. General quarters.
Men ran to their battle stations. The gun crews adjusted elevation, ready to fill the sky with fire. Everyone knew what came next. Once the enemy had their position, the carriers would launch. It was no longer a question of if the attack would come, but when. The fleet was still hours from the safety of the San Bernardino Strait.
Trapped in open water with no air cover of their own. For Mousashi, this was the moment her designers had envisioned. Her massive anti-aircraft batteries, her thick armor, her damage control drills, all would be tested. The enemy was coming in force, and they would throw everything they had at the largest ship they could see.
In the next part, the first wave of American aircraft will descend from the eastern sky, and Mousashi will face the beginning of the end. At 10:26 a.m., the eastern sky erupted with movement. Tiny black specks grew larger with every passing second. American carrier aircraft in tight formation, diving out of the sun. The first wave was here.
From Mousashi’s bridge, orders flew like lightning. Engines roared to flank speed, churning up foaming wakes behind the battleship’s stern. Her 130 plus anti-aircraft guns, ranging from heavy 127 mm dualpurpose mounts to clusters of rapidfiring 25 mm cannons swiveled upward in unison. The ship’s great horn bellowed over the den, a warning to all hands that the fight had begun. Then the sky came alive.
Black puffs of flack burst among the incoming planes as the Japanese gunners threw up a storm of steel. Tracer fire lanced into the air. Even Mousashi’s main 18.1in guns joined the defense, firing Saniki anti-air shells. enormous canisters that burst in midair, spraying burning fragments in a lethal cone. But the Americans pressed on from above.
Curtis SB2C Hell Diver dive bombers rolled into near vertical plunges, screaming down toward the ship. From sea level, Grumman TBF Avenger torpedo bombers skimmed the waves, splitting into coordinated attack patterns to hit from multiple angles at once. On the bridge, officers barked rapid course changes, trying to throw off the torpedo planes while not making the dive bombers aim too easy.
It was a deadly balancing act, and Mousashi’s massive bulk made her sluggish to respond. A bomb slammed into the roof of turret number one, the forwardmost main gun. The armor absorbed the worst of it, but the shock disabled the turret’s elevation system. Another bomb punched through the upper deck, setting fires in the compartments below.
Then came the torpedoes. One struck starboard amid ships with a deep, sickening thud. The explosion lifting part of the ship out of the water. Compartments near an engine room began to flood. The ship taking a slight list to starboard. Below decks, damage control teams worked furiously, counter flooding on the opposite side to keep the ship upright.
The entire attack lasted less than 20 minutes. When the last aircraft banked away, Mousashi was still moving, her guns still firing, but she was wounded. Smoke drifted from her decks, and stretcher teams moved quickly among the fallen. The men knew this was only the beginning.
The Americans now had her exact position, and there was no air cover to shield her from whatever came next. The largest battleship in the world had survived the opening blow, but the day was far from over. In the next part, the Americans will return in force, not in chaos, but in carefully planned waves designed to wear down even the strongest warship afloat.
The first wave had bloodied Mousashi, but it had not slowed her. For the Americans, that was unacceptable. Admiral William Bullh Hally commanding the US third fleet understood exactly what loomed ahead. A powerful Japanese surface force, two super battleships among it, was bearing down on the Lee landings. If it broke through, the consequences could be catastrophic.
Holly issued a simple order to his carriers. hit the center force with everything available and keep hitting until it was gone. From the decks of the Intrepid, Essex, Lexington, Franklin, and Enterprise, aircraft began to launch in wave after wave. By day end, 259 planes would be committed to a single target, the most dangerous, most visible ship in the formation, Mousashi. This would not be a reckless swarm.
It was a demonstration of how far American carrier doctrine had evolved since 1941. Each strike group was a coordinated weapon combining F6F Hellcat fighters, SB2C Helldiver dive bombers, and TBF Avenger torpedo bombers in a carefully orchestrated sequence. The Hellcats went in first, their 050 caliber guns blazing, strafing exposed gunners and peppering the superructure.
Their role was to suppress defenses, disrupt fire control, and seow confusion before the bombers arrived. For the Japanese crews manning open gun mounts, the experience was nightmarish, facing enemy fighters headon with only a steel shield between them and a stream of lead. Then came the dive bombers.
Hell divers roared down from altitude, targeting Mousashi’s bridge, turrets, and smoke stack. Their bombs were designed to punch through armored decks, disabling command and control. Almost simultaneously, the torpedo bombers made their approach. They came in low, splitting into port and starboard attack groups. This was the anvil tactic.
Turn to avoid one side, and you expose your full length to the other. For a ship as massive as Mousashi, it was an almost impossible dilemma. Avoiding damage entirely was out of the question. Below decks, damage control crews braced for impact. They knew the danger of alternating torpedo hits. Flooding on both sides could cancel out counter flooding efforts, leaving the ship unstable and vulnerable to capsizing.
Each wave lasted only minutes, but the psychological toll was immense. The sky never cleared completely. There was always another formation on the horizon, another set of silhouettes emerging from the sun glare. Above the thunder of explosions and the chatter of anti-aircraft fire, the sound of incoming engines became a kind of relentless drum beat, signaling that the next blow was already on its way.
Mousashi was holding her course toward the San Bernardino Strait, but her armor and crew were being tested in a way no battleship in history had endured before. The attacks were building in intensity, and the day was still young. In the next part, the second and third waves will strike, and the pride of the Japanese fleet will begin to lose speed, fall behind, and face the unthinkable.
The second and third waves came before noon, and they were even more punishing than the first. The Americans had studied their target, and now they pressed the attack with cold precision. Mousashi, already wounded, was about to endure a storm of steel that would push her to the breaking point. Hell divers screamed down from the clouds, their bombs slamming into the decks with bone rattling force.
Torpedo bombers streaked in low, skimming the waves, releasing their deadly cargo at pointblank range. A hit to port was followed quickly by a hit to starboard. Each explosion tearing open more of the hull. Below decks, the shock waves knocked men off their feet and plunged compartments into darkness as bulkheads twisted and ruptured.
Damage control crews worked with desperate focus in the choking heat and stifling air. Pumps groaned as they fought to keep up with the flooding. Men waited through kneedeep water sllicked with oil, dragging heavy hoses, ceiling hatches, and counter flooding compartments to balance the ship. But every adjustment was temporary.
With each new torpedo strike, the balance shifted again. Mousashi’s speed began to bleed away. From her designed 27 knots, she dropped to 22, then 18, and lower still as flooded boiler rooms and damaged engine compartments robbed her of power. The rest of Karita’s center force pressed ahead, under strict orders to push toward San Bernardino Strait at all costs. One by one, the other ships pulled away until Mousashi was trailing far behind.
Her escorts struggling to shield her from the swarms above. The air was filled with the roar of engines and the hammering of anti-aircraft guns. Geysers from near misses rose higher than her superructure, drenching the decks. A bomb smashed into the for deck, killing dozens of gun crew in an instant.
Another struck near the armored conning tower. The concussion alone wounding or killing many inside. Shrapnel rad the upper decks, cutting down men at their posts. Still, the survivors fought on. Gunners stepped over fallen shipmates to keep their weapons firing. Engineers coaxed every possible knot of speed from the battered machinery.
The ship that had once been a symbol of invincibility was now a battered giant, staggering under blow after blow, yet refusing to go down. In the early afternoon, American pilot Dan Smith from the USS Enterprise would recall emerging from the clouds and seeing a sight he would never forget. They opened up with flack like the hammers of hell.
But the last time I saw her, she was stopped dead in the water. Her entire forcastle a wash. By 1:30 p.m., Mousashi was heavily listing, her forward decks nearly level with the sea. She was alone, crippled, and surrounded by an enemy determined to finish what they had started.
In the next part, the Americans will return again, not to test her, but to end her. By mid-afternoon, Mousashi was bleeding from more than a dozen wounds. Her decks were scarred and twisted. Her list to port growing steadily worse. Smoke curled from shattered gun mounts. Yet she was still afloat. And to the Americans, that was unacceptable. For the pilots returning to their carriers, the sight of the crippled giant trailing behind the rest of the Japanese fleet was a call to action. Reports flowed back to Admiral Hally.
Mousashi was damaged but alive. Hollyy’s orders were blunt. Finish her. The fifth and sixth attack waves would be dedicated to one purpose alone, sending the world’s largest battleship to the bottom. The Avengers came first, circling like patient predators.
They had a nearly stationary target now, and they aimed deliberately for her still intact sections, especially along the starboard side. The goal was simple. Worsen her port list until gravity itself would roll her over. Torpedo after torpedo slammed into her flanks. The explosions thundered through the hull, rattling every bulkhead. The ship groaned like a living thing in pain, her steel plates flexing under the shock.
Above, dive bombers roared in, targeting the base of her smoke stack and the stern, hoping to her rudder and remaining engine rooms. Her once formidable anti-aircraft fire was faltering. Many gun crews were dead, their stations reduced to smoking wreckage. Others fought on through exhaustion, deafened by hours of continuous firing, their eyes stinging from cordite and smoke.
Ammunition runners slipped in blood slick passageways, carrying shells to guns that would only fall silent minutes later under another hit. By 3:30 p.m., the sky finally began to clear. The last American aircraft banked away, leaving Mousashi a drifting ruin. She had endured an almost unimaginable pounding, 19 confirmed torpedo hits, 17 direct bomb strikes, and dozens of damaging near misses.
No warship in history had ever taken such punishment, and remained afloat this long. But her survival was an illusion. The list was severe. Her bow nearly submerged, flooding unchecked in multiple compartments. Fires smoldered deep inside her, and the pumps could no longer keep pace. The sea around her was littered with debris, twisted steel, shattered gun mounts, lifeboats torn to splinters.
The smell of fuel and cordite hung heavy in the air. The men aboard knew the battle was over. Now the question was no longer whether Mousashi could continue the fight but how long she could remain above water. In the next part the order will come to abandon ship.
For more than a thousand men the ocean will become their final resting place. By early evening the Mousashi was dying. The sea was already climbing over her forward decks and the port list had passed 12 degrees. Inside the ship, damage control officers reported flooding in multiple forward magazines. If the rising water reached the stored shells and powder, a catastrophic explosion could tear her apart in seconds. On the bridge, Rear Admiral Toshihira Inaguchi made his final assessment.
The fight was lost. The great battleship could not be saved. Yet his face remained calm, his voice measured as he issued his last tactical order. Attempt to beach her on the nearest coast of Sibuan Island. It was a faint hope, a chance to save the ship, or at least to get the crew closer to rescue.
Deep below decks, the engineers coaxed what little life remained from the battered machinery. The great ship began to move again, crawling forward at barely six knots. For a moment, there was a flicker of hope, but it didn’t last. The strain was too much. Pumps failed. More compartments gave way to the flooding. Her speed dropped again, then vanished altogether. Mousashi was dead in the water.
The list continued to worsen, 16°, then 20. The portside gun mounts were nearly a wash. The bow was buried in the sea, the stern rising ever so slightly. On the bridge, Inaguchi quietly dismissed himself to his cabin. He had already told his men he would share the ship’s fate. No amount of pleading from his officers could change his mind.
At 7:15 p.m., with the ship settling fast, the inevitable order came. abandoned ship. Across the decks, the surviving crew moved quickly, but with a strange discipline. Wounded men were lowered on makeshift stretchers. Others climbed over the side, dropping into the oil streaked water or scrambling onto rafts.
Two destroyers, Koshimo and Hamakazi, edged close, risking enemy attack to pull survivors aboard. Sailors tossed lines into the water, hauling in shivering, fuel soaked men. On the sloping deck, those still aboard assembled for one final act. Facing the bridge, they raised their voices in three sharp banzai cheers for the emperor.
Then, one by one, they left their posts, slipping into the sea as their ship groaned beneath them. For more than a thousand of their comrades, there would be no escape. They were already trapped below or too badly wounded to move. Mousashi, the unsinkable giant, was about to take them with her into the depths. In the next part, darkness will fall and the Leviathan’s final plunge will begin.
As dusk deepened into full night, the Mousashi’s final moments began. The list to port, already severe, increased rapidly, 20°, 30, then past 60. The sea swallowed her portside guns, waves breaking over the superructure. From the water, survivors watched in silence, knowing they were witnessing the death of a giant. The sounds were unlike anything they had heard before.
A deep metallic groaning as bulkheads buckled, punctuated by sharp cracks as steel plates tore apart. Somewhere inside, boilers hissed violently as seaater flooded in, releasing great bursts of steam that rose in ghostly plumes. Then, with a slow inevitability, Mousashi rolled completely onto her port side.
Her massive red hull, normally hidden beneath the waves, glistened wet and alien under the fading light. For a moment, she seemed to hang there, frozen. A mountain of steel turned on its side, but gravity claimed her. The bow began to sink, pulling the rest of the ship with it. The stern rose high into the night sky, her three enormous bronze propellers gleaming for the last time. It was an image no one who saw it would ever forget.
A warship so massive it seemed impossible for her to fall, now pointing straight into the heavens like a tombstone. There was a momentary pause, as if the sea itself were holding its breath. Then with a thunderous roar, she slipped backward into the deep. Water rushed over the rising stern, smashing into the propellers, swallowing them whole.
A violent geyser of steam and debris erupted as trapped air burst free. At 7:36 p.m. on October 24th, 1944, the Mousashi was gone. She took with her 1,023 members of her crew, including her captain, Rear Admiral Inaguchi, who had remained in his cabin as promised.
The spot where she had stood only minutes before, was now a boiling patch of water, black with oil and littered with debris. The survivors floated in the darkness, clinging to rafts, wreckage, and each other. The smell of fuel was thick in their lungs. The sky above was indifferent, scattered with stars.
Somewhere in the distance, the battle still raged, but here there was only the quiet lapping of waves against bodies and wood. The pride of the Imperial Japanese Navy had vanished beneath the Cibuan Sea. Her loss was more than the destruction of a ship. It was the death of a belief, the end of an era in naval warfare.
In the next part, we will follow the echoes of her passing, how the world learned of her fate, and how her end marked a turning point in the war at sea. The sinking of Mousashi was more than the destruction of a warship. It was the death nail of an age. She had been built to be the ultimate weapon of the decisive battle. a fortress so heavily armored and so powerfully armed that no surface ship could stand against her.
Yet in the Cibuan Sea, she had been undone not by another battleship, but by waves of aircraft that cost a fraction of her value. Her loss sent a message no navy could ignore. The reign of the battleship was over. The future belonged to the aircraft carrier. At Lady Gulf, that truth had been written in fire and steel.
For Japan, the disaster was even greater than the loss of a single ship. Operation Shogo had been a gamble, a last throw of the dice. The plan had nearly worked. Admiral Hollyy had indeed taken the bait and chased the northern forces decoy carriers far from the landing beaches. For a few critical hours, the American transports at Lee were exposed, but fate and American tenacity intervened.
Off Samar, a small group of escort carriers, destroyers, and destroyer escorts. Taffy 3 fought with desperate courage, charging straight at Karita’s far superior force. They laid smoke screens, launched every plane they could, and attacked with guns and torpedoes as if they were the hunters, not the hunted. Their ferocity convinced Karita that he was facing Halsy’s main fleet.
Unsure and wary of further air attack, he ordered a retreat. For Mousashi, the sacrifice had been in vain. She had gone down fighting, but the operation she died for failed. The Imperial Japanese Navy was broken, never again able to mount a major offensive.
For decades, Mousashi lay silent in the dark, her exact resting place unknown. She became a ghost of history, remembered only in survivor accounts and grainy wartime photographs. Then in March 2015, the mystery ended. A research vessel led by philanthropist Paul Allen located her wreck more than a kilometer below the surface of the Cibuan Sea.
Highdefinition cameras revealed her massive bow, her shattered gun turrets, the twisted remnants of her once proud superructure. It was a haunting sight. Steel still proud in form, yet marked forever by the violence of her last day. Mousashi’s grave is more than a war relic. It is a monument to the men who served and died aboard her, and a reminder of how quickly technology can render even the mightiest weapon obsolete.
The same belief in invincibility that had built her was the belief that doomed her. Somewhere, even now, other nations are building their own unsinkable wonders, confident in their supremacy. History whispers a warning from the deep. Every age has its mousashi and every mousashi has its cibuan sea.