The Ships of Battlegroup: Japan Nagato (BB)

Displacement	39,050 tons	Belt Armor	12 inches
Overall Length	738 feet	Deck Armor	3.5 inches
Beam	113 feet	Main Turret Armor	14 inches
Speed	25 knots	Main Guns	8 × 16″

Laid down on August 28, 1917, launched on November 9, 1919 and commissioned on November 25, 1920, the ship carried a main armament of eight of the new 16 inch main guns mounted two per turret; two superfiring centerline forward and two superfiring centerline aft. Nagato was the name ship of a two-ship battleship class that also included the Mutsu and the ships had a mixture of 15 oil-fired and six mixed-firing boilers that gave them the exceptional speed of 26.7 knots. When built, these ships were the best in the world—they had bigger guns, were better protected and faster than the excellent British Queen Elizabeth class and they were in the water before the similarly-armed and much slower American Colorado class. “Nagato” is the name of an area in Japan.

At the time of their construction, these were the most powerful battleships in the world. In 1934, both ships started major reconstruction that added bulges for added underwater protection (increasing beam from 95 to 113 feet), added a triple bottom, installed new oil-fired boilers and new engines that enabled them to steam at 25 knots, even with the broader beam, added the distinctive Japanese “pagoda” foremast, replaced the guns with newer models with a higher angle of fire and longer range and increased antiaircraft protection. In August 1939, Nagato became flagship of the Combined Fleet.

She took part in the Midway campaign in mid 1942 and was torpedoed by the submarine Skate near Truk on Christmas Day, 1943. After repairs, Nagato took part in the Battle of the Philippine Sea in June 1944. Following a short refit to add better radar and more light antiaircraft guns, she was slightly damaged during the Battle of Leyte Gulf in October 1944, where, in the company of Haruna, Kongo and Yamato (Musashi had been part of the frce initially but had been sunk earlier by carrier air strikes), she actually fired her big guns at escort carriers, destroyers and destroyer escorts. Lack of fuel pinned her at Yokosuka for most of the rest of the war and, despite some bomb damage, when the war ended, she was the last Japanese battleship still afloat.

After the war, the United States Navy towed Nagato to Bikini Atoll and she was expended in the atomic bomb tests there on July 1 and July 24, 1946 and finally sank there on July 29, 1946. Since the radiation dissipated, the shallow but shark-filled waters are still visited by scuba divers to observe the rusting ghosts of the battleships Nagato, Arkansas, the aircraft carrier Saratoga (CV-3), the German heavy cruiser Prinz Eugene and a host of smaller vessels in a unique underwater museum.

For other pre-World War Two battleships with 16 inch guns, see: Maryland and Nelson .

For a Queen Elizabeth class battleship, see: Warspite .

For a further discussion of what happened to the battleships of World War One, see the Introduction to these articles.