All language subtitles for Worlds.Greatest.Warships.S01E01.Bismarck.Hitlers.Greatest.Warship.1080p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DDP2.0.H.264-ALLEYESONME_track3_[eng]

Warships
are the ultimate symbol

of a nation's military might.

These things are monstrous
wonders of technology.

Enormous vessels,
crewed by thousands,

bristling with massive
guns and powerful aircraft,

they can deliver terrifying destruction

and turn the tide of history.

The ships were built to win the war.

There was no other reason.

From the
beginning of the 20th century

to the present day,

these are the stories of classic warships.

From dreadnoughts to Bismarck,

to Japan's monster sea warrior, Yamato.

The American super ships,

Wisconsin, Lexington, and Enterprise,

to today's cutting edge
Royal Navy carriers.

These are the world's greatest warships.

On September the 2nd, 1945,

officers of the Japanese high command

boarded a mighty American battleship

to officially surrender to the allies.

It is my earnest hope that
from this solemn occasion,

a better world shall emerge

out of the blood and carnage of the past.

The ceremony took place

on board an Iowa-class battleship,

a huge floating fortress
and fitting theater

to end the bloodiest war in human history.

A war that saw the rise

and fall of the greatest warships
the world would ever see.

Bristling leviathans
capable of brutal violence,

but also facing a fight for survival

from a new deadly threat.

These were the giant
battleships of World War II.

The template for these ships

of the 1940s was laid down decades earlier

before World War I,

with the revolutionary
HMS Dreadnoughts in 1906.

15 years of nonstop arms race

and then the war itself
resulted in huge fleets

of these warrior ships.

As the first world war comes to an end,

dreadnoughts battleships
are still the currency

by which nations measure their
power and their prestige.

But the cost of
having serious naval status

was crippling already
weak post-war economies.

Something had to be done.

All the main naval
powers, the United States,

Great Britain, Japan, France,

and Italy are invited to
Washington for a conference.

And the treaty that results

from that puts a cap on naval
spending and naval allocation

for all the signatory powers.

You get arm's limitation

to try and reduce the
number of battleships,

the size of battleships,

and the capacity and
capability of battleships.

A 10-year hiatus

on battleship building was also agreed,

plus a maximum weight of 35,000 tons.

So when buildings started
again in the mid 1930s,

battleship designers were confronted

with a dizzying array of challenges.

A battleship is a compromise

between three primary factors.

That's gunnery, armored protection,

and its propulsion system.

Naval author, Mark Stille,

is an expert on battleship specifications.

The Washington Naval
Treaty was in effect

for most of the 1930s up until 1937.

And with that 35,000 ton limit,

it was very hard to build a balanced ship

with heavy firepower, good
protection, and a high speed.

You can never fit all of these
systems aboard a single hull

to the degree that you might like.

What everyone's doing is
looking for innovative ways

of trying to keep within treaty limits,

but at the same time,

give your ship the biggest punch you can.

That punch came from guns

that by the late thirties
were more powerful than ever.

So what you're looking at
here is a 14 inch naval gun.

This is almost as big as
guns get in the Royal Navy.

This can fire a shell that
is the weight of a small car.

So that's what naval warfare
is at this point in time.

They're hurling basically
VW beetles across the sea

at each other in 22 miles range.

So they're firing over the horizon.

They're firing much
further than you can see.

For its newest battleship,

the Royal Navy wanted 10
of these guns on board,

but in less turrets to
keep the weight down.

So two of the turrets would need

to house an unprecedented four guns.

HMS King George V.

35,000.

Ten 14 inch guns,

16 five-

Four 14 inch guns in one turret.

Now, that is an interesting concept.

It saves a huge amount of weight.

Usually you have two guns per turret,

so you are saving basically
250 tons of steel weight

from the turret alone.

It was a very, very
clever and inventive way

of trying to solve a
very difficult problem.

They were accustomed to
building twin gun turrets.

They'd built the triple
turret arrangement,

but they'd never tried a quadruple before.

With the King George V class,

the British thought they'd
built the best warship possible

under treaty restrictions.

Germany's New Navy begins

to take powerful shape from the yards-

But not everyone
was playing by the rules.

Announced
be widened and deepened.

Hitler's Nazi
party had risen to power

pledging to rebuild
Germany's military might.

He had already def divinely torn up

the hated Versailles Treaty,

which restricted Germany to
a tiny coastal patrol navy.

Now on the eve of World War II,

the launch of Bismarck
makes a powerful statement.

The Bismarck wasn't
only a military weapon,

it was also a status symbol

indicating the regaining
of German sea power.

Also a symbol for German
technological achievements.

Hitler had agreed with Britain

to stick to the Washington
Treaty maximum tonnage.

35,000 tons
of German steel is launched

in the presence of the Fuhrer himself.

The truth was Bismarck weighed

over 41,000 tons.

They cheated in their ship sizes.

That extra 6,000 tons is
translated into quite a lot

of extra military value.

Bismarck was one
quarter of a kilometer long

and 36 meters across her beam,

as wide as an eight-lane motorway.

She was crewed by over 2000 men.

Steam turbines drove three huge screws,

giving the Bismarck a 30 knot top speed

and a cruising range of
over 16,000 kilometers.

Her 838 centimeter guns
could fire their shells

over 19 kilometers with deadly accuracy.

A thick belt of rock hard
armor protected her waterline,

turrets and magazines.

Bismarck was quite
simply the most advanced,

most fearsome ship ever built.

Now, Hitler could unleash his
rule-breaking secret weapon

on the Atlantic convoys,
Britain's wartime lifeline.

May, 1941, German armies
controlled half of Scandinavia,

north Africa and most of
Europe, but not Britain.

After the REF had repelled his air force

thwarting his plans to invade,

Hitler knew he must still defeat Britain

to win the war.

He focused on its Achilles heel,

the vulnerable, but
crucial Atlantic convoys.

Hitler knew that Britain was dependent

on vast amounts of war
supplies coming from America

and also coming from the British empire

up around Africa into Britain.

The Germany Navy employed her vessels

not in a vain sea battle in the North Sea,

but against the British
lines of communication.

Because these had been identified

as the weak strategic point of Britain.

German naval
command made a bold decision.

Bismarck, along with only
a heavy cruiser of support,

was tasked to attack Allied shipping.

From its main base at
Scapa Flow in Scotland,

the Royal Navy still
controlled the North Sea,

so Bismarck sneaked along the coast

of Norway and passed Iceland

where it could get at
the vulnerable convoys

settling between Britain and America.

Now, those convoys
are perfectly structured

to protect the merchant
ships from submarines.

And what you wanna do when
you have a submarine threat

is put all your merchant ships together

and surround them by smaller ships

that can sink submarines, job done.

The only time that job isn't done

is if a battleship gets amongst them,

'cause a battleship can sink any one

of those little escorts at long range

and then polish off every merchant ship

firing its main guns
at a range of 22 miles.

As Bismarck set sail,

her captain Ernst Lindemann
was in optimistic mood.

I have the comforting
feeling that with this ship,

I will be able to accomplish
any mission assigned to me.

We have for the first time in years,

a ship whose fighting
qualities are at least a match

for any enemy.

Had Bismarck succeeded,

had it gotten to a convoy
and sunk a dozen ships

and then got home safely,

that would've been something

we'd had real problems dealing with.

Like Hitler,
Winston Churchill knew

that the stakes were high.

Britain could not lose what he called,

"this battle of the Atlantic."

"Without victory," he said,
"there is no survival."

Next, Bismarck made her dash
for the Atlantic past Iceland.

Here, she was detected by British patrols,

realizing this may be their only chance

to catch her, HMS Prince of Wales,

a brand new King George V-class battleship

was ordered to set sail.

Prince of Wales was still being finished

off in Scapa flow.

There were civilian engineers

on the ship finishing off its guns,

but it was dispatched straight away

to go and search for the Bismarck.

Andrew Choong is curator

of the Ship's Plans archive

at the Royal Maritime Museum in Greenwich.

These one's top secret sketches
compare Bismarck's design

to the design of the
HMS King George V-class.

What the admiralty was
extremely keen to know

was how Bismarck compared

to the King George V-class battleships,

which are of course our most
modern battleships at the time.

What we are looking at

is a very basic general
arrangement drawing

of the two ships.

What is really remarkable about two ships

is not the difference between them,

but how incredibly similar they both are

in terms of the weight of
offensive power they both carry.

But with an
extra and illicit 6,000 tons

to play with, Bismarck's
designers have been able

to build in a clear advantage.

Bismarck is a much wider ship

than the King George V.

This is what allowed
the Germans to build in

significantly more watertight
compartmentalization.

And this made the ship not only a better

and more stable gun platform,

but also made her that
much harder to flood

and therefore sink.

On May 24th,
1941, the Prince of Wales,

along with post World War
I battle cruiser, HMS Hood,

caught up with Bismarck.

Hood was Britain's largest warship.

She was fast, but lightly armored

and a soft target for Bismarck.

Her artillery and a level of training

of her gun crews was excellent.

So only shortly after Bismarck had started

to fire at HM Hood, the
first shells hit the ship.

One of Bismarck's huge shells

had penetrated Hood's deck
igniting the aft magazine

where ammunition and other
explosives were stored.

The sailor on board the Prince
of Wales witnessed the scene.

The whole of
the vast ship was enveloped

in a flash of flame and smoke,

which rose high into the air

in the shape of a giant mushroom.

All the remained apart
from bits of wreckage

was a flicker of flame and
smoke on the water surface.

There was
no time to abandon her.

Out of Hood's crew of
1,418, only three survived.

The brand new Prince of Wales
had made a poor showing too,

a revolutionary foregone turrets
proving highly unreliable.

Quite often the quadruple
turrets didn't work.

No, no, no, no, no.

There are gaps in the
operating of the 14-inch turrets.

Despite failings,

one shell had landed a telling blow.

Prince of Whales
managed to strike Bismarck

up near the bow, which
robbed her of ability

to get about a thousand tons
of fuel oil from the bow tanks.

Those hits ended Bismarck's
sortie into the Atlantic,

and the decision was made
to run down towards France

to try and get her repaired.

Bismarck was on the run

and her commander, Admiral Lutjens,

knew that Royal Navy
would be out for revenge.

Seamen
of the battleship Bismarck,

you have covered yourself with glory.

The sinking of the battle cruiser Hood,

is not only military
but psychological value,

for she was the pride of Great Britain.

Henceforth, the enemy will
try to concentrate his forces

and bring them into action against us.

She had been
observed by a flying boat

of coastal command in a hunt,

which will echo down
the corridors of time.

Almost everything the Royal Navy has

that will float is put into the Atlantic

to try and find Bismarck.

With that many assets
looking for Bismarck,

it's very hard for her to get away.

She was leaving an oil
trail behind her, she went,

which would make it easier
for her to be located.

Eventually, she was attacked

by British Swordfish torpedo bombers.

These old fashioned biplanes
came in at 80 miles an hour,

dropped their torpedoes.

One Swordfish torpedo

disabled Bismarck's rudder,

locking her into a tight turn.

With his ship now a sitting duck,

Lutjens sent a defiant final
message to his superiors.

Ship unable to maneuver.

We will fight to the last shell.

Long live the fuhrer.

Decisive blow comes at the end.

Bulk of the home fleet
catches up with her,

and she's pummeled from long
range by British battleships.

HMS King George V ,

sister ship of the Prince of Wales,

was one of the first on the scene.

Her foregone turrets worked better.

And along with HMS Rodney,

they scored hundreds of hits
on the stricken battleship.

Even Bismarck's formidable
armor could only take so much.

A British eyewitness recalled.

Considering the punishment

she had received already, she
fought back magnificently.

And one can but admire
the courage of those men.

We passed within a couple of miles of her

just as she sank at 1100 hours,

and by then she was just a smoking rack.

The Navy was out for revenge

and Bismarck paid in full.

At home in Britain,

the sinking is a huge
boost for flagging morale.

It was a fine-looking ship,

but she just couldn't take it.

For Germany,
the loss is also profound.

The Bismark was cherished as the blossom

of German shipbuilding
technology, a powerful ship.

The largest ship afloat,
almost unsinkable.

And now this vessel is lost.

And this is of course, a
massive psychological setback.

The loss of Bismarck
had a profound effect

upon Hitler's strategic
thinking vis-a-vis his navy.

He felt very keenly the loss of prestige

that had resulted from this
mission, which to be honest,

had been a really bad
idea in the first place.

Adolf Hitler really has very,

very little interest in navies.

He famously said at one point that,

"On land I'm a hero, and
at sea I am a coward."

Hitler decided
his U-boats could take care

of the Atlantic convoys
from beneath the waves.

The next month, he turned
back to what he knew best,

fighting on land.

In June, 1941, Hitler ordered the invasion

of the Soviet Union.

Within four months, his armies
were at the door to Moscow.

The Soviets needed help.

The US and Britain started
to send convoys of ships

loaded with crucial supplies of arms,

equipment, and food from Scotland

via the freezing northern ocean

to the northern seaports of Russia.

The convoys were getting through,

and Hitler found his
armies fighting Soviets

in American trucks, Canadian
tanks and British aircraft.

He needed an effective weapon
to try and stop the convoys.

Tirpitz launched in 1941,

was slightly bigger and
faster than Bismarck.

She was Hitler's last great battleship,

and she would not follow
in her sister's wake.

He doesn't want to risk
another prestige ship

on an operation that
would probably only result

in its destruction.

It results interprets being
sent to the relative security

of the Norwegian fjords.

And we see a very interesting reversion,

almost to first World War naval thinking,

where we have this
incredibly powerful warship,

but we dare not use it in case we lose it.

By parking his last
great battleship in a fjord,

Hitler had stumbled upon a way

to make Tirpitz very effective
without risking her at sea.

Being held in Norway
had a paralyzing effect

on the British,

and meant that the British
had to keep a number

of their heavy ships in Scapa Flow

as a direct deterrent to
the Tirpitz coming out.

The beneficiaries were the Japanese

because the British had
to have two fleet carriers

and three battleships tied up
in Scapa Flow watching Tirpitz

when they were desperately
needed in the far East.

The war was
still in the balance,

and Churchill wanted Tirpitz sunk.

It would take the best minds
and bravest men two years

to do what must be done.

The sinking of the Tirpitz
would be a new victory.

The destruction of this
last great visible symbol

of German sea power.

June, 1942, Hitler's
jackboot was still firmly

on Europe's throat.

His U-boats were wreaking
havoc in the Atlantic.

but what was left of his surface Navy

was deployed with great care.

Tirpitz sculpted in the fjords of Norway,

menacing the convoys
that supplied the Soviets

as they pushed back against
the German invaders.

Churchill and the
admiralty feared the damage

a rampaging Tirpitz could
inflict on these convoys.

One was unlucky enough to be at sea

when a message that Tirpitz was
on the move was intercepted.

A protective escort was
sent to intercept her,

leaving the convoy
defenseless against U-boats

and the Luftwaffe.

The threat of Tirpitz
coming out was enough for them

to order the scattering of Convoy PQ 17

with the result that that
convoy was slaughtered.

The great irony being

that Tirpitz hadn't even
really sortied at all

to come after the convoy,

but it illustrates the
fear which the presence

of this ship engenders
in British naval mines.

So again, you see this worth

and the function of of capital ships,

of huge battleships as symbols of power.

The Tirpitz-induced
panic had caused the loss

of 24 out of 35 ships.

Churchill's obsession with attacking

and destroying the ship he
called the beast, intensified.

A location was known,

but getting at Tirpitz
was a different matter.

She was very well protected,
floating in a kind of cage

with a kind of steel nets around her,

protecting her against attacks
from U-boats or submarines.

There was a huge number of
anti-aircraft batteries around

in addition to her own considerable
anti-aircraft armament.

And they had also devices to
set up kind of artificial mist

or fog just to cover the
vessel from air attack.

Even if all this was overcome,

Tirpitz had a formidable
lust line of defense.

So what I'm sat on here is
a piece of solid Krupp steel,

14 inches thick.

And this is part of the main armor belt

from the German battleship Tirpitz.

And when you build a battleship,

you can't armor the entire thing.

It would be so heavy, it
would sink like a stone.

So all you can do is pick
the most important parts

of the ship and protect them.

So this belt was designed
to run for hundreds

of feet along the side of the ship,

and that's there to protect the engines,

the boilers, the ammunition
magazines, and the shell rooms.

This is basically per
Tirpitz, his coat of armor.

A dozen attacks
by aircraft from carriers

and long range bombers
had made little impact.

But like all battleships,
Tirpitz had a soft underbelly.

It was this lightly armored lower hull

that will be targeted next.

So you see attacks by
X-Craft miniature submarines,

which can sneak in through the defenses

without anyone seeing and plant
charges underneath Tirpitz.

And the impact will kind
of shake and damage a hull,

and that works fairly well,
but doesn't sink the ship.

With Tirpitz soon
fully operational once again,

the British command turned to
a man who had a track record

of destroying hard to hit targets.

Barnes Wallace was the man

behind the dambusting bouncing bombs

that had caused havoc in
Germany's industrial heartland.

Ian Murray is an expert on his work.

Barnes Wallace is up with
the best partition inventors

certainly of the 20th century.

He had such unusual ideas,

many of which were proven
to work successfully.

To destroy Tirpitz,

Wallace initially adapted
his dambusting bomb

to attack a ship's hull.

He called his idea highball.

The workshops at Portsmouth's
historic dockyard

have painstakingly restored a highball

that Ian and his team retrieved

from Loch Striven in Scotland.

It was here bombing runs were practiced

by specialist pilots in aircraft

in preparation for an attack on Tirpitz.

The Mosquito was a small
bomber, but it had no armament.

And it was extremely fast.

Squadron of probably nine

of those aircraft would've
flown up the fjord,

dropped it at the correct distance.

So the the bomb would've skipped in,

hit the foot thick armor
on the side of the ship.

But it wouldn't have exploded there.

It would have continued to spin

and it would've rolled down
underneath the keel of the ship

where the steel was only
probably an inch or two

at the most, and it
would've detonated there

and blown a large hole in
the bottom of the ship.

That was all good in theory,

but the Germans were one step ahead

as proven by Tirpitz next mooring.

The Germans very inconveniently
had the ship positioned

in a fjord where it was
very difficult to attack

by aerial torpedo or with highball

'cause it needed a reasonable run up.

And an approach to the ship

and the fjord would've been very difficult

to attack it broadside on, unfortunately.

The Air ministry
asked Wallace to think again.

He revisited an older,
more conventional design

for a dambusting bomb.

One that didn't bounce.

Wallace had originally
proposed a very large bomb,

which would've gone deep into the ground.

So the Air ministry sort of said,

"Could we try some of those?"

They had success with
that six-ton version,

which was called Tallboy.

Tallboy was one
of the most awesome weapons

built in Britain during the war.

Only a stripped down Lancaster
heavy bomber had the power

to carry the 12,000 pound earthquake bomb.

A normal bomb would just have
been a single metal casting

full of explosive with a
straight tail on the back.

Tallboy was machined to
have a lovely smooth casing,

and they were balanced

so that the weight was
distributed equally.

Wallace also borrowed an
idea from the Archers,

which on the tail fins of the bomb.

He actually angled them at five degrees.

So as the bomb fell,

and it would've been falling
for something like 30 seconds,

the bomb would actually have spun.

And that sort of gyroscopic stabilized it

and it gave it a nice straight flight path

all the way down to the ground.

On November the 12th, 1944,

the 24th mission against
Tirpitz was launched.

Two Lancaster squadrons
dropped 29 Tallboys

from high altitude over the fjord.

That massive explosion
set off the magazines

inside the Tirpitz,

and it turned over within a few minutes.

So Tirpitz, like
Bismarck, was lost to history.

Thousands of miles away war
was raging in the Pacific,

where the American Navy was
unleashing an all new battleship

on the Japanese Imperial fleet.

It remains an icon of American
warship building at its best,

the Iowa-class Battleship.

The Iowas have a very good claim

for being the finest
battleships ever produced.

They have the right balance
of armor, speed and armament.

It's absolutely nailed it.

They were the first US battleships

completely free of treaty restrictions,

which meant that the
US could pour the whole

of its production capacity
into these vessels.

Almost every battleship

before has had to compromise somewhere.

Those ones get the balance
absolutely perfectly.

This is USS Wisconsin,

one of four Iowa-class
battleships launched in 1943,

all still afloat as museums.

Follow me into the chartoom.

Clayton Allen
looks after Wisconsin,

now permanently moored in the naval port

of Norfolk, Virginia.

We are the last battleship

in the US Navy battleship fleet, BB-64.

There are no more
battleships in the US Navy.

So what we're seeing here is Broadway.

It's the longest continuous
passage on the ship.

It's 250 feet long. It's six feet wide.

And the sailors adopted that name Broadway

because on a hot summer steamy night

and all the lights are lit up

and so they're trying to connect to home.

The original design compliment

for this ship was to have 1900 men,

but because of the threat of kamikazes,

they added more gunner's mates

that way we could pull watch
in the guns 24 hours a day.

They added a thousand extra men.

So about a crew of 2,900.

Crew working inside the ship

in key operational areas
were well protected.

This is what we call the Citadel.

And if we were under attack,

you would want to be inside this space.

Inside this 17 inches of armor,
the lookouts, the helmsman,

the lee helmsman, the captain,
the officer of the deck,

all these men are protected,

and they have to be
inside here during combat.

These were very advanced ships,

even by the standards of World War II.

They were very heavily armed
with nine 16 inch guns.

Most importantly were
their electronic eyes,

their sensor suits

in terms of search radars, gunnery radars.

Now we're gonna go down
to the heart and the soul.

We're going down seven decks.

Welcome to engine room one.

We have four engine rooms.

Collectively, each engine room

at maximum speed can produce
53,000 shaft horsepower.

So at 33 knots, or 37
and a half miles an hour,

that's 212,000 shaft horsepower.

That's amazing When you're
pushing around 58,000 tons

of ship, men and armor.

With a range of 25,000 miles,

Wisconsin could almost
circumnavigate the globe.

So we use a lot of fuel,

2.3 million gallons of
fuel every two weeks.

We try and maintain
the tank levels at 80%.

We never wanna have to tell the Pentagon,

sorry, we need to get
fuel before we go there.

All you do is say, yes,
we're headed there now.

When Wisconsin entered
the war in April, 1944,

all those formidable capabilities
would be fully tested.

Her radar and anti-aircraft
batteries were crucial

in protecting against Kamikaze attacks

on the vulnerable US carrier fleets.

But it was when American soldiers had

to fight the Japanese hand to hand

that Wisconsin's big guns
would make their mark.

In preparation for an invasion of Japan,

US marines fought a bitter campaign

to clear the Japanese
occupiers from islands

across the Pacific region.

From the Marshall Islands to Guam,

from Iwo Jima, and finally to Okinawa.

If we're trying to
work our way to Japan,

we know we need to conquer
some key island chains

so that we can have a
foothold for aircraft.

And so to help with that,

we did shore bombardment in
Okinawa again in Iwo Jima,

looking for pill boxes,
that kind of thing,

and softening the beachhead.

Tom Mumpower served

as Wisconsin's fire control officer.

We're in Ford main battery plot.

We're gonna control the fire
of the turrets from here.

I was in charge of making
sure we got a proper solution

on the target we were assigned.

Tom bombarded
shore targets in Vietnam

using the same guns as his predecessors

when they supported island
landings in the Second World War.

The guys are on the beach
and they need help, okay?

They don't have time
to wait for an aircraft

to sortie or that kind of thing.

That's where we are very accomplished.

That is once we find the target,

we can land on that target
over and over again.

If we were putting troops ashore,

they have no better friend
than a Iowa-class battleship.

The Japanese
defiance was finally ended

when two atomic bombs were
delivered by aircraft.

The greatest ceremonial honor

of the war was given to a ship,

the Iowa-class USS Missouri.

Her four deck was the stage
for the allies vanquished enemy

to finally surrender.

The war had been a brutal,
humiliating disaster for Japan.

And perhaps nothing
embodied the catastrophe

more than the story

of the most powerful
battleship ever built.

She is the most superb battleship

that humankind has ever produced.

Unfortunately, that title slips
from her grasp very quickly.

In 1940, as
war had raged in Europe,

Japan was defiantly building
its military strength

for the coming struggle against the USA.

The Imperial Japanese Navy

was already assembling
an impressive fleet.

Then they launched the
mightiest battleship

that would ever float, the Yamato.

Battleships have got
progressively bigger

and more capable.

And the Japanese build the largest super,

super dreadnoughts in the world.

Acknowledging they
could never out build America

in quantity, Yamato's
designers opted to go big.

They built a battleship
that was 70,000 tons,

which gave them a qualitative overmatch

against the likely American
battleship of the day.

That was the only chance that Japanese saw

in being successful against the Americans

in a major fleet engagement.

Yamato's hull was huge.

Longer than three Boeing
747s, nose to tail.

She was cladding 23,000 tons of armor

in places over 60 centimeters thick.

But it was her peerless firepower,

which made Yamato so fearsome.

Nine 18 inch guns arranged

in three turrets were the
largest ever mounted on a ship.

Yamato was designed to secure
and maintain naval supremacy

in the Pacific for Japan.

Yamato, in some respects,
in the context of her time,

was the most superb battleship

that humankind has ever produced.

Unfortunately, that title slips
from her grasp very quickly.

The Pacific Theater
is a very different war,

and battleships play their role,

but there's nowhere, I don't
think, where you can see it,

more sharper focus on the
fact that battleships have

to be part of a combined cohesive fleet.

In the vast Pacific Theater,

the aircraft carrier is king,

able to deliver ordinance
accurately over huge ranges.

After their carrier fleet was decimated

at the Battle of Midway,

Japan's ability to protect
its most valuable ships

from US air attack was greatly diminished.

Japanese battleships are being forced

to operate more and
more without air cover.

And what this exposes is how
incredibly vulnerable they are

if they're not part of a balanced fleet.

Admiral Yamamoto rather
disparagingly likened Yamato

to an ancient religious scroll,

the sort of thing old people

in the superstitious
hang up on their walls

to give them comfort,

but otherwise of no
practical value, whatever.

Despite being fitted

with 162 anti-aircraft guns,

Yamato was kept at bay by
the constant threat of attack

by American planes.

By the time the Americans reached Okinawa,

just 257 kilometers from Japan itself,

Yamato was finished as a tactical weapon.

All that was left was
for her 3000 crew men

to join their kamikaze pilot compatriots

in the ultimate sacrifice.

She is sent on a do
or die mission really

to try and penetrate the American fleet

that is surrounding Okinawa

and supporting the landings there.

She's sent in without air cover.

The theory is she will go in
at high speed all guns blazing

and actually ground herself deliberately

as an unsinkable shore battery.

Long before reaching Okinawa,

over 100 US aircraft
unleashed a relentless attack.

She put up quite a fight,

but her weaponry was ineffective.

Her crew were not of the quality

that characterized the Imperial Navy

at the beginning of the war.

And she effectively suffered the same fate

of any Japanese warship
that tried to put out

of its harbor in the spring of 1945.

Finally, after 17 direct hits,

the pride of the Japanese Navy detonated,

a mushroom cloud, six kilometers
high, rose into the sky.

The flash of light was
seen from Japan itself.

All hands were lost.

Yamato's inevitable demise

alongside those of Bismarck and Tirpitz

signaled the battleship had had its day.

All big gunfire power
alone was no longer enough.

Aircraft carriers were the future.

But there was one extraordinary exception:

America's mighty Iowa-class battleships.

The four Iowas were so capable

and fitted so well into the
all powerful US carrier fleets

that they alone of all
World War II battleships,

had long post-war careers.

In the decades that followed,

the Iowas bombarded shorelines
in Korea and Vietnam,

and following an extensive refit,

were again brought back into service

by Ronald Reagan in the 1980s.

The Russians at the
time, I think in 1980,

had about 1700 active
duty ships and we had 400.

And so there's a buildup of the fleet.

And to keep the cost down,

they decided they would bring back ships

that were sitting in ready reserve

and we could build, refit that

and make it a modernized ship.

It was 385 million to bring
this ship back to life

and modernize it and bring on computers

and that kind of thing.

But we did some tests and
tried to computerize the guns,

but frankly, you can't
fix what isn't broken,

and it works really well,
manipulated by hand.

Wisconsin last fired her guns

and launched missile's
bombarding Iraqi positions

during the first Gulf War in 1991

before being decommissioned
later that year.

But Wisconsin and her three
sister ships were preserved

as regal reminders of a bygone era.

To me, it's amazing, you know,

built in 39 months by
hand, 45,000 tons of steel.

You could use this ship again today.

We gotta throw these chains off

and spruce her up a little bit

and train up some good Americans.

Will they? No, but
that's a different story.

Could they? Yes, and that amazes me.

The battleship
may have lost its crown

to the aircraft carrier,

but while they ruled,
these imperious castles

of steel shaped the
history of naval warfare.

The battleship went
from being the yardstick,

the currency by which
navies measured their worth

and importance right through to a plateau

where they became a vastly important,

powerful, useful naval asset.

And then kind of tipping off the end

where they became a subsidiary,
a nice to have platform,

able to provide gunfire
support for troops ashore.

I don't
think we'll ever forget them.

The 20th century, really,

the first half of the 20th century

is dominated by the battleship.

Next time,
the mighty dreadnoughts.

The story of how one man's vision

led to a revolutionary warship

that would spark an arms race.

The message was
modernize, modernize or die.

An arms race

that would lead to the First World War

and greatest sea battle
the world had ever seen.

It's the story of warships so powerful

that they changed the world.