Japanese battleship Musashi

Rare card · No. 61715

Musashi (Japanese: 武蔵; named after the former Japanese province) was one of the Yamato-class battleships built for the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN), beginning in the late 1930s. The Yamato-class ships were the heaviest and most powerfully armed battleships ever constructed, displacing almost 72,000 long tons (73,000 t) fully loaded and armed with nine 460-millimetre (18.1 in) main guns. Their secondary armament consisted of four 155-millimetre (6.1 in) triple-gun turrets formerly used by the Mogami-class cruisers. They were equipped with six or seven floatplanes to conduct reconnaissance. Commissioned in mid-1942, Musashi was modified to serve as the flagship of the Combined Fleet, and spent the rest of the year working up. The ship was transferred to Truk, Japan's main wartime naval base in the South Pacific theatre, in early 1943 and sortied several times that year with the fleet in unsuccessful searches for American forces. She was used to transfer forces and equipment between Japan...

Read on Wikipedia · Image Lieutenant Tobei Shiraishi, Public domain