The Day Japan's Greatest Battleship Died in Under Two Hours: on 7 April 1945 the Yamato, the largest warship ever built, opened fire on American aircraft at thirty-four minutes past noon and was gone 109 minutes later. Not one American surface ship fired on her. The Imperial Japanese Navy would never again send a battleship to sea.

This documentary follows Operation Ten-Go from the keel of the Yamato at Kure in 1937 to her last sortie from Tokuyama with the light cruiser Yahagi and eight destroyers. It covers her 18.1-inch guns and 71,659 tons, the loss of her sister ship Musashi in the Sibuyan Sea, the submarines Threadfin and Hackleback, and the 386 aircraft of Task Force 58 - Hellcats, Helldivers and Avengers - that sank her. It sets out the losses on both sides, the fuel question, the Japanese and American dead, and the four factors that decided the afternoon.

Every figure comes from the record: after-action reports, loss tables and ship histories. Where sources disagree on hit counts, casualties or times, the video says so instead of choosing the neater number.

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