Yamato, a super battleship.
A real sea monster with the height of a 17-story building.
72,000 tons of steel. 500 km of welded joints—
enough to wrap them around Japan and decorate it all with a bow.
Building Yamato was like forging the ultimate sword…
…while everyone else was making machine guns.
Why? This is a tragic story.
The real-life Yamato never met a worthy opponent among other surface warships.
Instead, she was met by almost four hundred aircraft
that tore her apart in two hours.
She was at the top of the battleship evolutionary tree,
but she reached this peak too late.
By the time she did, aircraft carriers
and submarines had changed naval warfare.
The power of Yamato became legendary.
But in World of Warships, this legend lives.
Just look at this giant.
How can this sea monster ever be sunk?
Her side armor thickness is up to 410 mm.
The main turrets are protected with armor plates more than half a meter thick.
And look at those gorgeous lines!
Yamato just slices through the waves.
And that shape was not a whim of the Japanese designers’ poetic souls.
Her high bow and low aft ensure the best seaworthiness,
and the rise at the center is necessary for more convenient arrangement
of ammunition and structures.
The slight sag between the center
and the bow saves weight without any loss of durability.
That hull makes Yamato the most durable warship in the game.
It will require an entire squadron to deal with this battleship.
She can withstand a torpedo salvo and keep firing from all guns.
When she fights alone,
the battle will become something like a scene from a Godzilla movie.
When you’re at the wheel of this ship,
the most difficult thing about this monster is to wake it up.
Just imagine: it devours 62 tons of fuel per hour.
That works out to 130 tons of fuel per 100 km.
Stopping this leviathan is as hard as accelerating or turning.
The inertia of thousands of tons propels the ship forward.
You have to plan all your maneuvers in advance, and don’t even try to hurry.
But there’s no need to hurry.
The Emperor doesn’t pay attention to the annoyance of small destroyers and cruisers.
The turrets traverse slowly and the reload takes a long time.
While the shells are flying, you can sit back and sip your tea.
But when the shells reach their target…
What? How can it be? Yamato should have torn it apart!
Remember, Yamato was gigantic for a reason.
She was built to carry guns of the largest caliber in the history of naval artillery—460 mm.
A shell of this caliber weighs as much as a car.
In fact, this battleship could lob a shell out to 42 km: literally beyond the horizon.
A spotter aircraft would be needed to direct and adjust the fire.
There are no maps of such large size in the game,
otherwise it would be the end of the battle
before you even got an enemy warship in your gunsights.
In World of Warships, Yamato’s maximum firing range is 26 km.
If you try to hit a destroyer at that distance,
it will be able to sail a few circles around the base waiting for your salvo.
However, destroyers can survive for a different reason.
An armor-piercing shell hit, but it just flew in one side and out the other.
If the enemy warship had been more massive and durable,
the shell would have stuck inside and caused severe damage to its compartments.
But here it only caused a hole through the hull
and a controllable amount of flooding.
So, when you fire at small targets, load HE shells.
But should you waste such great power to destroy minor ships and aircraft?
Of course, Yamato can do the job.
She carries about one hundred AA guns as well as 155-mm secondary guns.
All those weapons work quite well
while you’re focused on aiming your main batteries.
So what’s the best way to use those monstrous guns?
There are two ways. The first is daring, and the other is convenient.
Let’s talk about the convenient way.
Think where the main action will take place… and don’t go there.
Turn your side to aim all three main battery turrets in that direction,
and support your team with mighty shots of 15 tons of steel per salvo.
Your shells can fly so far, enemy warships just won’t be able to reach you with theirs.
The rest is a matter of your skill at leading your targets.
And here’s the daring way.
Choose a flank and lead your team forward, protecting them with your armor.
You must always be wide awake
and plan out the maneuvers it will take to pass between islands,
trying not to expose yourself to enemy torpedoes.
Aim your main guns at the enemy flagship,
while your allies keep enemy destroyers and aircraft away from you.
Yamato is good in both roles. The path to her is a green wave.
With every successive Tier, Japanese battleships become bigger and bigger.
And there are no hidden pitfalls.
What could be a better reward for those
who reach the top than firing the guns of the largest caliber in the world
from the deck of the legendary battleship?