Jay Naddeo

USS Iowa entering Pearl Harbor, US Territory of Hawaii with her rails manned as she prepares to pass the sunken USS Arizona, 28 October 1952

A comparison between the top 2 heaviest Japanese & American units at the Battle off Samar

Graf Zeppelin moored at Stettin in mid-1941

Nagato

Repulse, circa 1916–1917, after post-trials alterations

Musashi

The worst battleship of WW2 might be Japan's Fuso. A ship so badly designed that its own navy kept it out of the fight for almost the entire war, and then sent it to die in the last battleship duel in history. When Fuso was completed in 1915, she was briefly one of the most powerful battleships in the world. Twelve 14-inch guns. Japan's first true super-dreadnought. But the designers made a fatal choice. They spread those twelve guns across six turrets, running almost the whole length of the ship. Two at the front, two in the middle, two at the back. That meant six separate ammunition magazines scattered along the hull. Huge stretches of the ship had to be armored to protect explosives. The armor couldn't cover all of it well. And when the middle turrets fired, the blast interfered with the rest of the ship. Then in the 1930s, Japan modernized her. They gave her new engines, more armor, and a towering "pagoda" mast. It rose so high above the deck it looked like it might tip her over. It became one of the strangest silhouettes of any warship ever built. By WW2, Fuso was old, slow, and fragile. The Japanese Navy knew it. So when the war started, she mostly sat in home waters. She trained crews. She escorted. She waited. During the biggest naval battles of 1942 and 1943, she barely saw action. Japan even considered cutting off her rear turrets and turning her into a half-carrier, then dropped the idea. Then came October 1944. Leyte Gulf. Japan was throwing everything it had at the American landings in the Philippines. Fuso and her near-sister Yamashiro were assigned to Admiral Shoji Nishimura's Southern Force. Their job was to push through Surigao Strait at night and hit the landing beaches. The Americans were waiting. At the far end of the strait sat six US battleships, plus cruisers, destroyers, and torpedo boats. Five of those six battleships had been at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Some had been sunk in the mud that day, raised, and rebuilt. They had come back for revenge. Early on October 25, 1944, American destroyers charged down the strait in the dark and fired torpedoes. At least one slammed into Fuso around 3 a.m. Fires spread. She fell out of line. For decades, the story was that Fuso blew up and broke in two, with both burning halves drifting in the strait while the battle raged around them. It's in countless books. But when her wreck was finally found and surveyed in 2017, it raised real doubts about that story. The truth of her last minutes is still being argued. What isn't in doubt is how it ended. Fuso went down with nearly her entire crew. Over 1,500 men. Only a handful are believed to have survived. Minutes later, Yamashiro steamed straight into the American battle line. The US battleships crossed her T and opened fire. Yamashiro was torn apart and sank with Admiral Nishimura aboard. It was the last time in history that battleships fought battleships. Fuso spent almost the whole war being kept away from combat because her navy knew what she was. When they finally sent her in, she didn't survive the night.

IJN Takao on sea trials in 1932

Oct 27, 1914. One of Britain's newest battleships sinks off Ireland. The government spends the next four years pretending it never happened. HMS Audacious was barely a year old. A modern dreadnought with ten 13.5-inch guns, one of the most powerful warships in the world. On the morning of Oct 27, 1914, she left Lough Swilly on the north coast of Ireland with the rest of her squadron for gunnery practice. At 8:45 a.m., in the middle of a turn, there was an explosion under her port side. She had hit a mine. It had been laid just days earlier by Berlin, a German passenger liner converted into a minelayer. The damage didn't look fatal at first. But the blast had hit a part of the ship with no protective bulkhead, and the water spread slowly from compartment to compartment. She began to settle by the stern. Admiral Jellicoe, commander of the Grand Fleet, was afraid of U-boats in the area. He wouldn't risk sending other battleships to tow her. Help came from somewhere unexpected. The liner RMS Olympic, sister ship of the Titanic, was passing by on her way from New York. Her captain offered to tow the battleship. A line was passed and Olympic started pulling. But Audacious was flooded and impossible to steer, and the line snapped. A cruiser and a coal ship tried too. Every line broke. By evening, the crew had been taken off. Around 9 p.m., Audacious rolled over and blew up. A piece of armor plate flew hundreds of yards and killed a sailor on a nearby cruiser. He was the only death. Now came the strange part. Jellicoe begged the Admiralty to keep the loss secret. Britain's lead over the German fleet in modern battleships was small, and he didn't want Germany to know it had just gotten smaller. But Olympic was full of passengers, many of them American. They had watched the whole thing. Some took photos. At least one shot film. So Olympic was held at Lough Swilly and the passengers were kept from contacting anyone. It didn't work. Photos ended up in American newspapers within weeks. The British government still refused to admit it. Audacious stayed on the official list of ships. The loss was finally announced on Nov 14, 1918. Three days after the war ended.