Nagato-class Battleships 1920–46

An illustrated study of Japan’s Nagato-class battleships: the IJN’s powerful super-dreadnoughts, which were heavily modernised to fight in World War II.

Illustrated with the author’s much-acclaimed 3D reconstructions, naval researcher Stefan Draminski offers a technical and operational study of Nagato and Mutsu, Japan’s most powerful battleships of the dreadnought era.

They were the world’s first battleships to mount 16-inch guns, and signalled Japan’s determination to build a fleet that qualitatively outmatched the world’s leading navies. Entering service in the 1920s, they would be heavily modernised before the outbreak of the Pacific War, which Nagato would start as Yamamoto’s flagship for the Pearl Harbor attack.

Both ships were present at the Battle of Midway, and though Mutsu would be sunk by a magazine explosion in 1943, Nagato fought at Philippine Sea and Leyte Gulf, before being modified again and moored at Yokosuka as an antiaircraft battery. The last Japanese battleship afloat on VJ-Day, Nagato was sunk in 1946 at Bikini Atoll in the Crossroads nuclear test.

Drawing on Japanese-language sources and original documentation, this is a concisely detailed account of these formidable battleships, superbly illustrated with archive photos and artwork showing the ships through their careers and in action.