Sailors first saw the battleship Yamato as an awe-inspiring, "skyscraper"-like structure when joining her crew in 1941, characterized by her immense 18-inch guns. Later, in her final moments on April 7, 1945, crewmen first spotted attacking American planes as a sudden, overwhelming, and terrifying force emerging from clouds, described as "a net of bullets" and "30...40, and more planes". Survivors described the sky turning "crimson" with antiaircraft explosions and seeing the American planes ver