I have been interested in the twin superbattleships for many years and this book was a very interesting read. It dealt more with the building process and the extreme measures that went into hiding the ships than it did the combat history, but then again, the ships didn't have a long history to speak of.

Overall the book was worth owning and reading. No regrets.

I really enjoyed reading about the technical details involved in building this ship. It was all quite fascinating and I consumed this book over three jet-lagged nights. The Yamato class battleships were obsolete the moment they were laid down. The amount of materials and energy devoted to building these vessels would have been far better spent on 4-6 Soryu-type air craft carriers and their airwings. Fortunately for the U.S. Japan squandered a great deal of her precious resources on these dreadnoughts, even while the Japanese navy (unlike our own) was convinced that air craft carriers would be the key ships in Naval warfare. Moreover, the sinking of the HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse by land based bombers shortly after Pearl Harbor should have sent shivers down the spine of any Admiral envisioning battleships as stand alone fighting ships. The idea behind these battleships was to use their longer range fire power to fight Amerian battlehips before our ships could get in range, but this was a highy suspect strategy. 1)It's very hard to get accurate targeting of ballistic projectiles at extreme ranges even if targeting is provided by airplane (Yamato and Musashi carried 9 each for this purpose) 2)Though heavily armored- more so than our Iowa class and South dakota and Washington-classes- the guns were 50 caliber whereas the smaller bore (40cm versus Yamato and Musashi's 46 cm guns) were 70 caliber and the penetrating power of the guns on US battleships would have been about the same as the larger bore lower caliber Japanese guns. 3)Guns on our ships were radar directed and more accurate. We could have "picked up" the Yamato's long before their aircraft spotted our ships. The "tragic" aspect for me is that her final and really only battle was futile. There was zero chance of accomplishing her mission in the face of overwhelming US Naval aviation. The ship was lost for no reason whatsoever. I have to wonder what would have happened in the Pacific if Japan had built more aircraft carriers instead of these obsolete thugs. I am glad that a good book on the Musashi has been wtitten. In Japan, the Yamato is still famous, but almost no one has ever heard of the Musashi. The writing itself is very engaging but there are som typos and mistranslations. For example the commanding officers of the Musashi are designated Lieutenant Commanders but this is highly unlikely. Destroyers would have been commanded by officers of this rank but even Light Cruisers would have been commanded by a Commander and a capital ship- battlehips and air craft carriers- were surely all commanded by Captains. In one of the final chapters of the book the Cruiser Maya is misclassed as a destroyer (even though she was properly classed as a cruiser pages earlier). Destroyers generally had names ending in... "Kaze" (wind)- as in Hayakaze (Fast Wind or Early Wind, depending on the character for "hayai") or ... "Shio" (current)- as in Tsuyoshio (Strong Current). These error or typos are of course minor.

This is the kind of book I enjoy reading--it has an immense engineering feat to be accomplished, major obstacles, security issues, and the project is critical to the nation as a whole. I'd give it 5 stars, but I still had that "if only" feeling, the kind you get when you've had just enough to get your interest but not enough to really satisfy you. I like technical details, and more would have been better. For instance, the specialized ship built to haul the guns isn't illustrated (I've never seen a picture of it) and is only barely described, but that ship was essential to the whole construction process. However, I realize that pictures and documentation of Japanese ships are rare due to document destruction at the end of the war, so if this is all there is, so be it.

One of the more jarring (but accurate) aspects of the book is how the Japanese handle security. "Questioning" a suspect involves torture and beatings, the whole Chinese community in Nagasaki is rounded up and terrorized, and the city itself is sometimes shut down with an air of casualness about it.

The title is somewhat deceptive as the text goes more into the secrecy around the building of the ship as it was a private yard who build Musashi. Details are given how they shielded the ship from foreign eyes as there were foreign owned houses with a view of the area.

Problems with a missing blueprint and also launching of the ship are interesting but you only get bits of the actual contruction of the ship. This book is only for the enthusiast who knows a lot of the ships already and for example has read Lengerers article of the Japanese super battleship strategy.
The book gives almost nothing about the design.
The three star is for the enthusiast but for the novice the book is only a one star. The description of the sinking is acceptable but the article from Tim Thornton in Warship no 45 (jan 88) is in my opinion better. But the secrecy problems gives interesting insights in a way that I have seldom seen.
Therefor it is difficult to rate the book, for those who are not interested in the positive aspects that I have mentioned - stay away.

The title is somewhat deceptive as the text goes more into the secrecy around the building of the ship as it was a private yard who build Musashi. Details are given how they shielded the ship from foreign eyes as there were foreign owned houses with a view of the area.

Problems with a missing blueprint and also launching of the ship are interesting but you only get bits of the actual contruction of the ship. This book is only for the enthusiast who knows a lot of the ships already and for example has read Lengerers article of the Japanese super battleship strategy.
The book gives almost nothing about the design.
The three star is for the enthusiast but for the novice the book is only a one star. The description of the sinking is acceptable but the article from Tim Thornton in Warship no 45 (jan 88) is in my opinion better. But the secrecy problems gives interesting insights in a way that I have seldom seen.
Therefor it is difficult to rate the book, for those who are not interested in the positive aspects that I have mentioned - stay away.

IN A NUTSHELL: A TRUE STORY ABOUT THE MIND SET OF A DESPERATE JAPAN

The book is a short, easy, and an interesting read for most people acquainted with naval construction and operations. It is broken into two distinct parts; the construction of the ship [under a cloak of extreme secrecy], and its short life as one of a class of two, of the most extreme battleship designs ever constructed. Both the designs of the ships and the mindset of the navy that ordered them are interwoven and born of a need to somehow prevail over a greatly superior adversary. In that light, this book is fascinating as it reveals this rather empirically. In reading "Battleship Musashi", I felt and empathized with the Japanese of the era by witnessing [through the written accounts] some of the motivations and experiences of the Japanese people during the period. Many of the goals that were to be achieved with this new class of vessel embodied the rather unique hopes and ideas that the Japanese people had at the time, compared to westerners. This book stresses these cultural themes in the context of the construction and destruction of an incredible symbol of Japanese Imperial power.

Though I would have preferred reading more detailed accounts of the design criteria and ship operations, it was a fast and worthwhile read. In the end, the invincible Battleship Musashi shared the same fate as the rest of the Imperial Japanese Empire, and this book is a requiem to both.

This translated book will not satisfy anyone looking for explicit ship building details, or decriptions of a glorious naval battle.

As with all books that I have read, I found some information that I otherwise didn't have before I read the book. For starters, the Matsui was not the largest battleship, but the sister ship of the Yamato. I doubt whether anyone then or now could tell you which ship was technically the largest. The Matsui was the newer of the two, and had some equipment the Matsui did not have. I have read the two books written by former young officers who served on both, and this is more technical, but not by much.

You will learn from reading that the reason the Japanese had 18.1 inch guns rather than the 16 inch guns of US Batttleships was due to the US's requirement to defend both coasts and thus navigate the Panama Canal. Apparently, the design of the main battery guns required such breadth that 16 inches was the maximum.

This ship was built in the Nagasaki shipyard, which was the target of the second and last Atomic bomb. I have often heard anti US/nuclear propaganda that Nagasaki was not a military target. Anyone with any objective sense would have to concede that destroying a shipyard capable of building such a weapon qualifies as a military target.

Finally, the book provides an insight into the mindset of a young Japanese Naval officer. His view of the world around him was pragmatic and quite un-western. His service to his country had a religious zeal. Surrender does not carry the same stigma for Americans, as it did for the Japanese in WWII. Our leaders asked for sacrifice, but they did allow major forces to surrender when the end was inevitable. (The Philipines). The Nazi's and the military cabal of Tojo never considered surrender as an option, and prefered suicide as a military tactic.

For those who still argue about the morality of using atomic weapons against such an enemy, read this book. It may give you a different perspective of an "already defeated" enemy.

This is a short book that chronicles the amazing construction and the practically useless battle experience of the 2nd Yamato class battleship, the HIJMS Musashi.

It is basically split up into two quite distinct sections. The first two thirds or so of the book is concerned with the construction of the Musashi in the Nagasaki shipyards and is told from the point of view of the senior engineers and shipyard leadership, and their Navy overseers. The story of the Musashi's construction and launch is rather amazing, especially because of the security paranoia of the Japanese during the late '30's. What struck me as an engineer in industry was just how familiar the organization and methods of the Nagasaki shipyard design offices were back then, with the notable exception that workers who made mistakes or gossiped about their job simply "disappeared" of course. How the engineers and the Japanese Navy managed to upgrade the Nagasaki facilities to build and launch the Musashi, to prevent it from careening across Nagasaki bay and beaching itself on the nearby opposite shore, and keep the construction and launching a complete secret even though it took place in the heart of major city made for some pretty absorbing reading at times. It's also filled with interesting little facts, such as the explanation of how the caliber of a battleship's main gun determines its necessary width. Based on this the Japanese planned to beat American battleships by mounting 9 x 18.1 inch guns on the Musashi and Yamato, while the need to traverse the Panama Canal limited their American counterparts to 9 x 16 inch guns.

The last third of the book was a little less strong, following the Musashi along its completely undistinguished operational career and told from the viewpoint of no one in particular. Nonetheless you get a clear picture of the highly paradoxical and at times anachronistic thinking of the Imperial Japanese Navy during WWII, a fighting force that is normally cited for being extremely efficient, effective, and innovative. Yet the nation that showed the world how to fight with aircraft carriers in the first part of the war showed none of these qualities when it came to using their giant super-battleships, ships made useless by their own early operational innovations. For the majority of the war the Yamato and Musashi sat in Truk Lagoon and then Palau doing not much of anything. Officially they were waiting for a giant decisive gun battle with the U.S. Navy, but other than occasionally running away from air raids or briefly chasing false leads about the location of the U.S. Fleet they pretty much sat around, trying not to waste fuel. At one point the Musashi was even used as a freighter with bombs, fuel and equipment lashed to the deck, making it surely their worst designed freighter in history. This unsurprisingly came to nothing however as heavy seas started moving the cargo and it had to be thrown overboard. Nearing a couple years of service in the midst of the largest theater in the largest war of human history, the largest battleship in human history had basically consumed some fuel and thrown equipment over the sides.

Finally during the battle of the Philippine Seas the Yamato and Musashi get to at least try to take part in the long awaited massive gun to gun battle with the U.S. Navy. Unfortunately the Musashi gets picked off by American carrier aircraft. The ordeal of the survivors, like any group of men on a warship battered and sunk, is indeed truly harrowing. Their treatment at the hands of the Japanese government which wanted to hide the loss of the ship from the public was particularly shameful.

A quick and interesting read for people who want to know about the Japanese Yamato class battleships. Due to the extreme secrecy surrounding these vessels only limited information exists and you'll have to be satisfied with mere glimpses of what the full story must have been. Expectations should also be tempered by the fact that this book is a translation from a language with zero root connection to English, so don't expect Ernest Hemingway caliber prose either. Nonetheless highly enjoyable if taken for what it is.

I would agree with the November 3, 2000 reviewer about this book. It is correct that neither the technical details of the construction, nor the ship's fatal battle in the Sibuyan Sea are really the focus of this book. Rather, it is really how long the Japanese Navy clung to the belief that massive battleships and big guns would shape the fate of the nation-probably because of their longstanding belief in "decisive battles"-and how the paranoia and secrecy (even from their own Finance Ministry) that followed resulted in years of work and the expenditure of massive national resources to produce a weapon that was obsolete before it was completed. The ship was built on a massive scale to fight and defeat other capital ships, but it never got anywhere near those ships-the Navy seemed afraid to risk it's investment on anything other than a decisive battle. When it was finally sent to what the Japanese hoped was the decisive surface battle in Leyte Gulf, the US Navy did not oblige, and it was quicky sunk by a relatively few aircraft. The irony is, of course, that not only did this weapon not have a decisive role, it had virtually no role at all, not even as a deterrent (since the secrecy resulted in the allies not even knowing it's size until after the war). The story is really summed up by the short epilogue recounting how the 1,300 Musashi survivors were treated by the Japanese military-to acknowledge their existence would have been tantamount to admitting the sinking of the super ship and the futility of its creation. This story is really more about the military industrial complex, and the fatal combination of secrecy,paranoia,national hubris and outdated thinking. Some of the negative comments probably reflect the fact that this work was translated from the Japanese, and probably loses something therein.

I would agree with the November 3, 2000 reviewer about this book. It is correct that neither the technical details of the construction, nor the ship's fatal battle in the Sibuyan Sea are really the focus of this book. Rather, it is really how long the Japanese Navy clung to the belief that massive battleships and big guns would shape the fate of the nation-probably because of their longstanding belief in "decisive battles"-and how the paranoia and secrecy (even from their own Finance Ministry) that followed resulted in years of work and the expenditure of massive national resources to produce a weapon that was obsolete before it was completed. The ship was built on a massive scale to fight and defeat other capital ships, but it never got anywhere near those ships-the Navy seemed afraid to risk it's investment on anything other than a decisive battle. When it was finally sent to what the Japanese hoped was the decisive surface battle in Leyte Gulf, the US Navy did not oblige, and it was quicky sunk by a relatively few aircraft. The irony is, of course, that not only did this weapon not have a decisive role, it had virtually no role at all, not even as a deterrent (since the secrecy resulted in the allies not even knowing it's size until after the war). The story is really summed up by the short epilogue recounting how the 1,300 Musashi survivors were treated by the Japanese military-to acknowledge their existence would have been tantamount to admitting the sinking of the super ship and the futility of its creation. This story is really more about the military industrial complex, and the fatal combination of secrecy,paranoia,national hubris and outdated thinking. Some of the negative comments probably reflect the fact that this work was translated from the Japanese, and probably loses something therein.

I agreed with the other writer that gives this book a 1 star. More than 1/2 of the book is dedicated to its construction, and the paranoid that goes into covering its existence. There is not much information about the crew, or its battle, though I guess the Musashi did not take part in any major battle till the end... kind of like the Bismarck.. this book is nothing compared to Saboro Sakai's Samurai, which is a much better read.

This is an awful book; after reading it I kept wondering what it is supposed to be about. It is for sure not about the building of the Musashi, nor about the fighting and sinking of the ship, nor about her design, nor about her crew, nor about anything else; the only way I can describe it is a chronological collection of random unexplained details. One even wonders why the Musashi: according to the book itself the identical Yamato was build first and better records exist. I particularly enjojed the "technical drawings": the best is 5, I am not kidding, 5 plan views of a 700 odd feet of battleship reduced to one 5x8 inch page, with legends in Japanese! (actually I am not sure, but they look to me like Japanese). Maybe the title of the book should have been "Musashi still in hiding". The consistent effort made by the Imperial Japanese Navy to hide the existence of the ship - which is the only is coherent message that comes from the book - cannot be an excuse; the technique for writing non-fiction about something that is not known is well established: one writes about similar, parallel, or otherwise related facts that are known. "Into the wild" and "The perfect storm" are examples that come to mind. One could at least speculate about the secrecy: it seems to me that the normal thing is to hide one's own weak points, and exaggerate the strong ones: so why hide the existence of the ship(s)? Was everything in pre-war Japan kept secret? only ships? why? was it good or bad in retrospect? Maybe the author is planning a sequel, "Everything you wanted to ask after reading my previous book about the Musashi".

If you are interested in the detailed minutiae of how battleships were designed and built in the Second World War, this is not the book to buy. Actual technical description is quite sparse and that's not really what this book is about. What it does, very well indeed, is to detail the appalling human cost that went into the creation of this beautiful, useless ship. The story is one of occasional horror and frequent farce.

Musashi was built in the Mitsubishi shipyard at Nagasaki, a town which in the late 1930s had a substantial Chinese community. When it was decided to award the construction contract to the Mitsubishi yard, the Japanese secret police's paranoia was so great that they moved into Nagasaki's Chinatown and more or less destroyed it in a night. They arrested almost every inhabitant and - while they were about it, so to speak - beat several of them to death for being suspiciously Chinese.

The shipyard was overlooked by hills; Japanese secret police would hide in those hills arresting and torturing any hill-walkers or ramblers thought to be paying too much attention to the view towards the shipyard below. Anyone hillwalking around Nagasaki had to face the land at all times, or else. The police did this even though nothing could actually be seen of the shipyard - because the shipbuilders, as well as building the world's largest battleship, were doing so behind the world's largest sisal-rope curtain. This weighed 400 tons and used up almost the entire sisal-rope output of Japan, driving the price to ludicrous heights and creating another security problem in that people might start asking what the Navy needed all that sisal-rope for....

At one point in the construction, a blueprint of part of the turret ring was accidentally incinerated; assumed stolen, the builders were facing liquidation as spies by the secret police when its true fate came to light.

And so it goes on. The ship itself feels like a metaphor rather than a real entity; one has little impression of her other than as a vast, brooding presence, doomed by our foreknowledge of her fate. The ship is oddly anonymous, not least because the builders were not allowed even to know her name. Farcically, when she was launched, the dignitary involved mumbled it inaudibly into his hand so the people building her would not find out the real name of "Number Two Battleship"! Nor were they allowed to pool experience with the builders of Number One or Number Three Battleship, although they did learn the ominous news that the latter was to be completed as an aircraft carrier.

No such useful fate for Musashi. The launch itself was a fraught operation; never having launched anything so huge before, there was concern that she might go careering uncontrollably across the channel and beach herself catastrophically on the opposite shore, so a raft had to be specially built and moored opposite the slipway. This way, Number Two Battleship would have something softer than the shore to crash into if such a thing happened.

It didn't, of course, and off went Musashi to battle - or rather to war, to idle at Truk, to Lingga Roads, and other anchorages, for she only ever saw one battle. And even that was a battle against aircraft, to be sunk with contemptuous ease. She absorbed tremendous damage, but her anti-aircraft armament - 251 weapons, according to Januscz Skulski (in "The Battleship Yamato") - proved pitifully ineffective.

Japan was always, after all, going to run out of battleships before America ran out of torpedoes. This book tells the story of perhaps the only unequivocally successful aspect of Musashi's career - the effort to keep her secret. The Americans never suspected Musashi's existence until they sank her; the point of her existence, arguably, remains a mystery to this day.

Unputdownable!

Since I am not interested in technical engineering details of the construction of ships, I did not mind that almost all the information on this subject was confined to a few diagrams. I enjoyed the discussion of the secrecy aspects of the construction. The only negatives for me were the rather brief summary of the sinking, and the failure to put the Musashi's mission at that time into a broader strategic framework.

I purchased the book with great enthusiasm for I am fanatically interested in the design and construction of the Musashi.Unfortunately the book didn`t satisfy any of my interests..Rather than detail the making of the Musashi it wandered off into the problems associated in keeping the construction hidden.. I am no more enlightened than I was before I read the book. If you are interested enough in the making of the Musashi that this book would appeal to you, then you probably already know more than the book offers..