The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors: The Extraordinary World War II Story of the U.S. Navy's Finest Hour

by James D. Hornfischer

When a heavy round from a naval rifle hits a ship and explodes, the energy released pulverizes the hardened steel of the shell and swirls up the shattered remnants of surrounding metal decks and bulkheads. All of this metal rushes outward on the edge of a wave of blast pressure that a typical shipboard compartment cannot hope to contain. The sudden and overwhelming “overpressure” turns the compartment itself into a weapon, its remains churning up into a superheated storm of fragmented or liquified metal. The blast wave’s effect on people is horrific. It collapses body cavities, crushes organs, and blows flesh from bone. The size of the killing zone—the radius within which these effects will occur—depends on the amount of explosive the shell holds. A Japanese eight-inch armor-piercing shell, three feet long and 277 pounds in weight, had a 6.9-pound bursting charge. A fourteen-inch high-explosive shell, 1,425 pounds and five feet long, contained sixty-three pounds of explosives. The Yamato’s giant 18.1-inch armor-piercing shells, six and a half feet long and 3,219 pounds in weight, carried a seventy-five-pound bursting charge.