The name is old Japan. Yamato was built at Kure, the first of two battleships armed with 18.1-inch guns. She was launched on 8 August 1940 and commissioned on 16 December 1941, a week after the war opened. Nothing else afloat carried a broadside like hers.
She was not in the carrier fight at Midway. She stayed with the main body. Through 1943 and 1944 she was the fleet's heaviest ship and, for long stretches, a fleet headquarters that rarely fired those guns at another ship.
On the morning of 25 October 1944 Vice Admiral Takeo Kurita flew his flag in her off Samar. The center force had come through San Bernardino Strait in the night. What it met was not the American battle line. It was Rear Admiral Clifton Sprague's escort carriers, Taffy 3. Yamato was in that chase. She was not sunk. The escort carriers and destroyers lost that morning are not credited to her alone.
On 7 April 1945 she sailed for Okinawa with a light cruiser and a handful of destroyers, to beach herself and fight as a battery. American carrier aircraft found her southwest of Kyushu. She took bombs and torpedoes, capsized, and blew up. That sinking is not credited to one plane.