Volume 7, Issue 4, Winter 2022 4 Winning Left of Battle: The Role of Analysis James J. Wirtz - Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey About the author James J. Wirtz is a Professor of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California. He recently completed coediting the 7th edition of Strategy in the Contemporary World (Oxford 2022). Disclaimer: The opinions expressed here are those of the author alone and do not reflect the position of any government or government agency. When the battleship Yamato was launched in August 1940, the Japanese Empire possessed a weapon that was designed with one target in mind, the battleships of the U.S. Navy. At 70,000 tons and armed with nine 18-inch guns, the largest caliber naval rifle ever deployed on a warship, the Yamato was actually intended to take on several comparatively lightly-armed and lightly-armored American battleships simultaneously in a climatic battle for control of the Western Pacific. That battle never occurred – the Yamato was sunk by more than four-hundred U.S. carrier aircraft during what amounted to a suicide mission to attack the U.S. invasion force at Okinawa in April of 1945. Nevertheless, both the Japanese and U.S. navies worked throughout World War II to bring their opposing battle lines To cite this article: Wirtz, James J., “Winning Left of Battle: The Role of Analysis,” Military Strategy Magazine, Volume 7, Issue 4, winter 2022, pages 4-8.
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