https://vineyardgazette.com/news/2015/04/09/looking-back-avengers-world-war-ii

The port side of the ship was taking a savage beating. After two more torpedo hits, the Yamato developed a slight list; it could not be corrected by counterflooding, because many damage-control personnel had been killed or wounded. Smoke rose from the great battleship, and she gradually began to lose speed. A damaged rudder held her in a lazy turn to port. The American aircraft kept coming, wave upon wave of them, scoring hit after hit. “From near the funnel,” recalled Ensign Yoshida, “black smoke was rising in great puffs. There was a sudden increase in our list, and speed fell off to only seven knots! Now we were easy prey to the planes. As though awaiting this moment, the enemy came plunging through the clouds to deliver the coup de grace.” As his captain shouted “Hold on, men!” Yoshida lay down on the deck of the bridge; “I braced myself to withstand the shocks!”

The planes that Yoshida saw were six Yorktown Avengers commanded by Lieutenant Thomas Stetson. One of the squadron’s rear-seat gunners, Harvey Ewing, held his breath as he neared the ship. “I could see bursts of antiaircraft fire all around the plane as we made the run,” he said, “and to say I was scared would be an understatement. We dropped the fish and pulled up on one wing over the Yamato and seemed to hang there for minutes as the ship was firing every gun it had, including its 18-inch rifles, at the planes following us in.”

At least four torpedoes found their mark. “Great columns of water,” Yoshida said, “suddenly rose high into the air on the port side amidships.” As the Yamato shuddered from the explosions, the sea cascaded into the fresh holes in her side. “The horizon seemed to take on a mad new angle. Dark waves splattered and reached for us as the stricken ship heeled to the incredible list of 80 degrees!” The Yamato turned turtle and went under at 2:23 p.m. Yoshida heard “the blast, rumble and shock of compartments bursting from air pressure and exploding magazines already submerged.” He was one of only 269 survivors of the Yamato’s complement of 2,767.

The battleship had plenty of company on the ocean floor that afternoon. The cruiser Yahagi and four of the destroyers that had escorted the Yamato into battle also escorted her to the bottom. The remaining four destroyers limped back to Japan, having sustained varying degrees of damage. Almost 3,700 Japanese officers and men were killed, at a cost to Admiral Mitscher of only 10 aircraft. If the story of the shift of power at sea from once-mighty dreadnoughts to aircraft carriers needed a final chapter, it was written that afternoon as the Yamato went down.

Thomas Stetson (1918)