Why did Yamato have almost one thousand more crew than Musashi when lost?

Thing is, when Yamato sunk, she wasn’t the exact same as her sister ship anymore.

Here’s the Yamato:

Credit: Wikipedia

And here’s the Musashi:

Credit: Wikipedia

As was demonstrated at the Battle of Midway and the Battle of Leyte Gulf, air power was now the more significant threat, not battleships. The secondary guns on the Yamato and Musashi could be used for multi-purpose, they sucked in the AA role. So they stripped Yamato of two of her secondary guns and placed many more AA guns to protect the ship.

Naturally, you need crews to man the guns: for the triple mount, you would need 9 men to operate it, and 7 men for the double barrel. But something isn’t right; even with the additional crew for the guns, we only get about 200 more people. Yet when the Musashi sank, she had 2,399 people total, which about 1,000 people survived; with the Yamato, she had a crew of 3,332, who had a little under 300 survivors. What gives?

For the survivor count, the answer is simple: the Musashi was not being attacked when she went down and did not have a massive magazine detonation as her sister did. But as for why exactly the Yamato had seemingly 800 more people that didn’t go with the guns, I was unable to find out anything about it. However, my theory is that some were soldiers that would help fend off the Americans at Okinawa, once they beached the ship. Makes sense, since the troops would need to go there before reaching the mainland of Japan, but I guess we’ll never know for sure.

Source/Credit: WolfSpirit99 (Quora)

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