Creative Execution: What Great Leaders Do to Unleash Bold Thinking and Innovation

The Final Curtain: Operation SHO

By late 1944, the initiative in the Pacific had fully shifted to the United States. Although the Imperial Japanese Navy still presented a credible force, and included the world’s two largest battleships, the Yamato and her sister ship Musashi, each displacing 72,800 tons, the American industrial machine had kicked into full gear and was producing more fleet and escort carriers in a month than Japan could hope to produce in one year. This was exactly what Yamamoto had forecasted, yet the Pearl Harbor mastermind would not live to see his dark premonitions come true. His plane was shot down by American fighters in April 1943 while on a tour of the Japanese Empire’s forward bases, and crashed into the jungle. With ...