May 15, 1942 the headline read; Japanese Launch Six New Battleships, and the story that followed;
DNB, the German news agency, reported today that the Japanese Navy launched two new 45,000 ton and four 35,000 ton battleships last year and will launch three more battleships of unspecified size this year.
DNB quoted an axis dispatch saying that on the basis of these figures "the United States navy no longer has a five-to-three advantage over the Japanese navy." The figures quoted for Japanese construction far exceed those credited by United Nations authorities."

The two large battleships would be Yamato and Musashi, launched in 1940 and 1941 respectively, but the 35,000 ton battleships were non existent. Perhaps this was a propaganda piece designed to startle the Allies, after all this was only five months after Pearl Harbor. It might benefit Hitler, who did not want the U.S. to become more involved in the European theatre and for the Japanese it might have been just to bolster their position and give the Allies something to think about. The U.S. might have to think up a different strategy if there were four more battleships in the Japanese arsenal.

In fact Japanese battleship construction was far behind other nations, all of the battleships used by the Japanese navy in World War 2 had been built between 1910 and 1921. Until the Yamato class was launched the last battleship completed was Mutsu in 1921. The Japanese recognized that the future of naval warfare lay in the aircraft carrier, and several hulls laid down as battleships were converted into carriers.