What preserving Yamato could reveal about Japanese armor

What lost information would be most valuable if Yamato survived as a museum ship?

Her armor: researchers could examine how such thick plates were made and whether they had set properly inside.

Paper specifications cannot reveal every feature of Yamato's massive armor plates or the industrial process that produced them. A surviving museum ship would let researchers cut samples and examine internal structure directly. Physical access could show whether the plate set uniformly, how its layers behaved, and whether unusual thickness created hidden metallurgical flaws. Incomplete setting is a hypothesis to test, not a confirmed defect that documents alone can establish.