Launched in 1936, she soon displayed scorching speed and wound up setting records well into the 1960s, including one for a 1964 passage from Los Angeles to Tahiti that stood for 30 years.
Nor can Japanese suppliers be sure yet of how soon they can get back up to speed: hundreds of aftershocks, some strong enough to disrupt production, have rumbled on since the main quake.
The renewed fighting showed the need to speedup the deployment of the intervention brigade so that it would be "fully responsible as soon as possible", Mr Ban said.