Sakaki (ship)
|
|
|---|---|
| Kaba class | |
 The type ship Kaba |
|
| Overview | |
| Type | destroyer |
| units | 10 |
| Shipyard | |
| Keel laying | November 5, 1914 |
| Launch | February 15, 1915 |
| delivery | March 26, 1915 |
| Namesake | the evergreen bulky shrub |
| Decommissioning | April 1, 1932 |
| Technical specifications | |
| displacement |
655 ts, |
| length |
83.6 m over everything, |
| width |
7.3 m |
| Draft |
2.3 m |
| crew |
94 men |
| drive |
4 steam boilers , |
| speed |
30 kn |
| Range |
1600 nm at 15 kn |
| Armament |
1 × 120 mm L / 40 rapid fire gun |
| Fuel supply |
100 tons of coal, 137 tons of oil |
| Sister ships |
9 destroyers of the Kaba- class, |
The Japanese destroyer Sakaki ( jap. 榊 ) was the second Japanese warship that lost most of its crew during World War I due to enemy action.
She was one of the eight Japanese destroyers of the Kaba class that were deployed to support the Allies from Malta in April 1917 in the Mediterranean for convoy security and anti-submarine defense.
The Sakaki was torpedoed off Crete on June 11, 1917 by the Austro-Hungarian submarine U-27 . 59 men of the 92-strong crew were killed, most of whom were in the crew mess at the time. The severely damaged ship was brought to Piraeus, was repaired and was used in the Mediterranean until the end of the war. Like her sister boats , the Sakaki remained in service until 1932.
Building history
When the First World War broke out , the Imperial Japanese Navy had only two modern boats with the Sakura-class destroyers , Sakura and Tachibana , completed in 1912 , of 530/830 ts, which appeared to be suitable for use at sea. The Urakaze-class boats subsequently ordered from Yarrow in Great Britain were only finished after the outbreak of the war and only one of the boats reached Japan after the end of the war; the second was sold to Italy before completion and entered service there as Audace in 1917 .
The larger Japanese destroyers of the Umikaze class of 1030/1150 ts with turbine propulsion, delivered in 1911, had not proven themselves due to their high fuel consumption and therefore appeared unsuitable for use at sea.
In order to fulfill the security tasks of the shipping lanes taken over in the Anglo-Japanese Alliance , the Japanese government implemented a naval emergency program in the 1914 financial year that allowed the construction of ten new destroyers. In order to get them into service as quickly as possible, the orders for the boats went not only to state shipyards, but also to civil shipyards in Japan. The ten boats of the Kaba class were built simultaneously at eight different shipyards. The order was quickly placed on the basis of the design of the Sakura class. The shipyards were only instructed to use conventional, coal-fired triple expansion engines as propulsion systems and not to use steam turbines. Despite the hasty implementation of the plans and the necessary changes to the design, all units were almost identical in appearance and performance, despite the eight shipyards.
As with the Sakura class, it was armed with a 12 cm cannon in front of the bridge and four so-called 8 cm cannons , two of which were positioned on the side and two at the stern. There were also two twin torpedo tubes behind the bridge and in the rear fuselage area. All weapons were made in Japan.
Twelve more boats were built in 1917 at six Japanese shipyards on behalf of the French navy , as there was insufficient building capacity for escort ships in Europe. They were given names of tribes in French possessions, similar to the British Tribal class, and were referred to as the Arabe class . They were named Algérien , Annamite , Arabe , Bambara , Hova , Kabyle , Marocain , Sakalave , Sénégalais , Somali , Tonkinois and Touareg .
Mission history
The Kaba- class destroyers turned out to be very reliable. The 10th Destroyer Flotilla was deployed from Singapore to secure the sea routes into the Indian Ocean. At the request of the British, the 11th destroyer flotilla ran from Japan to Singapore on February 18, 1917 and from there on March 11th together with the 10th flotilla (a total of eight boats of the Kaba class: Ume, Kusunoki, Kaede, Katsura, Kashiwa , Matsu, Sugi and Sakaki ) under Rear Admiral Kozo Sato via Colombo to Aden , where the Japanese arrived on April 4, 1917. The Japanese took on their first backup job on April 10, when Ume and Kusunoki escorted the Saxon transporter from Port Said to Malta . The other destroyers soon followed and on April 16 the destroyer squadron with its eight boats and the cruiser Akashi was assembled in Malta. Although independent on paper, the escort duties for transporters and convoy trains and the submarine hunt were carried out in accordance with the instructions of the British command in Malta.
The Sakaki was involved in an early, unsuccessful mission with the Matsu . On Thursday, May 3, 1917, they took over the security of the troop transport Transylvania with almost 3,000 soldiers on board in Marseille for a trip to Alexandria (Egypt). On May 4, the transporter was attacked four kilometers south of Cape Vado in the Gulf of Genoa by the German submarine U 63 under Lieutenant Otto Schultze . The Transylvania was zigzagging at a speed of 14 knots when a torpedo from U 63 hit the engine room on the port side at around 10 o'clock in the morning . The ship hit headed for the nearby land. The Matsu pulled alongside to take over the soldiers while the Sakaki attacked the submarine. U 63 shot another torpedo, which the Matsu was able to avoid with "full power back". The torpedo then hit the Transylvania again , which sank 40 minutes after the first hit. Ten crew members, 29 officers and 373 soldiers were killed in the sinking. Japanese, French and Italian ships were able to save the majority of the castaways. With 14,348 GRT, the Transylvania was the largest ship that sank U 63 .
The Sakaki was torpedoed and badly damaged off Crete on June 11, 1917 by the Austro-Hungarian submarine SM U-27 near the small island of Cengotto . The commander of the frigate captain Uehara Taichi and 58 men of the 92-strong crew were killed. There were also nine seriously and 6 slightly wounded.
She was brought to Piraeus with a severed bow , repaired and remained in service with her nine sister ships until 1932.
In June 1917, the armored cruiser Izumo replaced the Akashi as the flagship of the Japanese destroyer squadron in the Mediterranean, which had been relocated to Malta with the 15th destroyer flotilla, which consisted of the four destroyers of the Momo class .
At the end of the war, the Sakaki was sent to Brindisi with three sister boats , while the other Mediterranean boats went to Constantinople . The Japanese had distinguished themselves in the security service, had the highest sea times and 34 encounters with opposing submarines. In addition to the Sakaki , the Matsu was damaged in the process. However, they did not succeed in sinking a submarine.
List of the Kaba class
| Surname | Shipyard | Keel laying | Launch | Commissioning | Whereabouts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kaba ( 樺 ) | Yokosuka naval shipyard | December 1, 1914 | February 6, 1915 | March 5, 1915 | out of service April 1, 1932 |
| Kashiwa ( 柏 ) |
Mitsubishi , Nagasaki |
November 3, 1914 | February 14, 1915 | April 4, 1915 | 1917 Mediterranean Sea, damaged by earthquake on September 1st, 1923 repaired, out of service April 1, 1932 |
| Matsu ( 松 ) | November 3, 1914 | March 5, 1915 | April 6, 1915 | 1917 Mediterranean Sea, damaged by earthquake on September 1st, 1923 repaired, out of service April 1, 1932 |
|
| Sakaki ( 榊 ) | Sasebo naval shipyard | November 5, 1914 | February 15, 1915 | March 26, 1915 | 1917 Mediterranean Sea, out of service April 1, 1932 |
| Sugi ( 杉 ) | Osaka Iron Works, Osaka |
November 24, 1914 | February 16, 1915 | April 7, 1915 | 1917 Mediterranean Sea, out of service April 1, 1932 |
| Kaede ( 楓 ) | Maizuru naval shipyard | October 25, 1914 | February 20, 1915 | March 25, 1915 | 1917 Mediterranean Sea, out of service April 1, 1932, sunk November 3, 1934 |
| Ume ( 梅 ) |
Kawasaki , Kobe |
November 10, 1914 | February 27, 1915 | March 31, 1915 | 1917 Mediterranean Sea, out of service April 1, 1932 |
| Kusunoki ( 楠 ) | November 10, 1914 | March 5, 1915 | March 31, 1915 | 1917 Mediterranean Sea, out of service April 1, 1932 | |
| Kiri ( 桐 ) |
Uraga shipyard , Yokosuka |
November 24, 1914 | February 28, 1915 | April 22, 1915 | out of service April 1, 1932 |
| Katsura ( 桂 ) | Kure naval shipyard | December 1, 1914 | March 4, 1915 | March 31, 1915 | 1917 Mediterranean Sea, out of service April 1, 1932 |
literature
- Maurice Cocker: Destroyers of the Royal Navy, 1893-1981 . Ian Allan, 1983, ISBN 0-7110-1075-7 .
- David Evans: Kaigun: Strategy, Tactics, and Technology in the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1887-1941 . US Naval Institute Press, 1979, ISBN 0870211927 .
- Stephen Howarth: The Fighting Ships of the Rising Sun: The Drama of the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1895-1945 . Atheneum, 1983, ISBN 0689114028 .
- Paul G. Halpern: A Naval History of World War I . Routledge, 1994, ISBN 1857284984 .
- Hansgeorg Jentsura: Warships of the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1869-1945 . US Naval Institute Press, 1976, ISBN 087021893X .
- Spencer Tucker: The European Powers in the First World War . Taylor & Francis, 1996, ISBN 081533351X .
Individual evidence
- ↑ http://www.naval-history.net/WW1NavyJapanese.htm#dd
- ↑ Paul G. Halpern: A Naval History of World War I . Routledge, 1994, p. 393, ISBN 1857284984 .
- ↑ Japanese Destroyers
- ↑ http://www.naval-history.net/WW1NavyJapanese.htm
Web links
- Hiroshi Nishida: Materials of IJN: Kaba class destroyer . In: Imperial Japanese Navy . Retrieved January 22, 2012.
- battleships-cruisers.co.uk: French Arabe class . Retrieved January 22, 2012.
- navypedia.org: Japanese Kaba class . Retrieved January 22, 2012.
- Japan Center for Asian Historical Records: 11th Destroyer Division 1st Platoon (Matsu, Sakaki) detailed battle report . Retrieved November 25, 2017.