Kasagi (ship, 1898)
 The Kasagi in Kobe, 1899
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The Kasagi ( Japanese 笠 置 ) was a 2nd class armored cruiser of the Imperial Japanese Navy . It was named after the holy mountain Kasagi near Kyoto .
Construction and technical data
She and the Chitose , which was laid down three months later and launched two days later , are commonly referred to as sister ships, mostly referring to the Kasagi class and occasionally the Chitose class. The two ships, almost simultaneously but built by two different American shipyards , were very similar as their design was based on that of the British- built Takasago . The two ships, typical Elswick cruisers with a low foredeck, two funnels, two masts and a battering bow , were slightly larger than the Takasago and, unlike the latter, had no bow torpedo tube. However, they differed from one another in many aspects of their interior, as the shipyards had been given a lot of freedom for their own developments. So the Kasagi had z. B. a total of 142 watertight compartments separated by bulkheads and bulkhead decks, the Chitose 130 and the Takasago only 109.
The two ships were ordered as part of the fleet expansion program of 1896. Its construction costs were met from the reparation payments that the Chinese Empire had to pay to Japan after the First Sino-Japanese War on the basis of the Shimonoseki Treaty of 1895.
The Kasagi was designed and built by the William Cramp and Sons shipyard in Philadelphia . The building contract was signed on December 31, 1896. The ship was laid down on February 13, 1897, launched on January 20, 1898, and was completed and officially put into service on October 24, 1898. With a length of 114.1 m in the waterline , 14.9 m width and 5.41 m draft , the cruiser displaced 4979 ts . The machine system consisted of twelve boilers and two triple expansion steam engines with a total output of 11,600 kW, which enabled a top speed of 22.5 knots with two screws . The range was, with a bunker supply of 1000 tons of coal, 4000 nautical miles at 10 nm cruising speed. The armament was not installed in Great Britain until December 1898 ; it consisted of two 20.3 cm rapid fire cannons behind gun shields (one in front, one aft), 10 British 120 mm rapid fire guns Mk I-IV in casemates , 12 British 76 mm rapid fire cannons also in casemates, four Japanese 2, 5-pounder rapid-fire guns on the battle marshes of both masts and four 35.6 cm torpedo tubes . The deck armor was 62 mm, 112 mm on the slopes. The gun shields of the two heavy guns were 203 mm thick at the front and 62 mm at the sides, and the command post had 115 mm of armor protection. The crew numbered 405 men.
Mission history
First years
The day after its official commissioning, the then still unarmed Kasagi took part in the fleet parade on the Delaware River in Philadelphia on October 25, 1898 , which marked the start of the Philadelphia Peace Jubilee, a four-day celebration of the victory in the Spanish-American War , was aligned. Then the ship steamed on November 5 from New York to Newcastle upon Tyne , where it arrived on November 24, to then receive its guns at the Elswick Ordnance Company . On May 16, 1899, the ship finally arrived at the Yokosuka naval base in Japan.
During naval maneuvers in April 1900 in the Bay of Kagoshima, the Kasagi collided in a fog bank with a cargo steamer that had to be beached in order not to sink. The Kasagi had to stop participating in the exercises because of their own harm.
From June, the cruiser was then used off the north Chinese coast, as part of the naval forces of the so-called United Eight States , which put down the Boxer Rebellion ; In July, 52 men of his crew belonged to the second international expeditionary force that occupied the city of Tianjin .
In July 1901 the Kasagi took part in the maneuvers in which the defense against an attack by enemy forces on the port city of Sasebo was rehearsed. In August 1901 she made a friendship visit to Vladivostok, Russia, with the new armored cruiser Iwate , which was commissioned in March 1901 .
Russo-Japanese War
In the Russo-Japanese War 1904–05, the Kasagi took part in several battles. In the sea battle off Port Arthur , the Japanese attack on Port Arthur , on February 9, 1904, she was one of the four protected cruisers of the 3rd Division of the United Fleet , which under the command of Rear Admiral Dewa Shigeto the first morning attack on the port Performed February 9; in the process she suffered some combat damage.
In March she took part in the bombardment of Vladivostok by the units of Admiral Kamimura Hikonojō . On May 14, the Kasagi recovered 134 survivors of the battleship Hatsuse, which sank south of Port Arthur after being hit by mines.
During the naval battle in the Yellow Sea on August 10, 1904, the Kasagi was a direct enemy of the Russian battleship Poltava for a short time , until Rear Admiral Dewa led his cruisers out of the firing range of the artillery superior enemy again, and afterwards took part in the futile pursuit of the Russian cruisers Askold and Nowik part.
In the naval battle of Tsushima in May 1905, the Kagasi was under the Dewa flagship of the 3rd Division of the First Squadron, now promoted to Vice Admiral , whose four cruisers dueled with the Russian cruisers Oleg , Aurora and Schemtschug . The Kasagi received a hit below the waterline , which put a boiler room and a coal bunker under water and forced the ship to break off the battle. Vice Admiral Dewa switched to the Chitose .
Last years
In October 1908, the Kasagi took part in the first large-format post-war maneuvers of the Japanese Navy. From 1910 she then served as a training ship , where she undertook an extensive navigation training trip in the Pacific from October 16, 1910 to March 6, 1911.
In 1912 the ship was completely overhauled. The previous locomotive steam boilers were replaced by so-called Miyabara water tube boilers .
After the beginning of the First World War , the Kasagi was assigned to the 1st Fleet, but continued to serve mainly as a training ship.
The End
On July 20, 1916, the cruiser ran aground in a storm in the Tsugaru Strait between the islands of Honshū and Hokkaidō in northern Japan and drew a serious leak at the level of the rear chimney. Rescue attempts failed; only parts of the equipment could ultimately be recovered. The Kasagi sank on August 10, 1916 and was formally removed from the list of ships on November 5, 1916.
literature
- Roger Chesneau, Eugene M. Kolesnik (eds.): Warships of the World 1860 to 1905 . Volume 2: USA, Japan and Russia . Bernard & Graefe Verlag, Koblenz 1983, ISBN 3-7637-5403-2 .
- Roger Chesneau: Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships, 1906-1921. Naval Institute Press, Annapolis 1985, ISBN 0-87021-907-3 .
- Stephen Howarth: The Fighting Ships of the Rising Sun: The Drama of the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1895-1945. Atheneum, 1983, ISBN 0-689-11402-8 .
- Hansgeorg Jentsura: Warships of the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1869-1945 . Naval Institute Press, Annapolis 1976, ISBN 0-87021-893-X .
- Journal of the Royal United Service Institution , Vol. XLIII, No. 251, London, January 16, 1899, pp. 562-566. Royal United Services Institute for Defense Studies
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ California Digital Newspaper Collection: Sacramento Daily Union , Volume 94, Number 152, January 21, 1898: Japanese Cruiser Kasagi Successfully Launched at Philadelphia
- ^ The Philadelphia Peace Jubilee
- ↑ Japanese Cruiser Kasagi in England . In: The New York Times . November 26, 1898 ( digitized [PDF]).
- ↑ The chief engineer of the Japanese Navy, Rear Admiral Miyabara Jiro, designed this type of water-tube boiler named after him in 1895/96. The Miyabara cauldron . In: Walter Leps: The water tube boilers of the war and merchant navy. Volckmann, Rostock, 1904, pp. 282–289, Textarchiv - Internet Archive