Kirishima (ship, 1913)
 The Kirishima 1938
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The Kirishima ( Japanese 霧 島 ) was a warship of the Japanese Navy , which was used in the First and Second World War . It was named after Mount Kirishima , a volcano in Kagoshima Prefecture . The ship was sunk by the USS Washington on November 15, 1942 .
Planning and construction
The keel of the Kirishima was laid on March 17, 1912 at the Mitsubishi shipyard in Nagasaki . She was one of three battle cruisers of Kongō class , which in Japan as copies of the built in England Kongō were built.
Under the pressure of the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 in which Japan was restricted to build more capital ships, it was modernized into a battleship between 1927 and 1930 .
In the course of a further modernization program that followed Japan's exit from the League of Nations in 1933, the Kirishima was comprehensively modernized. It received a new engine system that delivered almost twice as much power as the previous model and reached a theoretical speed of up to 31 knots . Later it turned out to be only 29.8 knots on the Kirishima . The armor and fire control systems were also revised, so that the ship changed so much that it was reclassified as a fast battleship .
The plans adopted by the government in September 1939 for the expansion and modernization of the Imperial Japanese Navy provided for the replacement of the aging Kirishima with a super battleship of the Yamato class within six years .
Mission history of the Kirishima
As part of Kido Butai took Kirishima at the Pearl Harbor attack in part on 7 December 1941st Subsequently, in the spring of 1942, she took part in the Japanese offensive in the East Indies and was part of the fleet that defeated the British in the Indian Ocean .
In early March 1942, the Kirishima was deployed as part of Vice Admiral Mikawa's combat group near the Christmas Islands . The battle group got into a fight with the individually-propelled Edsall - a destroyer of the Clemson class . Aided by dive bombers from Admiral Nagumo's aircraft carriers and heavy cruisers, the skillfully guided destroyer was finally sunk. In the course of the battle, Kirishima and Hiei fired around 297 35.6 cm shells.
Eventually the 11th Battleship Division consisting of Kirishima and Hiei was assigned to the 3rd Fleet. In August 1942, the Kirishima received an early type of Japanese radar system , Type 21 Go Denkan Mod. 1, for searching for aircraft. As part of the carrier battles in the Eastern Solomon Islands and the Santa Cruz Islands , the battleships were used as part of Admiral Kondo's combat groups.
After American marines landed on Guadalcanal and set up an airfield on the island, it was no longer possible for Japanese naval units to supply their troops on the island during daylight, as they feared air attacks on the transport ships. Admiral Kondō had his ships under the command of Rear Admiral Abe Hiroaki now mainly drive safety missions for their own transporters on their nightly missions. Since the landing point for Japanese reinforcement troops on the island was only a few nautical miles from the landing point of the American reinforcements, naval operations against American transport fleets and the use of heavy warships such as the Kirishima to bombard the Henderson Field airfield were also possible .
On November 13, 1942, the Kirishima and her sister ship Hiei penetrated the Eisensund to bombard Henderson Field. After American defenders surprisingly presented themselves to battle , heavy losses occurred on both sides. The Hiei and the destroyer Yudachi had to be abandoned and the remaining ships, including the Kirishima , withdrew to be out of range of US planes at daybreak. The Kirishima had only received one hit from an 8- inch shell and badly damaged the cruiser San Francisco .
_firing_during_the_Second_Naval_Battle_of_Guadalcanal,_14_November_1942.jpg)
When the Kirishima sailed a few days later on November 15 for the Tokyo Express as a backup in the direction of Guadalcanal, Japanese reconnaissance planes reported two American cruisers off Guadalcanal and Admiral Kondō - this time on board the Atago - decided to move these ships around the island with a pincer movement To attack Savo around from two sides at the same time. However, the crew of the Kirishima faced a battleship and several destroyers while circumnavigating Savo. While the Japanese ships concentrated their fire on the USS South Dakota , the second American battleship, the USS Washington , went undetected in the dark. The Japanese falsely identified the South Dakota as a North Carolina-class ship and finally reported the serious damage to the enemy and his expected demise to their command posts. That was not true, but after a 14-inch hit by the Kirishima and many hits by the cruisers , the South Dakota was de facto incapacitated and withdrew. The American battleship fired 115 heavy shells but had no confirmed hits with its main artillery.
With its radar, the Washington succeeded in recording the position of the Kirishima precisely and, on the basis of this data, maneuvering itself into a favorable firing position. After nine direct hits from the main guns of the Washington , two of which tore open the hull to starboard, and numerous hits from smaller shells, the Kirishima was so badly damaged that it was burning arcs with a heavy list because her rudder was damaged and wedged on 10 ° starboard was. The steering gear room was flooded and fires soon made it impossible to stay in the engine rooms. Numerous machinists were already dead, two main turrets had failed and the spreading fires threatened the powder magazines of the front and rear groups of turrets, so that their flooding was ordered. The ship could no longer be saved. After Admiral Kondo received the damage report, he instructed Kaigun-Taisa Sanji Iwabuchi to abandon the Kirishima . It went down at 4:25 a.m. local time. More than 300 crew members were killed in the sea battle and in the sinking of the Kirishima , the rest were taken up by Japanese destroyers.
wreck
In August 1992, a team led by the American deep-sea researcher Robert D. Ballard discovered a wreck of a Congo-class battleship lying upside down at a depth of around 1220 m and assigned this wreck to the Kirishima on the basis of its position and the damage that could be identified.
For the location of the wreck see: Ironbottom Sound
Remarks
- ↑ The Japanese rank corresponds to the German rank of captain at sea . The prefix Kaigun indicates that it is a naval officer.
literature
- Maru Special, Japanese Naval Vessels. Volume 35: Kirishima. Tokyo 1976-1981.
- Maru Special, Japanese Naval Vessels (Second Series), Volume 112: History of the Congo Class , Tokyo 1986, with Volume 116: History of the Japanese Battleships , Tokyo 1986.
- Kaijinsha (publ.): Warships of the Imperial Japanese Navy. Volume 4: Congo class (Kirishima / Haruna). Tokyo 1996.
- Robert D. Ballard, Rick Archbold: Sunk in the Pacific - Guadalcanal ship cemetery. Ullstein, 1999, ISBN 3-548-24605-2 .
- Jane's Publishing Company, 1919: Jane's Fighting ships of World War 1. Studio Editions, London 1990, ISBN 1-85170-378-0 .
Web links
- Side to the use history of Kirishima (English)
- US Navy page on the Kirishima (English)
Individual evidence
- ^ Donald M. Goldstein, Katherine V. Dillon: The Pacific War papers. Japanese documents of World War II. Free Press, 2005, ISBN 1-57488-632-0 , p. 300.
- ↑ David C. Evans: Kaigun. Strategy, Tactics, and Technology in the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1887-1941. US Naval Institute Press, 2003, ISBN 0-87021-192-7 , p. 276.
- ↑ David C. Evans: Kaigun. Strategy, Tactics, and Technology in the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1887-1941. US Naval Institute Press, 2003, ISBN 0-87021-192-7 , p. 358.
- ^ John B. Lundstrom: First Team and the Guadalcanal Campaign: Naval Fighter Combat from August to November 1942 . US Naval Institute Press, ISBN 978-1-59114-472-4 , p. 93
- ^ John B. Lundstrom: First Team and the Guadalcanal Campaign. Naval Fighter Combat from August to November 1942. US Naval Institute Press, ISBN 978-1-59114-472-4 , p. 476.
- ↑ Tameichi Hara: Japanese destroyer captain. US Naval Institute Press, ISBN 1-59114-354-3 , 2007, p. 136.
- ^ A b Vincent P. O'Hara: The US Navy against the Axis. Surface combat - 1941-1945. US Naval Institute Press, ISBN 1-59114-650-X , pp. 124 ff.
- ↑ Joachim Wätzig: The Japanese Fleet - From 1868 to today. Brandenburgisches Verlagshaus, Berlin 1996, ISBN 3-89488-104-6 , p. 183.