Mikazuki (ship, 1927)
 The Mikazuki 1933
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The Mikazuki ( Japanese 三 日月 , dt. "Waxing moon") was a destroyer of the Mutsuki class of the Imperial Japanese Navy .
history
The ship was built at the Sasebo naval shipyard and was launched there on August 21, 1925. The commissioning took place on May 7, 1927 and in 1928 it was christened Mikazuki , as it was previously only named with a number (No. 32).
In the period before the Pacific War, the Mikazuki supported landings of Japanese troops in China ( Second Sino-Japanese War ).
Pacific War
Guard service
At the beginning of the war in December 1941, the Mikazuki was assigned to the 3rd Aircraft Carrier Division to act as a security ship for the carriers Hōshō and Zuihō .
Midway
In June 1942 she was assigned to the landing fleet of Admiral Kondo together with the Zuihō . During the Battle of Midway , she was not involved in the fighting.
Guadalcanal
In the further course of the war, the destroyer was mainly used for escort and transport tasks, for example for the Tokyo Express . On July 12, 1943, she ran together with the light cruiser Jintsū and four other destroyers from Rabaul to transport troops and equipment to Guadalcanal . Warned by their wiretapping experts, the Americans formed a strong combat group to intercept the ships during the night. In the following Battle of Kolombangara the Jintsū was sunk, but the Japanese destroyers successfully pulled away. They later used their torpedoes against the pursuing ships and severely damaged several of them.
The End
After the Mikazuki had taken fuel from the fleet tanker Naruto on July 21, 1943 , she was assigned to another transport mission. Together with the destroyer Ariake , the Mikazuki left Rabaul on July 27, 1943 to transport 500 soldiers of the 115th and 14th regiments of the army with six guns and 40 tons of supplies, some of which were loaded onto barges, to Tuluvu.
On the night of July 27th to 28th, the Mikazuki ran onto a reef at Tuluvu (Cape Gloucester) around midnight. The Ariake went alongside, took over the crew and the troops, and set them down in the landing zone.
The following day, Wednesday July 28, numerous targets in the Tuluvu area were attacked from the air. The Mikazuki was attacked by B-25 bombers and badly damaged. The destroyer Akikaze moored on the wreck on the night of the 29th and his sailors recovered secret documents and useful equipment from the Mikazuki .
The following day, the wreck - which, propped up on the reef, had not sunk - was once again targeted by American P-38 fighter bombers and B-25 bombers.
Eight crew members of the Mikazuki were killed in the events of July 28th. The wreckage of the destroyer later served the Americans as a helpful marker for the reef during their destroyer missions.
literature
- Theodore Roscoe: United States Destroyer Operations in World War II. US Naval Institute Press, 1953, ISBN 0-87021-726-7 (English).
- MJ Whitley: Destroyer in World War II . Motorbuch Verlag, Stuttgart 1991, ISBN 3-613-01426-2 .
Web links
Footnotes
- ^ Theodore Roscoe: United States Destroyer Operations in World War II. P. 230 and following.
- ↑ The Naruto mission history on combinedfleet.com, viewed August 1, 2012
- ↑ ChapterIV: "Most Successful Attack" by Richard L. Dunn, 2003, on j-aircraft.com, viewed August 1, 2012
- ↑ The Official Chronology of the US Navy in World War 2, Chapter V: 1943 , viewed August 1, 2012
- ↑ Mission history of Mikazuki at combinedfleet.com, viewed on August 1, 2012
- ^ Theodore Roscoe: United States Destroyer Operations in World War II. P. 269.