Tama (ship, 1920)
 The Tama 1942
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The Tama ( Japanese 多 摩 ) was a light cruiser of the Imperial Japanese Navy and the second ship of the five-unit Kuma class . The cruiser was named after the river Tama in the Kantō region in eastern Honshū .
The ship was built by the Mitsubishi shipyard in Nagasaki . The keel was laid on August 10, 1918, the launch about a year and a half later on February 20, 1920. The Tama was put into service on January 29, 1921.
Modifications and conversions
Like all units in this class, the Tama was equipped with Nakajima 90 model 2-2 aircraft and a catapult from 1929 onwards.
The Tama learned how most Japanese ships during the Second World War, a constant reinforcement of their flak . At the beginning of their service life there were only two 8 cm anti-aircraft guns on board - both guns were positioned in front of the foremost funnel - until July 1944, a 12.7 cm L / 40 type 89 A1 gun was installed on the cruiser , 41 light 2.5 cm anti-aircraft guns and ten 13.2 mm anti-aircraft machine guns installed. The retrofitting made it necessary, however, that two 14 cm guns of the main artillery had to be dismantled in return.
Career and pre-war history
After the commissioning, the Tama was stationed in Yokosuka and took over base and training tasks as well as official state missions. The cruiser transported the body of the American ambassador Edgar A. Bancroft, who died on July 27 near Tokyo , from Tokyo to San Francisco in August 1925 .
From 1932 the ship operated in Chinese waters and was temporarily stationed on Formosa .
In 1935 the German naval attaché in Japan, Captain z. S. Paul Wenneker - later commander of the ironclad Germany - the cruiser. As part of the excursion, organized by the Yokosuka Marine District, Wenneker also visited the battleship Kongō and the submarine I-2 . The German attaché is said to have been unimpressed by the shooting demonstrations.
From autumn 1941 - the Tama had meanwhile been assigned to the 21st cruiser squadron - the cruiser and its sister ships were given a brief overhaul and were given a camouflage paint job in keeping with the war.
Second World War
After the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the Tama was initially used as a patrol ship in northern Japanese waters. She suffered damage in a severe hurricane near the Kuril Islands and had to temporarily dock in Yokosuka at the end of December 1941.
In March and April 1942, the cruiser, together with its sister ship Kiso , was temporarily unsuccessfully used to hunt down the aircraft carriers of Vice Admiral William F. Halsey, who on April 18 launched the first American air raid on Japanese territory with B-25 bombers in the Second World War I ( Doolittle Raid ).
In June 1942, the Tama , as part of Vice Admiral Boshiro Hosogaya's 5th Fleet, took part in the Japanese campaign to conquer the Aleutian islands of Kiska and Attu and then remained in these waters. Between June 1942 and March 1943 the cruiser commuted between Attu, Kiska and the Japanese home bases and took on supply and security tasks.
On March 26, 1943, the Tama , together with the heavy cruisers Nachi and Maya , the light cruiser Abukuma and five destroyers, was involved in the sea battle near the Komandorsky Islands , around 100 nautical miles east of Kamchatka. The Japanese finally broke off the undecided battle, but gave the outnumbered Americans a strategic success because the Japanese also broke off their supply trip to the Aleutian Islands. In the course of the battle, the Tama received two 12.7 cm hits from US destroyers, which caused only minor damage and no personnel losses.
After the Japanese surrendered the Aleutians, the Tama and her sister ship Kiso moved to the Southwest Pacific in September 1943. The cruiser undertook troop transport trips between Truk, Rabaul and the Japanese home ports, whereby the Tama suffered some damage to the hull on October 21, 1943 north of Bougainville in an attack by Australian Bristol Beaufort bombers by close hits. The repairs in Yokosuka lasted until December 1943. At the same time, the ship's anti-aircraft weapons were reinforced.
Between January and June 1944, the Tama served as a watch and training ship and remained in her home waters. From the end of June 1944 the cruiser was used for several troop transports to the Bonin Islands and then re-docked until the end of August 1944.
In October 1944 the cruiser was detached by Vice Admiral Jisaburo Ozawa as part of the Japanese counter-offensive near the Philippines to the Japanese Northern Force and involved in the sea and air battle in the Gulf of Leyte . Ozawa's association, which only had to act as a bait for the far superior US armed forces, suffered heavy losses from American carrier aircraft on October 25, 1944 in the Battle of Cape Engano .
The Tama was hit by an American air torpedo in her boiler room No. 2 and badly damaged. Although the cruiser could only reach a top speed of 14 knots, it marched alone - the security destroyers were busy rescuing survivors from other ships or with their own damage - towards Okinawa, where repairs could have been carried out.
loss
In the evening hours of October 25, 1944, around 8:50 p.m., the radar of the American submarine USS Jallao (Lieutenant Commander Joseph B. Icenhower) north-east of Luzon captured Tama, who was marching back to Okinawa alone . At 9:02 p.m., the American submarine shot a fan of four torpedoes at the damaged cruiser, which was hit by three torpedoes just two minutes later. The Tama exploded after the hits, broke in two and sank at 21 ° 23 ′ N , 127 ° 19 ′ E. in just five minutes. The commander, Kaigun-Taisa Iwata Yamamoto, and an estimated 500 crew members went down with the cruiser. There were no survivors.
literature
- Eric LaCroix, Linton Wells: Japanese Cruisers of the Pacific War. US Naval Institute Press, 1997, ISBN 0-87021-311-3 .
- Helmut Pemsel: Command of the Sea. Volume 2. Augsburg 1995, pp. 610-613.
- Mike J. Whitley: Cruiser in World War II. Stuttgart 1997, pp. 184-186.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Japanese Cruisers of the Pacific War. P. 792.
- ↑ Japanese Cruisers of the Pacific War. P. 169.
- ↑ The Japanese rank Taisa corresponds to the German rank of captain at sea . The prefix Kaigun indicates that it is a naval officer.
- ↑ Joachim Wätzig: The Japanese Fleet - From 1868 to today. Brandenburgisches Verlagshaus, Berlin 1996, ISBN 3-89488-104-6 . P. 183