Tokiwa
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|---|---|
 The Tokiwa in 1904 |
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| Overview | |
| Type | Armored cruiser |
| units | 2 |
| Shipyard |
Armstrong, Whitworth & Co. , Elswick , BauNr. 662 |
| Keel laying | January 6, 1897 |
| Launch | July 6, 1898 |
| delivery | May 18, 1899 |
| Namesake | a lake at Ube |
| Whereabouts | August 9, 1945 sunk demolition 1947 |
| Technical specifications | |
| displacement |
9700 ts |
| length |
124.36 m pp, |
| width |
20.45 m |
| Draft |
7.43 m |
| crew |
726 men |
| drive |
12 steam boilers |
| speed |
21.5 kn |
| Range |
7,000 nm at 10 kn |
| Armament |
• 4 × 203 mm L / 45 Armstrong cannons in twin turrets |
| Armor |
• Belt: 88–180 mm |
| Sister ship | |
| similar | |
The Tokiwa ( Japanese 常 盤 ) was the second armored cruiser of the Japanese Navy , which was built in the "six and six" construction program. The ship was named after a lake in Yamaguchi prefecture , near Ube . The ship was built at the Armstrong-Whitworth shipyard in Elswick near Newcastle upon Tyne after her sister ship Asama . Converted into a mine-layer in 1922, the Tokiwa remained in service with the Japanese Navy until it was sunk shortly before the end of the Second World War .
Building history
The Tokiwa was the second of six armored cruisers that were ordered after the First Sino-Japanese War as part of the "six-six program" (six ships of the line - six armored cruisers ) from foreign shipyards as the core of the Japanese navy. She was the sister ship of the first built Asama , according to the basic design developed by Armstrong, was for all six cruisers in the program, all 8-inch Armstrong guns as main armament and should reach a speed of 20 to 21 knots. The shipyards were relatively free to design the details.
Almost all of the orders for the construction program went to Great Britain, Armstrong built two pairs of these cruisers in Elswick: first the Asama and the Tokiwa , then the Izumo and the Iwate . For political and diplomatic reasons, the Yakumo was ordered in Germany and her near-sister ship Azuma in France .
The keel of the Tokiwa took place on January 6, 1897, which was then launched on July 6, 1898 and put into service on May 18, 1899. On July 17, 1899, the Tokiwa arrived in Yokosuka two months after her sister Asama . Their first commander was the future fleet commander Dewa Shigeto .
The following four armored cruisers differed from the Asama and Tokiwa only in a few details. Outwardly there was a considerable difference due to the two funnels, while the following ships had three funnels.
Mission history
They were first used during the Boxer Rebellion off the Chinese coast.
Russo-Japanese War
During the Russo-Japanese War , the Tokiwa with Izumo , Iwate , Azuma and Yakumo was initially used as the 2nd Division of the United Japanese Fleet against Port Arthur together with the 1st Division, which consisted of six ships of the line. After the success of the Russian cruisers, which operated from Vladivostok , the armored cruiser was deployed under Admiral Kamimura as a second fleet in the Sea of Japan and defeated with the four modern armored cruisers Izumo , Azuma , Tokiwa under Captain Motaro Yoshimatsu and Iwate and the two armored cruisers Naniwa and Takachiho in the naval battle near Ulsan on August 14, 1904, the Russian cruiser squadron under Rear Admiral Karl Jessen with the armored cruisers Rossija , Gromoboi and the outdated Rurik , which was sunk. Tokiwa received only a few hits in this battle and only had 3 injured. After replenishing the used ammunition and fuel supplies, she went back to sea with Izumo and Azuma . As the flagship of Vice Admiral Uryū Sotokichi , she went to Shanghai on the 16th with the cruisers Naniwa , Niitaka and two destroyers to enforce the demobilization of the Russian ships that had fled there. At the beginning of September she returned to Tsushima to secure southern access to the Korean Strait as the flagship of the 3rd Fleet . She also secured military expeditions to Korea.
The Tokiwa under Captain Reijiro Kawashima was involved in the decisive naval battle at Tsushima on May 27-28 , 1905 . She suffered a few insignificant hits and had one death to mourn. Until the end of the war she was mostly on duty in the Koreastrasse and secured the transport of troops to the Asian mainland.
In 1910 the Tokiwa was overhauled and received more modern, coal-fired Belleville boilers before returning to fleet service.
First World War
During the First World War , the armored cruiser Tokiwa initially belonged to the 4th squadron of the 2nd Japanese fleet, which was used against the German naval base in Tsingtau , which, however, had already been abandoned by the German East Asia squadron before the Japanese entered the war. Against the German base, in which there were only five gunboats (4 of them already disarmed to equip auxiliary cruisers) and the torpedo boat S 90 and the old Austrian cruiser Kaiserin Elisabeth , the Japanese initially set five old ships of the line of Russian origin with Suwo , Iwami , Tango , Okinoshima , Mishima , in addition to the Tokiwa two other armored cruisers with Iwate and Yakumo , eight light cruisers, including the Takachiho , 24 destroyers, 4 gunboats, the aircraft mother ship Wakamiya and a variety of auxiliary ships. The more modern ships of the line Settsu , Kawachi , Aki and Satsuma and the battle cruiser Kongo were soon withdrawn, however. The British took part in the naval deployment with the old Triumph , which had been mobilized in Hong Kong, and 4 old destroyers from Weihaiwei .
In October 1914 the Tokiwa went together with the Yakumo to Singapore and the Bay of Bengal to support the Chikuma already deployed there and the Russian Schemtschug in their search for the Emden .
On March 19, the Tokiwa arrived with the workshop ship Kamakura Maru in Puerto San Bartolome , Baja California Sur , on the Mexican west coast. On the Tokiwa came Vice Admiral Tochinai Sojirō , who routinely replaced Admiral Moriyama Keizaburo as commander of the American division of the Japanese fleet. In Puerto San Bartolome, also called Turtle Bay, the sister ship Asama ran aground on January 31, 1915 on an unmapped underwater rock and threatened to break. The previous flagship Izumo , which had been stationed on the Mexican west coast since December 1913, the cruiser Chitose , the supply ship Konan Maru , and on March 24th the workshop ship Kanto finally arrived to support them. Only after 98 days did the Asama , which has since been further damaged by the tidal range, float up and on 23 August, accompanied by the Kanto and the Chitose, started its journey home via the British base in Esquimalt , British Columbia , where another emergency repair was carried out. On December 18, 1915, the heavily damaged sister ship reached Yokosuka again .
The Tokiwa remained in the Pacific until the beginning of 1917 with trade defense duties against possible German auxiliary cruisers.
Training ship
During the World War, the Tokiwa , like the other armored cruisers later, undertook long-range training trips for midshipmen. On April 5, 1917, she left with 44th class cadets of the Japanese Naval Academy along with the Yakumo Yokosuka on such a trip to California , Hawaii and Oceania , from which she returned on August 17. From March 1 to July 26, 1919, the Azuma was followed by another trip to South Asia and Australia with the 46th class and on November 24, 1919 again with the Azuma, the 47th class to Singapore , Southeast Asia and through the Suez Canal to the Mediterranean , from which she returned to Yokosuka on May 20, 1920.
Like the other cruisers, she was reclassified to a "Coastal Defense Ship 1st Class" on September 30, 1921 and downgraded to a "Coastal Defense Ship" on June 1, 1931.
Mine layers
On September 30, 1922, the conversion of the Tokiwa into a mine- layer began in Sasebo . Laying offensive mine barriers had been a tradition in the Japanese navy since the war with Russia. For this purpose, their two 203 mm twin towers and the 152 mm middle artillery were removed. She received mine rails on the upper deck and in the middle deck and could hold 500 mines and thereby became the mine-layer with the highest mine capacity. The renovation was completed in March 1924.
On August 1, 1927, the Tokiwa suffered considerable damage when it came to an accident with sharp mines in the bay off Saiki . The accident while defusing a mine caused a chain reaction, the stern was severely damaged and 35 crew members died. Others were seriously injured. The ship was repaired in Sasebo and then assigned to the reserve. In 1930 Tokiwa , like all Japanese armored cruisers, was the subject of the London Naval Agreement, which aimed to remove all old ironclad ships from the fleets. According to Art. 12.3 of the agreement, the Japanese side was allowed to replace them with a mine-layer with a displacement of 5,000 ts and a speed of up to 20 knots. The same was true for the miner Aso , the former bayan .
In 1931 , as in other old armored cruisers, eight Kampon boilers were installed in the Tokiwa . Because of the tensions with China after the Mukden Incident and the First Shanghai Incident , she was assigned to the 1st Fleet and performed security duties off the north Chinese coast from January 1932 to May 1933. With the formation of the 4th Fleet for the administration of the naval units in the Japanese areas of the South Seas ( Mariana Islands , Palau , Caroline Islands and Marshall Islands ) on November 15, 1939, the Tokiwa was assigned to the 18th Squadron there. In 1940 she moved to the 19th Squadron under Admiral Kiyohide Shima with the modern mine- layer Okinoshima as the flagship.
Second World War
On November 29, 1941, Tokiwa left with the association Truk intended for Operation Gi , with the Okinoshima as the flagship. Simultaneously with the attack on Pearl Harbor , Jaluit began the occupation of the Gilbert Islands (Operation Gi), in which the Tokiwa was involved and which was completed on December 10, 1941. Under the command of Admiral Sadamichi Kajioka , the Tokiwa took part in "Operation R" , the occupation of Rabaul and Kavieng , in January . On February 1, 1942, she was damaged in an attack by the carrier aircraft of the USS Enterprise in Kwajalein Atoll and had to return to Sasebo for repairs. On July 14th she was back in Truk and on August 19th she was assigned to the Japanese unit, which was supposed to recapture the Makin Atoll , which had been recaptured by the Allies on the 17th ( Makin Raid ), but was evacuated immediately.
On May 1, 1943, the Tokiwa was assigned to the Ōminato Guard District , but at the end of the month took part in a convoy to Truk, which the submarine USS Salmon attacked on June 3 without success.
On January 20, 1944, the Tokiwa was assigned to the 18th Security Squadron of the 7th Fleet for the defense between Kyūshū , Honshū and Korea . Since the situation of the Japanese Empire steadily deteriorated, it laid thousands of mines around Okinawa from June 1944 and off Yakushima in February 1945 .
Whereabouts
On April 14, 1945, the mine-layer suffered a mine hit 125 km from Kitakyūshū , Kyūshū, with medium damage. On June 3, 1945, the Tokiwa was again damaged by mines laid by USAAF B-29 Superfortress bombers . In an attack by American carrier aircraft on August 9, 1945, she was badly damaged by one direct hit and four close hits and beached by the crew at Ōminato on Mutsu Bay . The ship was salvaged on April 5, 1947 and demolished from August to October in Hakodate , Hokkaidō.
literature
- Peter Brooke: Warships for Export: Armstrong Warships 1867-1927 , World Ship Society, Gravesend (1999), ISBN 0-905617-89-4
- Hansgeorg Jentsura: Warships of the Imperial Japanese Navy 1869-1945 , Naval Institute Press, Annapolis 1976, ISBN 0-87021-893-X
- Arthur W. Jose: The Royal Australian Navy 1914-1918 The Official History of Australia in the War of 1914-1918 , 9th Edition, Sydney 1941
- John Roberts, HC Timewell, Roger Chesneau (ed.), Eugene M. Kolesnik (ed.): Warships of the World 1860 to 1905 - Volume 2: USA, Japan and Russia , Bernard & Graefe Verlag, Koblenz, 1983, ISBN 3- 7637-5403-2
