Tsukuba (ship, 1905)
 Armored cruiser Tsukuba (spring 1910)
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The Tsukuba was an armored cruiser of the Imperial Japanese Navy , which was used in World War I and sank in 1917 after an internal explosion. The ship belonged to the Tsukuba class , which consisted of a total of two units, and was also the lead ship of this class. The cruiser was named after Mount Tsukuba in Ibaraki Prefecture . The Tsukuba was laid down as the first ship of its class on January 14, 1905 at the naval shipyard in Kure ( Kure Kaigun Kōshō ) and was launched on December 26, 1905 after a comparatively short construction period. The commissioning finally took place on January 14, 1907, exactly two years after the keel was laid .
Technical features
The Tsukuba was on the one hand one of the most heavily armed armored cruisers of the time, although the armament, although replicas of foreign gun types (the 30.5 cm guns were slightly elongated copies of the British 30, produced from 1898/99) 5 cm gun Mark 9 L / 40 of the Elswick Ordnance Company ), was manufactured entirely in Japanese factories, but on the other hand the Tsukuba suffered from the hasty completion; so there were only two years between the keel-laying and the commissioning. This hasty completion of the ship, which was planned in the context of the Russo-Japanese War and initially as a replacement for the Hatsuse liner, which sank in 1904 , brought with it several technical problems, for example the Tsukuba suffered from strength problems of the hull and mechanical defects during the entire service life at the swivel mechanisms of the towers and under stability difficulties .
Although the cruiser could be assigned to the scheme of unit ships of the line in terms of armament, water displacement and speed , the armor was comparatively weak and corresponded more to that of an armored cruiser of that time. In addition, the top speed of 20.5 kn was relatively low; the maximum speed of comparable British or German cruisers was around 3 to 4 kn higher. As a result , despite the heavy armament, the Tsukuba was neither suitable for use as a battleship, as the armor must be regarded as inadequate, nor for the role as an armored cruiser, especially with regard to the low maximum speed and strength problems. With the advent of the then novel Dreadnought -Schlachtschiffe starting around 1906, the concept was Tsukuba (as well as all other armored cruisers and battleships unit) also largely obsolete.
Working time
Shortly after commissioning, the Tsukuba , with Admiral Ijuin Gorō on board and accompanied by the protected cruiser Chitose , took part as a Japanese contribution to the world exhibition in Jamestown 1907 ( Jamestown Exposition ), which also marked the 300th anniversary of the founding of the City (as the first English settlement in the New World ) was committed. Then the two ships moved across the Atlantic and visited Portsmouth and the Kieler Woche . Following the passage of the Mediterranean and the Suez Canal , the ship moved back to Japan through the Indian Ocean .
After her return, the Tsukuba accompanied the so-called Great White Fleet of the United States Navy in Japanese waters in October 1908 during their world tour. Between 1909 and 1912, maneuvering and training missions followed in the Japanese home waters and a shipyard overhaul in Sasebo .
First World War
After the outbreak of World War I in 1914 and Japan's entry into the war as part of the Japanese-British alliance , the Tsukuba took part in the blockade of the German colonial base Tsingtau ( Kiautschou ) in China from the beginning of September 1914 . After the fall of the city, the armored cruiser temporarily helped occupy the German colony of German New Guinea and briefly took part in the Allied search for the German East Asia Squadron at the end of 1914 . After the extensive destruction of this squadron in the Falkland Islands in December 1914 by the Royal Navy, the Tsukuba remained in the Japanese home waters in the following years, taking part in the parades of the Japanese Navy in the Bay of Tokyo Bay in 1915 and 1916 , and otherwise performed relatively uneventful patrol and security duties.
loss
On January 14, 1917, while the ship was anchored off Yokosuka , the forward main ammunition chamber of the Tsukuba exploded for reasons that were not known for certain . The force of the explosion killed around 200 sailors immediately and caused windows to burst and partitions in houses to fall in Kamakura , which is almost twelve kilometers away . The burning armored cruiser sank to the bottom within about 20 minutes, with the masts, the navigating bridge and the chimneys still sticking out of the water. Another 100 or so crew members drowned in the lower hold during the sinking. In total, the fatal explosion claimed 305 lives. Fortunately, at the time of the disaster, more than 400 crew members were on shore leave, which is why the already severe personnel losses were kept within limits.
Cause of misfortune
The exact cause of the accident could never be determined with certainty. However, it was assumed that spontaneous combustion of the so-called shimose powder used on the tsukuba , a picric acid- based gunpowder used in Japan since 1893, could have caused the loss.
Whereabouts
The half-sunken wreck of the Tsukuba was used until September 1917, in a makeshift raised and stabilized state, as a target for training missions by Japanese naval aviators . Raised in late 1917, the remains of the tsukuba were finally scrapped in 1918.
annotation
What is interesting about the tsukuba is that the keel-laying and the commissioning as well as the sinking all fall on January 14th.
Individual evidence
- ↑ http://www.navypedia.org/ships/japan/jap_cr_ikoma.htm
- ↑ http://www.naval-history.net/WW1NavyJapanese.htm
- ↑ http://www.ndl.go.jp/portrait/e/datas/109.html?c=9
literature
- Howarth, Stephen: The Fighting Ships of the Rising Sun: The Drama of the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1895-1945 . Atheneum, Simi Valley 1983.
- Jentsura, Hansgeorg / Jung, Dieter: Warships of the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1869-1945 . Naval Institute Press, Annapolis 1976.
- Osborne, Eric W .: Cruisers and Battle Cruisers. An illustrated history of their impact . Santa Barbara 2004.