Japanese battleship Mikasa

Coordinates: 35°17′06″N 139°40′26″E / 35.285°N 139.674°E / 35.285; 139.674
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Yokosuka
, Japan, 2021
Class overview
Operators Imperial Japanese Navy
Preceded byAsahi
Succeeded byKatori class
Built1899–1900
In commission1902–1923
Completed1
Preserved1
History
Japan
NameMikasa
Namesake
Mount Mikasa
Ordered26 September 1898
Builder
Vickers, Sons & Maxim, Barrow-in-Furness
Laid down24 January 1899
Launched8 November 1900
Commissioned1 March 1902
Stricken20 September 1923
StatusPreserved as a memorial ship
General characteristics (as built)
TypePre-dreadnought battleship
Displacement15,140 long tons (15,380 t) (normal)
Length432 ft (131.7 m)
Beam76 ft (23.2 m)
Draught27 ft (8.2 m)
Installed power
  • 25
    Belleville boilers
  • 15,000 
    kW
    )
Propulsion2 shafts, 2 vertical triple-expansion steam engines
Speed18 knots (33 km/h; 21 mph)
Range9,000 nmi (17,000 km; 10,000 mi) at 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph)
Complement836
Armament
  • 2 × twin
    12 in (305 mm) guns
  • 14 × single
    6 in (152 mm) guns
  • 20 × single
    12 pdr (3 in (76 mm)) guns
  • 6 × single
    3 pdr guns (47 mm) guns
  • 6 × single 2.5 pdr (47 mm) guns
  • 4 ×
    18 in (450 mm) torpedo tubes
Armour

Mikasa (三笠) is a

Siberian Intervention in the Russian Civil War
.

After 1922, Mikasa was

Yokosuka. She was badly neglected during the post-World War II Occupation of Japan and required extensive refurbishing in the late 1950s. She has been partially restored, and is now a museum ship located at Mikasa Park in Yokosuka. Mikasa is the last remaining example of a pre-dreadnought battleship anywhere in the world and also the last example of a British-built battleship still existing.[a][1]

Background

Jane's Fighting Ships
1906–07

The combat experience of the lightly armoured

armoured cruisers at its core.[2] These ships were paid for from the £30,000,000 indemnity paid by China after losing the First Sino-Japanese War.[3]

As with the earlier Fuji and Shikishima-class battleships, Japan lacked the technology and capability to construct its own battleships, and turned again to the United Kingdom for the four remaining battleships of the programme.[3] Mikasa, the last of these ships, was ordered from the Vickers shipyard in Barrow-in-Furness in 1898 at the cost of £880,000 (8.8 million yen at that time). Although she closely resembled several of the other ships ordered in this program, she was the only ship in her class.[4]

Design and description

Turret layout for original 12-inch (305 mm) 40-calibre guns

The design of Mikasa was a modified version of the

enlisted men.[7]

The ship was powered by two

forced draught, and designed to reach a top speed of 18 knots (33 km/h; 21 mph) although Mikasa proved to be faster during her sea trials in December 1901, reaching 18.45 knots (34.17 km/h; 21.23 mph) from 16,341 indicated horsepower (12,185 kW). She carried a maximum of 2,000 long tons (2,000 t) of coal which allowed her to steam for 9,000 nautical miles (17,000 km; 10,000 mi) at a speed of 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph).[8]

Mikasa's

twelve-inch guns used in all of the preceding Japanese battleships. They were mounted in twin-gun barbettes fore and aft of the superstructure which were additionally protected with armoured hoods, thus resembling true gun turrets. The hydraulically powered mountings could be loaded at all angles of traverse while the guns were loaded at a fixed angle of +13.5°.[9] They fired 850-pound (386 kg) projectiles at a muzzle velocity of 2,400 ft/s (730 m/s).[10]

The ship's

18-inch (450 mm) torpedo tubes, two on each broadside.[5]

The

Krupp cemented armour that had a maximum thickness of 9 inches (229 mm) over the middle of the ship. It was only 4 inches (102 mm) thick at the ends of the ship and was surmounted by a six-inch strake of armour that ran between the barbettes.[7] The barbettes were 14 inches (356 mm) thick, but reduced to six inches at the level of the lower deck. The armour of the barbette hoods had a thickness of 8–10 inches (203–254 mm).[14] The casemates protecting the secondary armament were 2–6 inches (51–152 mm) thick and the deck armour was 2–3 inches (51–76 mm) in thickness.[7] The forward conning tower was protected by 14 inches of armour, but the aft conning tower only had four inches of armour.[14]

Mikasa, like all the other Japanese battleships of the time, was fitted with four

gunsights.[15]

Construction and career

Tōgō on the "Compass Deck" above the bridge of Mikasa, before the Battle of Tsushima in 1905. The Z flag, Tōgō's special instruction to the fleet, is being hoisted.[c]

Mikasa, named after

Devonport, she left Plymouth on 13 March, bound for Yokohama, under the command of Captain Hayasaki.[20]

At the start of the Russo-Japanese War, Mikasa, commanded by

Port Arthur. Tōgō had expected his surprise night attack on the Russians by his destroyers to be much more successful than it actually was and expected to find them badly disorganized and weakened, but the Russians had recovered from their surprise and were ready for his attack. The Japanese ships were spotted by the cruiser Boyarin which was patrolling offshore and alerted the Russian defences. Tōgō chose to attack the Russian coastal defences with his main armament and engage the Russian ships with his secondary guns. Splitting his fire proved to be a bad idea as the Japanese 8-inch (203 mm) and six-inch guns inflicted very little significant damage on the Russian ships who concentrated all their fire on the Japanese ships with some effect. Although a large number of ships on both sides were hit, Russian casualties numbered only 17 while the Japanese suffered 60 killed and wounded before Tōgō disengaged. Mikasa was hit by two ten-inch shells during the engagement that wounded seven crewmen.[21]

The ship participated in the action of 13 April when Tōgō successfully lured out a portion of the Pacific Squadron, including

Vice Admiral Stepan Makarov's flagship, the battleship Petropavlovsk. When Makarov spotted the five battleships of the 1st Division, he turned back for Port Arthur and Petropavlovsk struck a minefield laid by the Japanese the previous night. The Russian battleship sank in less than two minutes after one of her magazines exploded, and Makarov was one of the 677 killed. Emboldened by his success, Tōgō resumed long-range bombardment missions, which prompted the Russians to lay more minefields which sank two Japanese battleships the following month.[22]

During the Battle of the Yellow Sea on 10 August, Mikasa was at the head of the column of Japanese battleships and was one of the primary targets of the Russian ships. She was hit twenty times, two of which knocked out her aft 12-inch gun turret, and suffered 125 casualties among her crew. In turn, she concentrated most of her fire upon the battleships Poltava and Tsesarevich although both ships were only lightly damaged by the Japanese shells which generally failed to penetrate any armour and detonated on impact.[23]

Battle of Tsushima

Main article: Battle of Tsushima
Mikasa as she appeared in 1905

At the Battle of Tsushima on 27 May 1905, Mikasa again led the 1st Fleet into combat, this time against the Second and Third Pacific Squadrons detached from the

gun port. She fired 124 twelve-inch shells during the battle, more than any other ship except Asahi's 142. In total, Mikasa was hit more than 40 times during the battle, including 10 twelve-inch and 22 six-inch shells, but none of them seriously damaged her.[24] While Mikasa suffered 113 personnel casualties, the entire Japanese force combined only lost 117 men killed and 583 wounded to all causes during the battle.[25]

The new 45-calibre 12-inch guns added during the reconstruction

Six days after the

Maizuru, during 1914–15 and was then assigned to the Second and Fifth Squadrons, in that order, for the rest of the war. The ship supported the Japanese intervention in Siberia during the Russian Civil War during 1921 and was reclassified on 1 September 1921 as a first-class coast-defence ship.[5] On 17 September, Mikasa ran aground near Askold Island off Vladivostok, but was not seriously damaged.[14]

Preservation

Battleship Mikasa as a museum ship in Yokosuka

The ship was decommissioned on 23 September 1923 following the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 and scheduled for destruction. However, at the request of the Japanese government, each of the signatory countries to the treaty agreed that Mikasa could be preserved as a

Japan Times about the state of the ship, which was the catalyst for a new restoration campaign.[30] With the support of the Japanese public, and also Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, the restored battleship reopened in 1961.[31][32][33] On 5 August 2009, Mikasa was repainted by sailors from USS Nimitz.[34] Mikasa is the only surviving example of a pre-dreadnought battleship in the world.[35] Unfortunately, all the guns and turrets on Mikasa are replicas. Almost all of the equipment and superstructure on Mikasa today are replicas or equipment taken from the two retired South American dreadnought battleships listed above.[36]

Mikasa is remembered in Barrow-in-Furness, the town of her construction, by Mikasa Street on Walney Island.[37]

See also

Notes

  1. armoured cruiser
    .
  2. ^ "cwt" is the abbreviation for hundredweight, 12 cwt referring to the weight of the gun.
  3. ^ This painting shows Tōgō wearing a sword. In reality, it was prohibited for any officer to wear a sword on this deck for its effect on compass reading. The cushion-like coverings on the compass turret, side railings, and the mast are rolled sailor hammocks as a part of the "prepare for battle" procedure to reduce the risk of shrapnel.[16]

Footnotes

  1. ^ Hammick, Murray (25 November 2018). "The one remaining British-built battleship left". The Military Times. Archived from the original on 26 January 2022. Retrieved 25 January 2021.
  2. ^ Evans & Peattie, pp. 15, 57–60
  3. ^ a b Brook 1999, p. 125
  4. ^ Forczyk, p. 20
  5. ^ a b c Preston, p. 189
  6. ^ Jentschura, Jung & Mickel, p. 18
  7. ^ a b c d e Watts, p. 222
  8. ^ Jentschura, Jung & Mickel, pp. 18–19
  9. ^ Brook 1999, p. 126
  10. ^ Friedman, pp. 270–271
  11. ^ Friedman, pp. 275–276
  12. ^ Friedman, p. 114
  13. ^ Friedman, pp. 118–19
  14. ^ a b c d Jentschura, Jung & Mickel, p. 19
  15. ^ Forczyk, p. 28
  16. ^ Tsukamoto, Yoshitane (4 June 1907). Battle of Sea of Japan as seen from Battleship Asahi. Sōrōkaku Shobō. pp. 49–51.(in Japanese)
  17. ^ Jane, p. 399
  18. ^ "A Great Battleship" Sketch (November 14, 1900): 133.
  19. ^ Silverstone, p. 334
  20. ^ "Naval & Military intelligence". The Times. No. 36715. London. 14 March 1902. p. 9.
  21. ^ Forczyk, pp. 24, 41–44
  22. ^ Forczyk, pp. 45–46
  23. ^ Forczyk, pp. 48–53
  24. ^ Campbell, pp. 128–135, 260, 262
  25. ^ Warner & Warner, p. 519
  26. ^ Warner & Warner, pp. 536–537
  27. ^ "Tried to Sink Mikasa". The Daily Colonist. Victoria, British Columbia. 25 October 1912. p. 15 – via University of Victoria Libraries.
  28. ^ Randall, Colin (2 September 2019). "Battleship Mikasa – Restoration". Naval Historical Society of Australia. Retrieved 7 April 2023.
  29. ^ https://navyhistory.au/battleship-mikasa-restoration/ . Retrieved 13 September 2023.
  30. ^ Clark, pp. 33–34
  31. ^ Corkill, Ednan (18 December 2011). "How The Japan Times Saved a Foundering Battleship, Twice". The Japan Times. Retrieved 2 August 2012.
  32. ^ "Fleet Admiral Nimitz". The National Museum of the Pacific War. Archived from the original on 14 November 2012. Retrieved 16 May 2023.
  33. ^ Jones, Jenkin Lloyd (1 May 1988). "Chester Nimitz a good winner". Park City Daily News. p. 8A.
  34. ^ Timberlake, Amara R. (26 August 2009). "Nimitz Preserves Ties to Renowned Japanese Warship" (Press release). United States Navy.
  35. ^ Morrison, Geoffrey (5 August 2016). "Japan's 114-year-old battleship Mikasa: A relic of another time". CNET. Retrieved 21 October 2020.
  36. ^ https://www.wayfarerdaves.com/?p=2099 . Retrieved 13 September 2023.
  37. ^ "Barrow on Japanese TV". North-West Evening Mail. 14 April 2009. Archived from the original on 22 July 2015. Retrieved 22 July 2015.

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Japanese battleship Mikasa.

35°17′06″N 139°40′26″E / 35.285°N 139.674°E / 35.285; 139.674

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