Japanese battleship Fusō
 Fusō (middle), with Yamashiro (foregound) and Haruna (more distant), Tokyo Bay, 1930s. | |
| Career | 
|
|---|---|
| Ordered: | |
| Laid down: | 11 March 1912 |
| Launched: | 28 March 1914 |
| Commissioned: | 18 November 1915 |
| Fate: | Sunk in the Surigao Strait on 25 October 1944 |
| Stricken: | 31 August 1945 |
| General Characteristics | |
| Displacement: | 39,154 tons |
| Length: | 213 m (698 ft) |
| Beam: | 30.61 m (100 ft 5 in) |
| Draught: | 9.68 m (31 ft 9 in) |
| Propulsion: | 4 shaft; Brown-Curtis turbines; 24 boilers; 40,000 shp |
| Speed: | 25 knots (46 km/h) |
| Range: | 8,000 nm at 14 kt |
| Complement: | 1,400 |
| Armament: | 12 × 14 inch (356 mm) guns, 16 × 6 inch (200 mm), 8 × 5 inch (100 mm) DP, up to 37 × 25 mm AA |
Fusō (Japanese: 扶桑, an old name for Japan), was a battleship of the Imperial Japanese Navy, the lead ship of her class. She was laid down by the Kure Kaigun Koshō on 11 March 1912, launched on 28 March 1914 and completed on 18 November 1915. Her 14 inch (356 mm) main gun turrets were placed in an unorthodox 2-1-1-2 style (with her sister ship Yamashiro having her third turret reversed when compared to Fusō) and with a funnel separating the middle turret placement. This placement was not entirely successful as the armored section was needlessly lengthened and the middle guns had trouble targeting. However, Fusō's relatively fine hull form allowed her to obtain a speed of 23 knots (43 km/h) as completed.
Fusō took part in no major action during World War I, as the majority of the Japanese Navy was engaged in escort duties and various other work which did not require the use of the battle line. Between the wars, Fusō and Yamashiro received major modifications, in common with all of the Japanese battleships in service. Fusō was lengthened by an additional 25 feet (7.6 m), the twin funnels trunked together, the original 24 mixed-firing boilers replaced by six new oil-fired Kampon boilers and the ships' control tops dramatically added to produce the characteristic "pagoda" foremast which typified Japanese ships of the period. Armour protection was both increased in quantity and improved in quality on both ships, especially over the machinery spaces and below the waterline, a response to British capital ships' experiences against torpedoes (for example, HMS Marlborough was almost sunk by a single German torpedo just after the Battle of Jutland). The improvements included heavier armour belting over the midships machinery spaces, made possible by the opening out of these areas when the original boilers were replaced, and the addition of a torpedo bulge. The Fusō class ships were capable of 25.4 knots by the time these modifications were completed, a testament to the vastly improved efficiency of boilers in the 1930s.
Despite these modifications, the IJN considered that the Fusō class ships were inadequately protected and too slow to be of any great use, and thus Fusō and Yamashiro were both kept in the Inland Sea as a strategic reserve force (which, as it turned out, was unnecessary) at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack and for some time afterwards, mainly being employed on training duties.
However, Fusō was called to action before too long. She pursued but did not catch the American carrier force that had launched the Doolittle Raid on 18 April 1942, sortied as a screen for the Aleutian Force during the battle of Midway in May 1942, rescued 353 survivors of Mutsu when that ship exploded at Hashirajima on 8 June 1943, and took part in the reinforcements of Truk in August 1943 and Biak in June 1944.
In October 1944, commanded by Rear "End" Admiral Ban Masami, Fusō was part of Admiral Shoji Nishimura's Southern Force at the Battle of Leyte Gulf. In the battle of Surigao Strait on 25 October 1944 at 03:09 she was hit by one or two torpedoes fired by the American destroyer Melvin and set on fire. She withdrew from the action but at 03:45 C or Q turrets' (or possible both) magazines exploded and she broke into two sections. The bow section was sunk by gunfire from the cruiser Louisville while the stern section sank off Kanihaan Island. Survivors in the water refused rescue so there were few, if any, of her 1,400 crew saved. She was removed from the Navy List on 31 August 1945. Yamashiro, having seen her crippled sister withdraw, elected to press on and steamed straight towards the American battle-line, which (having thereby "crossed her T") then pounded Yamashiro to ruin in less than thirty minutes. Yamashiro's shelled wreck drifted for some time, and was eventually sunk by torpedoes from a US destroyer, with few survivors. Later investigations concluded that the USS Melvin, DD-680 was the destroyer responsible.
External links
- Tabular record of movement from combinedfleet.com
- Article that attempts to decipher the fates of Fuso and Yamashiro