Fusō-class battleship

The Fusō-class battleships were a pair of dreadnought battleships built for the Imperial Japanese Navy before World War I and completed during it. Both patrolled briefly off the coast of China before being placed in reserve at the war’s end. In 1922 Yamashiro became the first battleship in the IJN to successfully launch aircraft. Both were lost in early hours of 25 October 1944 to torpedoes and naval gunfire.

About Fusō-class battleship in brief

The Fusō-class battleships were a pair of dreadnought battleships built for the Imperial Japanese Navy before World War I and completed during it. Both patrolled briefly off the coast of China before being placed in reserve at the war’s end. In 1922 Yamashiro became the first battleship in the IJN to successfully launch aircraft. During the 1930s, both ships underwent a series of modernizations and reconstructions. Despite the expensive reconstructions, both vessels were considered obsolescent by the eve of World War II, and neither saw significant action in the early years of the war. Both were the only two Japanese battleships at the Battle of Surigao Strait, the southernmost action of theBattle of Leyte Gulf, and both were lost in early hours of 25 October 1944 to torpedoes and naval gunfire. Some eyewitnesses later claimed that Fusô broke in half, and that both halves remained afloat and burning for an hour, but historian Anthony Tully has made the case that she simply sank after forty minutes of flooding. The design was shaped by the ongoing international naval arms race and a desire among Japanese naval planners to maintain a fleet of capital ships powerful enough to defeat the United States Navy in an encounter in Japanese territorial waters. In 1907 the Imperial Defense Policy called for the construction of a battle fleet of eight modern battleships, 20,000 long tons each, and eight modern armored cruisers. This was the genesis of the Eight-Eight Fleet Program, the development of a cohesive battle line of sixteen capital ships.

In 1910, the Navy put forward a request to the Diet Ministry to secure funding for the entirety of the program at once. Because of economic constraints, the proposal was cut to seven battleships and three battlecruisers. In an effort to match the New York class, planners called for a battlecruiser with 14-inch guns and faster than the Kongō class. The Diet amended this bill by authorizing construction of one battleship, later named Fuso, in what became what became later named the Emergency Expansion bill. After coordination with the British on the Kongo class, Japanese designers had access to the latest studies in naval architecture and design studies in British naval architecture. The first battleships of the renewed Eight- eight Fleet Program were the two dreadnoughts of the Kawachi class, ordered in 1907 and laid down in 1908. When the two new Satsuma-class Battleships were outclassed by their British counterparts, the program was restarted. The program was later amended by authorizing the creation of a single battleship and four armored battle cruisers, which were later named Fusō and Kawachi class. The fleet was the first by the Japanese Navy to work in conjunction with the British on the Kongō class, which was designed in coordination with British naval design studies in the 1920s and 1930s. In the 1950s and 1960s, the fleet was expanded to include the battleships Kamikaze, Yamashiro, and Komikaze Class.

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