Mutsu IJN (Dreadnought Battleship) 1921

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Arturo
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Joined: Mon Feb 13, 2012 8:11 pm

Mutsu IJN (Dreadnought Battleship) 1921

Post by Arturo » Thu Dec 18, 2014 9:05 pm

Mutsu, named after Mutsu Province, was a dreadnought battleship built for the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) at the end of World War I. She was the second ship of the Nagato class. In 1923, a year after commissioning, she carried supplies for the survivors of the Great Kantō earthquake. The ship was modernized in 1934–36 with improvements to her armor and machinery, and a rebuilt superstructure in the pagoda mast style.

Other than participating in the Battle of Midway and the Battle of the Eastern Solomons in 1942, where she did not see any significant combat, Mutsu spent most of the first year of the Pacific War in training. She returned to Japan in early 1943. That June, one of her aft magazines detonated while she was at anchor, sinking the ship with the loss of 1,121 of the 1,474 crew and visitors. The majority of the casualties died not from drowning, but from the explosion.

The IJN conducted a perfunctory investigation into the cause of her loss and concluded that it was not of natural causes. Due to the deaths of most of the people on the ship, however, while many possible causes were raised, to this day the real cause of the explosion is not yet known.

The navy dispersed the survivors in an attempt to conceal the sinking in the interest of morale in Japan, continuing even to pay the salaries of the dead men. Much of the wreck was salvaged after the war and many artifacts and relics are on display in Japan.

Mutsu had a length of 201.17 meters (660 ft 0 in) between perpendiculars and 215.8 meters (708 ft 0 in) overall. She had a beam of 28.96 meters (95 ft 0 in) and a draft of 9 meters (29 ft 6 in). The ship displaced 32,720 metric tons (32,200 long tons) at standard load and 39,116 metric tons (38,498 long tons) at full load. Her crew consisted of 1,333 officers and enlisted men as built and 1,368 in 1935. The crew totaled around 1,475 men in 1942.

Mutsu, named for Mutsu Province, and for the Meiji Emperor's personal name, Mutsuhito, was laid down at the Yokosuka Naval Arsenal on 1 June 1918 and launched on 31 May 1920. Funding for the ship had partly come from donations from school children. While Mutsu was still fitting out, the American government called a conference in Washington, D.C. late in 1921 to forestall the massively expensive naval arms race that was developing between the United States, the United Kingdom and the Empire of Japan.

The Washington Naval Conference convened on 12 November and the Americans proposed to scrap virtually every capital ship under construction or being fitting out by the participating nations.Mutsu was specifically listed among those to be scrapped even though she had been commissioned a few weeks earlier. This was unacceptable to the Japanese delegates; they agreed to a compromise that allowed them to keep Mutsu in exchange for scrapping the obsolete semi-dreadnought Settsu, with a similar arrangement for several American Colorado-classdreadnoughts that were fitting out. Mutsu was commissioned on 24 October 1921 with Captain Shizen Komaki in command. Captain Seiichi Kurose assumed command on 18 November and the ship was assigned to the 1st Battleship Division on 1 December. Mutsu hosted Edward, Prince of Wales, and his aide-de-camp,Lieutenant Louis Mountbatten, on 12 April 1922 during the prince's visit to Japan.

On 4 September 1923, Mutsu loaded supplies at Uchinoura Bay, Kyushu, for the victims of the Great Kantō earthquake. With her sister Nagato, she sank the hulk of the obsolete battleship Satsuma on 7 September 1924 during gunnery practice in Tokyo Bay, in accordance with the Washington Naval Treaty. CaptainMitsumasa Yonai, later Prime Minister of Japan, assumed command on 10 November. The ship was transferred to the reserve on 1 December 1925. Mutsu served as flagship of Emperor Hirohito during the 1927 naval maneuvers and fleet review. Captain Zengo Yoshida relieved Captain Teikichi Hori on 10 December 1928. On 29 March 1929, the ship was assigned to Battleship Division 3, together with three light cruisers.

Mutsu 's anti-aircraft armament was upgraded during 1932. Upon completion, she was assigned to Battleship Division 1 of the 1st Fleet, and again served as the Emperor's flagship during the annual maneuvers and fleet review in 1933. The ship was placed in reserve on 15 November and began her lengthy reconstruction. This was completed on 30 September 1936 and Mutsu rejoined the 1st Battleship Division on 1 December 1936. In August 1937, she transported 2,000 men of the11th Infantry Division to Shanghai during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Her floatplanes bombed targets in Shanghai on 24 August before she returned to Sasebo the following day. On 15 November 1938, Captain Aritomo Gotō assumed command of the ship. Mutsu was placed in reserve from 15 December 1938 to 15 November 1939. She was refitted in early 1941 in preparation for war; as part of this work, she was fitted with external degaussing coils and additional armor for her barbettes.

During the war Mutsu saw limited action, spending much of her time in home waters. On 8 December 1941, she sortiedfor the Bonin Islands, along with Nagato, the battleships Hyūga, Yamashiro, Fusō, Ise of Battleship Division 2, and the light carrier Hōshō as distant support for the fleet attacking Pearl Harbor, and returned six days later. On 18 January 1942, Mutsutowed the obsolete armored cruiser Nisshin as a target for the new battleship Yamato, which promptly sank her.

In June 1942 Mutsu, commanded by Rear Admiral Gunji Kogure, was assigned to the Main Body of the 1st Fleet during theBattle of Midway, together with Yamato, Nagato, Hosho, the light cruiser Sendai, nine destroyers and four auxiliary ships. Following the loss of all four carriers on 4 June, Yamamoto attempted to lure the American forces west to within range of the Japanese air groups at Wake Island, and into a night engagement with his surface forces, but the American forces withdrew and Mutsu saw no action. After rendezvousing with the remnants of the Striking Force on 6 June, about half of the survivors from the sunken aircraft carriers of the 1st Air Fleet were transferred to Mutsu. She arrived at Hashirajimaon 14 June.

On 14 July, Mutsu was transferred to Battleship Division 2 and then to the Advance Force of the 2nd Fleet on 9 August. Two days later, the ship departed Yokosuka accompanied by the cruisers Atago, Takao, Maya, Haguro, Yura, Myōkō, the seaplane tender Chitose and escorting destroyers to support operations during the Guadalcanal Campaign. They arrived at Truk on 17 August. On 20 August, while sailing from Truk to rendezvous with the main body of Vice Admiral Chūichi Nagumo's 3rd Fleet, Mutsu, the heavy cruiser Atago, and escorting destroyers unsuccessfully attempted to locate the escort carrier USS Long Island in response to a flying boat detecting the American ship.

During the Battle of the Eastern Solomons on 27 August, Mutsu, assigned to the Support Force, fired four shells at enemy reconnaissance aircraft during what was her first and only action of the war. Following her return to Truk on 2 September, a group of skilled AA gunnery officers and men were detached to serve as instructors to ground-based naval anti-aircraft gunners stationed in Rabaul. During October Mutsu off-loaded surplus fuel oil to the fleet oil tanker Kenyo Maru, allowing the tanker to refuel other ships involved in Guadalcanal operations. On 7 January 1943, Mutsu steamed from Truk via Saipan to return to Japan together with the carrier Zuikaku, the heavy cruiser Suzuya and four destroyers. Mutsu left Hashirajima for Kure on 13 April, where she prepared to sortie to reinforce the Japanese garrisons in the Aleutian Islands in response to the Battle of the Komandorski Islands. The operation was cancelled the next day and the ship resumed training.

On 8 June 1943, Mutsu was moored in the Hashirajima fleet anchorage, with 113 flying cadets and 40 instructors from the Tsuchiura Naval Air Group aboard for familiarization. At 12:13 the magazine of her No. 3 turret exploded, destroying the adjacent structure of the ship and cutting her in half. A massive influx of water into the machinery spaces caused the 150-meter (490 ft) forward section of the ship to capsize to starboard and sink almost immediately. The 45-meter (148 ft) stern section upended and remained floating until about 02:00 hours on 9 June before sinking, coming to rest a few hundred feet south of the main wreck at coordinates 33°58′N 132°24′E.

The nearby Fusō immediately launched two boats which, together with the destroyers Tamanami and Wakatsuki and the cruisers Tatsuta and Mogami, were able to rescue 353 survivors from the 1,474 crew members and visitors aboard Mutsu; 1,121 men were killed in the explosion. Only 13 of the visiting aviators were among the survivors.

After the explosion, as the rescue operations commenced, the fleet was alerted and the area was searched for Allied submarines, but no traces were found. To avert the potential damage to morale from the loss of a battleship coming so soon after the string of recent setbacks in the war effort, Mutsu 's destruction was declared a state secret. Mass cremations of recovered bodies began almost immediately after the sinking. Captain Teruhiko Miyoshi's body was recovered by divers on 17 June, but his wife was not officially notified until 6 January 1944. Both he and his second in command, Captain Ono Koro, were posthumously promoted to Rear Admiral, as was normal practice. To further prevent rumors from spreading, healthy and recovered survivors were reassigned to various garrisons in the Pacific Ocean. Some of the survivors were sent to Truk in the Caroline Islands and assigned to the 41st Guard Force. Another 150 were sent to Saipan in the Mariana Islands, where most were killed in 1944 during the battle for the island.

At the time of the explosion, Mutsu 's magazine contained a number of 16-inch Type 3 "Sanshikidan" incendiary shrapnel shells, which had caused a fire at the Sagami arsenal several years earlier due to improper storage. Because they might have been the cause of the explosion, the Minister of the Navy, Admiral Shimada Shigetaro, immediately ordered the removal of Type 3 shells from all IJN ships carrying them, until the conclusion of the investigation into the loss.

Philippines 1943, S.G.?, Scott:N26.

Source: Wikipedia.
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