''Akigumo'' was one of 19 s built for the
Imperial Japanese Navy during the 1930s.
Design and description
The ''Kagerō'' class was an enlarged and improved version of the preceding . Their crew numbered 240 officers and enlisted men. The ships measured
overall, with a
beam
Beam may refer to:
Streams of particles or energy
*Light beam, or beam of light, a directional projection of light energy
**Laser beam
*Particle beam, a stream of charged or neutral particles
**Charged particle beam, a spatially localized grou ...
of and a
draft of .
[Chesneau, p. 194] They displaced at
standard load and at
deep load.
[Whitley, pp. 200–01] The ships had two
Kampon geared
steam turbine
A steam turbine is a machine that extracts thermal energy from pressurized steam and uses it to do mechanical work on a rotating output shaft. Its modern manifestation was invented by Charles Parsons in 1884. Fabrication of a modern steam turbin ...
s, each driving one
propeller shaft, using steam provided by three Kampon
water-tube boilers. The turbines were rated at a total of for a designed speed of . The ships had a range of at a speed of .
[Jentschura, Jung & Mickel, p. 148]
The main armament of the ''Kagerō'' class consisted of six
Type 3 guns in three twin-
gun turrets, one
superfiring
Superfiring armament is a naval military building technique in which two (or more) turrets are located in a line, one behind the other, with the second turret located above ("super") the one in front so that the second turret can fire over the ...
pair aft and one turret forward of the
superstructure
A superstructure is an upward extension of an existing structure above a baseline. This term is applied to various kinds of physical structures such as buildings, bridges, or ships.
Aboard ships and large boats
On water craft, the superstruct ...
. They were built with four
Type 96 anti-aircraft guns in two twin-gun mounts, but more of these guns were added over the course of the war. The ships were also armed with eight
torpedo tubes for the oxygen-fueled
Type 93 "Long Lance" torpedo in two quadruple traversing mounts; one reload was carried for each tube.
[ Their anti-submarine weapons comprised 16 ]depth charge
A depth charge is an anti-submarine warfare (ASW) weapon. It is intended to destroy a submarine by being dropped into the water nearby and detonating, subjecting the target to a powerful and destructive Shock factor, hydraulic shock. Most depth ...
s.[
]
Career
''Akigumo'' was an escort in the carrier fleet that carried out the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.[Diary of Lieutenant Commander Sadao Chigusa, cited at ]
Shortly after the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands during the early hours of 27 October 1942, ''Akigumo'' along with the destroyer sank the heavily damaged and abandoned American aircraft carrier . US naval ships had attempted to scuttle ''Hornet'' earlier but failed to do so before Japanese naval forces forced the US ships to withdraw.
''Akigumo'' served during the Pacific war in various theatres and by 1943/44 received the typical mid-war radar and AA refits, bringing the light AA outfit finally to four triple and one twin Type 96 mounts, plus some singles, and mounting both the active type 22 and the passive type E-27 radars.
On 11 April 1944, ''Akigumo'' was torpedoed and sunk by the submarine southeast of Zamboanga Peninsula, Philippines ().
Notes
References
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External links
CombinedFleet.com: ''Kagero''-class destroyers
{{DEFAULTSORT:Akigumo
Kagerō-class destroyers
World War II destroyers of Japan
Attack on Pearl Harbor
Ships sunk by American submarines
Shipwrecks in the Philippine Sea
Maritime incidents in April 1944
1941 ships
Ships built by Uraga Dock Company