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pre-dreadnought battleship Pre-dreadnought battleships were sea-going battleships built between the mid- to late- 1880s and 1905, before the launch of in 1906. The pre-dreadnought ships replaced the ironclad battleships of the 1870s and 1880s. Built from steel, protec ...
built for the
Imperial Japanese Navy The Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN; Kyūjitai: Shinjitai: ' 'Navy of the Greater Japanese Empire', or ''Nippon Kaigun'', 'Japanese Navy') was the navy of the Empire of Japan from 1868 to 1945, when it was dissolved following Japan's surrend ...
(IJN) in the late 1890s. Named after Mount Mikasa in
Nara The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is an " independent federal agency of the United States government within the executive branch", charged with the preservation and documentation of government and historical records. It ...
, Japan, the ship served as the flagship of Vice Admiral Tōgō Heihachirō throughout the
Russo-Japanese War The Russo-Japanese War ( ja, 日露戦争, Nichiro sensō, Japanese-Russian War; russian: Ру́сско-япóнская войнá, Rússko-yapónskaya voyná) was fought between the Empire of Japan and the Russian Empire during 1904 and 1 ...
of 1904–1905, including the Battle of Port Arthur on the second day of the war and the Battles of the Yellow Sea and Tsushima. Days after the end of the war, ''Mikasa''s magazine accidentally exploded and sank the ship. She was salvaged and her repairs took over two years to complete. Afterwards, the ship served as a coast-defence ship during
World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
and supported Japanese forces during the Siberian Intervention in the
Russian Civil War {{Infobox military conflict , conflict = Russian Civil War , partof = the Russian Revolution and the aftermath of World War I , image = , caption = Clockwise from top left: {{flatlist, *Soldiers ...
. After 1922, ''Mikasa'' was decommissioned in accordance with the
Washington Naval Treaty The Washington Naval Treaty, also known as the Five-Power Treaty, was a treaty signed during 1922 among the major Allies of World War I, which agreed to prevent an arms race by limiting naval construction. It was negotiated at the Washington Nav ...
and preserved as a museum ship at
Yokosuka is a city in Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan. , the city has a population of 409,478, and a population density of . The total area is . Yokosuka is the 11th most populous city in the Greater Tokyo Area, and the 12th in the Kantō region. The city ...
. She was badly neglected during the post-
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
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 Pre-dreadnought battleships were sea-going battleships built between the mid- to late- 1880s and 1905, before the launch of in 1906. The pre-dreadnought ships replaced the ironclad battleships of the 1870s and 1880s. Built from steel, protec ...
anywhere in the world and also the last example of a British-built battleship.The ironclad frigate ''Warrior'' was never officially rated as a battleship by the
Royal Navy The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by English and Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years' War against ...
. The Greek , while often referred to as a battleship, is in fact an armoured cruiser.


Background

The combat experience of the lightly armoured ''Matsushima''-class cruisers during the First Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895 convinced the Imperial Japanese Navy of weaknesses in the
Jeune Ecole Jeune (29 March 1989 – 4 January 2006) was a British Thoroughbred racehorse who raced in England and Australia and is best known for winning the prestigious Melbourne Cup in 1994. He was a muscular chestnut stallion who sometimes raced in pac ...
naval philosophy, and Japan embarked on a program to modernize and expand its fleet in preparation for further confrontations. In particular, Japan promulgated a ten-year naval build-up programme, with the construction of six battleships and six armoured cruisers at its core. These ships were paid for from the £30,000,000 indemnity paid by China after losing the First Sino-Japanese War.Brook 1999, p. 125 As with the earlier and s, Japan lacked the technology and capability to construct its own battleships, and turned again to the
United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the European mainland, continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...
for the four remaining battleships of the programme. ''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.


Design and description

The design of ''Mikasa'' was a modified version of the s of the
Royal Navy The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by English and Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years' War against ...
with two additional guns.Preston, p. 189 ''Mikasa'' had an overall length of , a beam of , and a normal draught of . She displaced at normal load.Jentschura, Jung & Mickel, p. 18 The crew numbered about 830 officers and enlisted men.Chesneau & Kolesnik, p. 222 The ship was powered by two vertical triple-expansion steam engines, each driving one propeller, using steam generated by 25 Belleville boilers. The engines were rated at , using
forced draught The difference between atmospheric pressure and the pressure existing in the furnace or flue gas passage of a boiler is termed as draft. Draft can also be referred to as the difference in pressure in the combustion chamber area which results in the ...
, and designed to reach a top speed of although ''Mikasa'' proved to be faster during her sea trials in December 1901, reaching from . She carried a maximum of of coal which allowed her to steam for at a speed of . ''Mikasa''s
main battery A main battery is the primary weapon or group of weapons around which a warship is designed. As such, a main battery was historically a gun or group of guns, as in the broadsides of cannon on a ship of the line. Later, this came to be turreted ...
consisted of the same four
Elswick Ordnance Company The Elswick Ordnance Company (sometimes referred to as Elswick Ordnance Works, but usually as "EOC") was a British armaments manufacturing company of the late 19th and early 20th century History Originally created in 1859 to separate William A ...
40-
calibre In guns, particularly firearms, caliber (or calibre; sometimes abbreviated as "cal") is the specified nominal internal diameter of the gun barrel bore – regardless of how or where the bore is measured and whether the finished bore match ...
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°.Brook 1999, p. 126 They fired projectiles at a muzzle velocity of . The ship's secondary armament consisted of fourteen 40-calibre quick-firing guns mounted in casemates. Ten of these guns were positioned on the main deck and the other four guns were placed above them at the corners of the superstructure. They fired shells at a muzzle velocity of . Protection against
torpedo boat A torpedo boat is a relatively small and fast naval ship designed to carry torpedoes into battle. The first designs were steam-powered craft dedicated to ramming enemy ships with explosive spar torpedoes. Later evolutions launched variants of ...
attacks was provided by twenty QF 12-pounder 12 cwt"cwt" is the abbreviation for hundredweight, 12 cwt referring to the weight of the gun. guns. The 12-pounders fired , projectiles at a muzzle velocity of . Lighter guns consisted of eight three-pounder Hotchkiss guns and eight 47-millimetre 2.5-pounder Hotchkiss guns. The three-pounder gun fired projectiles at a muzzle velocity of while the 2.5-pounder fired shells at a muzzle velocity of . The ship was also equipped with four submerged 18-inch
torpedo tube A torpedo tube is a cylindrical device for launching torpedoes. There are two main types of torpedo tube: underwater tubes fitted to submarines and some surface ships, and deck-mounted units (also referred to as torpedo launchers) installed aboa ...
s, two on each broadside. The
waterline The waterline is the line where the hull of a ship meets the surface of the water. Specifically, it is also the name of a special marking, also known as an international load line, Plimsoll line and water line (positioned amidships), that indi ...
armour belt of ''Mikasa'' consisted of Krupp cemented armour that had a maximum thickness of over the middle of the ship. It was only thick at the ends of the ship and was surmounted by a six-inch
strake On a vessel's hull, a strake is a longitudinal course of planking or plating which runs from the boat's stempost (at the bows) to the sternpost or transom (at the rear). The garboard strakes are the two immediately adjacent to the keel on ea ...
of armour that ran between the barbettes. The barbettes were thick, but reduced to six inches at the level of the lower deck. The armour of the barbette hoods had a thickness of . The casemates protecting the secondary armament were thick and the deck armour was in thickness. The forward conning tower was protected by 14 inches of armour, but the aft conning tower only had four inches of armour.Jentschura, Jung & Mickel, p. 19 ''Mikasa'', like all the other Japanese battleships of the time, was fitted with four Barr & Stroud FA3
coincidence rangefinder A coincidence rangefinder or coincidence telemeter is a type of rangefinder that uses mechanical and optical principles to allow an operator to determine the distance to a visible object. There are subtypes split-image telemeter, inverted image, ...
s that had an effective range of . In addition the ships were also fitted with 24-power magnification telescopic gunsights.


Construction and career

''Mikasa'', named after Mount Mikasa, was laid down by Vickers at their Barrow-in-Furness shipyard on 24 January 1899. Baroness (later Countess) Hayashi, the wife of the then resident minister to Great Britain (later Ambassador), served as Mikasa's sponsor, launching the hull on a rainy, but otherwise perfect ceremony on 8 November 1900. She would be completed on 1 March 1902,Silverstone, p. 334 and after a visit to Devonport, she left Plymouth on 13 March, bound for
Yokohama is the second-largest city in Japan by population and the most populous municipality of Japan. It is the capital city and the most populous city in Kanagawa Prefecture, with a 2020 population of 3.8 million. It lies on Tokyo Bay, south of T ...
, under the command of Captain Hayasaki. At the start of the Russo-Japanese War, ''Mikasa'', commanded by Captain Hikojirō Ijichi, was assigned to the 1st Division of the 1st Fleet. She participated in the Battle of Port Arthur on 9 February 1904 when Admiral Tōgō Heihachirō led the 1st Fleet in an attack on the Russian ships of the Pacific Squadron anchored just outside 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 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 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. 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 . 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 A magazine is a periodical publication, generally published on a regular schedule (often weekly or monthly), containing a variety of content. They are generally financed by advertising, purchase price, prepaid subscriptions, or by a combination ...
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. 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 and although both ships were only lightly damaged by the Japanese shells which generally failed to penetrate any armour and detonated on impact.


Battle of Tsushima

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 Baltic Fleet. The ship opened fire at the battleship , the Russian flagship, at 14:10, and was joined by the battleship and the armoured cruiser shortly afterwards. Within an hour the Japanese ships had started a serious fire aboard the Russian ship, badly wounded the fleet commander, Vice Admiral Zinovy Rozhestvensky, knocked out her rear twelve-inch gun turret, and jammed ''Knyaz Suvorov''s steering so that she fell out of formation. During this time, ''Mikasa'' was the focus of the Russian fire as the leading ship in the Japanese column and was hit by 6 twelve-inch and 19 six-inch shells. They did very little damage and Tōgō was able to cross the T of the Russian squadrons. ''Knyaz Suvorov''s steering was later repaired, but she blundered between the Japanese and Russian fleets several times later in the battle and ''Mikasa'' fired three torpedoes at her to no avail. Later in the battle, the ship appears to have fired mostly on the battleship although fired the shots that caused the Russian ship's magazines to explode and sink her. At 18:04, a twelve-inch shell detonated prematurely in the barrel of the right gun of the forward turret, disabling the gun and knocking out the left gun until 18:40. Another twelve-inch shell had exploded in that same barrel almost two hours earlier, but had not damaged the gun. One six-inch gun jammed after firing 19 rounds, but the only other damage to any of the ship's guns was one six-inch gun that was disabled by a Russian shell of the same size that entered through the
gun port A gunport is an opening in the side of the hull of a ship, above the waterline, which allows the muzzle of artillery pieces mounted on the gun deck to fire outside. The origin of this technology is not precisely known, but can be traced back to ...
. 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. 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. Six days after the Treaty of Portsmouth that ended the war was signed, ''Mikasa'' sank at her moorings after a fire and magazine explosion at Sasebo on the night of 11/12 September 1905 that killed 251 crewmen. She was refloated on 7 August 1906, reconstructed and repaired at Sasebo Naval Arsenal. The navy took the opportunity to upgrade her existing armament with more powerful 45-calibre twelve-inch and six-inch guns during the two years it took to repair the ship. ''Mikasa'' was restored to active service on 24 August 1908. In 1912, Mikasa came extremely close to suffering another main magazine detonation, when a suicidal sailor attempted to blow her up at anchor near Kobe. During
World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
, she served on coast-defence duties, based at
Maizuru is a city in Kyoto Prefecture, Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 78,644 in 34817 households and a population density of 230 persons per km². The total area of the city is . Geography Maizuru is located in northern Kyoto Pref ...
, 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.Preston, p. 189 On 17 September, ''Mikasa'' ran aground near Askold Island off Vladivostok, but was not seriously damaged.


Preservation

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 memorial ship with her hull encased in concrete.The American pre-dreadnought ''Oregon'' was similarly preserved by her namesake state until the Second World War. On 12 November 1926, ''Mikasa'' was opened for display in
Yokosuka is a city in Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan. , the city has a population of 409,478, and a population density of . The total area is . Yokosuka is the 11th most populous city in the Greater Tokyo Area, and the 12th in the Kantō region. The city ...
in the presence of
Crown Prince A crown prince or hereditary prince is the heir apparent to the throne in a royal or imperial monarchy. The female form of the title is crown princess, which may refer either to an heiress apparent or, especially in earlier times, to the wi ...
Hirohito and Tōgō. Following the surrender of Japan in 1945, the ship deteriorated under control of the occupation forces. In 1955, American businessman John Rubin, formerly of Barrow, England, wrote a letter to the '' Japan Times'' about the state of the ship, which was the catalyst for a new restoration campaign. With the support of the Japanese public, and also Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, the restored battleship reopened in 1961. On 5 August 2009, ''Mikasa'' was repainted by sailors from . ''Mikasa'' is the only surviving example of a
pre-dreadnought battleship Pre-dreadnought battleships were sea-going battleships built between the mid- to late- 1880s and 1905, before the launch of in 1906. The pre-dreadnought ships replaced the ironclad battleships of the 1870s and 1880s. Built from steel, protec ...
in the world. ''Mikasa'' is remembered in Barrow-in-Furness, the town of its construction, by Mikasa Street on
Walney Island Walney Island, also known as the Isle of Walney, is an island off the west coast of England, at the western end of Morecambe Bay in the Irish Sea. It is part of Barrow-in-Furness, separated from the mainland by Walney Channel, which is spanned b ...
.


See also

* , a surviving Russian warship of the Battle of Tsushima * , a U.S. Navy protected cruiser preserved in Philadelphia * USS ''Texas'', sole surviving
dreadnought The dreadnought (alternatively spelled dreadnaught) was the predominant type of battleship in the early 20th century. The first of the kind, the Royal Navy's , had such an impact when launched in 1906 that similar battleships built after her ...
battleship * , the only armored cruiser still afloat


Notes


Footnotes


References

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *


External links


A photo tour of ''Mikasa''


* ttp://www.kinenkan-mikasa.or.jp/ ''Mikasa'' Official Website (Japanese)
''Mikasa'' Official Website (English)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mikasa Existing battleships Battleships of the Imperial Japanese Navy Vickers Ships built in Barrow-in-Furness 1900 ships Maritime incidents in 1905 Ships sunk by non-combat internal explosions World War I battleships of Japan Museum ships in Japan Russo-Japanese War battleships of Japan Museums in Kanagawa Prefecture Buildings and structures in Yokosuka, Kanagawa Victorian-era battleships of the United Kingdom Tōgō Heihachirō