Japanese battleship Asahi

Battleship of the Imperial Japanese Navy

Asahi (朝日) was a pre dreadnought battleship built for the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) in the late 1890s. As Japan lacked the industrial capacity to build such warships itself, the ship was designed and built in the United Kingdom. Shortly after her arrival in Japan, she became flagship of the Standing Fleet, the IJN's primary combat fleet. She participated in every major naval battle of the Russo Japanese War of 1904–1905 and was lightly damaged during the Battle of the Yellow Sea and the Battle of Tsushima. Asahi saw no combat during World War I, although the ship participated in the Siberian Intervention in 1918. Reclassified as a coastal defence ship in 1921, Asahi was disarmed two years later to meet the terms of the Washington Naval Treaty, after which she served as a training and submarine depot ship. She was modified into a submarine salvage and rescue ship before being placed in reserve in 1928. Asahi was recommissioned in late 1937, after the start of the Second Sino Japanese War, and used to transport Japanese troops. In 1938, she was converted into a repair ship and based first at Japanese occupied Shanghai, China, and then Cam Ranh Bay, French Indochina, from late 1938 to 1941. The ship was transferred to occupied Singapore in early 1942 to repair a damaged light cruiser and ordered to return home in May. She was sunk en route by the American submarine Salmon, although most of her crew survived.

Combat experience in the First Sino Japanese War of 1894–95 convinced the Imperial Japanese Navy of weaknesses in the Jeune École naval philosophy, which emphasized torpedo boats and commerce raiding to offset expensive heavily armoured ships. Therefore, Japan promulgated a ten year naval build up in early 1896, to modernize and expand its fleet in preparation for further confrontations, 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. As with the earlier and es, Japan lacked the technology and capability to construct its own battleships, and turned again to the United Kingdom for the four remaining battleships of the programme. Asahi, the fifth Japanese battleship to be built in Britain, was ordered from the Clydebank Engineering & Shipbuilding Company shipyard in Clydebank, Scotland in the 1897 annual naval programme. The ship had an overall length of 425 feet (130 m), a beam of 75 feet (23 m), and a normal draught of 27 feet (8 m). She displaced at normal load. Asahi had a complete double bottom with 55 watertight compartments. Her hull was also subdivided into 223 watertight compartments. She was fitted as a flagship and her crew numbered about 773 officers and enlisted men, including the admiral's staff. The ship was powered by two vertical triple expansion steam engines built by Humphrys, Tennant, each driving one propeller, using steam generated by 25 Belleville boilers at a working pressure of The engines were rated at , using forced draught, and designed to reach a top speed of She carried a maximum of of coal which allowed her to steam for at a speed of
Asahis main battery consisted of the same four Elswick Ordnance Company 40 calibre twelve inch guns used in all of Japan's preceding battleships. They were mounted in twin gun turrets fore and aft of the superstructure. The hydraulically powered mountings allowed the guns to be loaded at all angles of traverse, at a fixed elevation of +13.5°. Each mount could traverse a total of 240 degrees. They fired projectiles at a muzzle velocity of
The ship's secondary armament consisted of fourteen 40 calibre quick firing (QF) guns mounted in casemates. Eight of these guns were positioned on the main deck and the other six guns were placed above them in the superstructure. They fired shells at a muzzle velocity of Protection against torpedo boat attacks was provided by twenty QF 12 pounder 12 cwt guns. The 12 pounders fired , projectiles at a muzzle velocity of Lighter guns consisted of eight three pounder Hotchkiss guns and four 47 millimetre 2.5 pounder Hotchkiss guns. The former were mounted in the superstructure and the latter in the fighting tops. 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 tubes, two on each broadside. The barbette hoods were protected by 10 inches of armour on their face while their sides were 6 inches thick and the roof was thick. Diagonal bulkheads connecting the barbettes to the side armour were 12–14 inches thick, but only 6 inches thick at the lower deck level.

Asahi, meaning "rising sun", a poetic name for Japan from a stanza of waka poetry, was laid down on 1 August 1898 in Clydebank, Scotland, by the Clydebank Engineering & Shipbuilding Co. and completed by John Brown & Company, which purchased the firm before Asahi was completed. She was launched on 13 March 1899 and completed on 31 July 1900. Her completion was delayed by about three months when her bottom plating required repairs after running aground off Southsea following sea trials. The ship departed England, after repairs in Portsmouth, on the day of her completion, and arrived at Yokosuka, Japan, on 23 October 1900. 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 Russian battleship Petropavlovsk. 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 exploded, and Makarov was one of the 677 killed. Emboldened by his success, Tōgō resumed long range bombardment missions, prompting the Russians to lay more minefields, which sank two Japanese battleships the following month. During the Battle of the Yellow Sea on 10 August, Asahi, now commanded by Captain Tsunaakira Nomoto, was second in line of the column of Japanese battleships, behind Mikasa, and was one of the primary targets of the Russian ships. She was only hit by a single 12 inch shell that wounded two crewmen. Both guns in her aft 12 inch gun turret, however, were disabled by shells that detonated prematurely in their barrels. In turn she concentrated most of her fire upon the battleships Russian battleship Poltava and Russian battleship Tsesarevich although both ships were only lightly damaged by the Japanese shells, which generally failed to penetrate any armour and detonated on impact. The ship made the critical hits of the battle, however, when two of her 12 inch shells struck the bridge of Tsesarevich, killing the Russian squadron commander, Vice Admiral Wilgelm Vitgeft, two of his staff officers and the ship's quartermaster. The ship's wheel was jammed to port by wreckage and then slowed to a halt which threw the rest of the Russian ships into total confusion. The second in command, Rear Admiral Prince Pavel Ukhtomsky, eventually gained control of the remainder of the squadron and headed back to Port Arthur. Slightly more than two months later, on 26 October, Asahi struck a mine off Port Arthur while on blockade duty. Severely damaged, she was under repair at Sasebo Naval Arsenal from November 1904 to April 1905. Russian naval forces in the Far East had been destroyed or neutralized by this time and the Russians were forced to transfer ships from the Baltic Fleet that did not arrive until May. Asahi lost 1 officer and 6 men, 5 men seriously wounded, 1 officer and 18 men lightly wounded. In total, the Japanese only lost 110 men killed and 590 wounded to all causes during the battle. The battle was a total Japanese victory with four Russian battleships captured and incorporated into the IJN. Captain W. C. Pakenham, the Royal Navy's official military observer under the Anglo Japanese Alliance, took notes of the battle's progress from a deck chair on Asahis exposed quarterdeck. His report confirmed the superiority of Japanese training and tactics and publicized the victory in the West. and began disarmament in 1922 at Yokosuka in compliance with the terms of the Washington Naval Treaty. She was reclassified as a training and submarine depot ship on 1 April 1923 and her disarmament was completed in July of that same year. Her displacement dropped to with the loss of her armour and guns, and her speed was limited to Of Salmons four torpedoes, two hit the ship in her port central boiler room and aft spaces. At 01:03, moments after being hit, Asahi sank at .