The Ships of Brawling Battleships Steel: Japan Battleship Kongo

Laid down on January 17, 1911, launched on May 18, 1912 and commissioned on August 16, 1913, Kongo carried a main armament of eight 14 inch main guns mounted two per turret; two superfiring centerline forward, one centerline aft and one centerline aft placed up one deck to allow it to fire over the other aft turret. Kongo was the name ship of a four-ship battle cruiser class and the ships had coal-fired turbine engines with oil-fired supplementary burners. Japan lacked experience in building large warships at the time and wanted a “model” battle cruiser built at a British yard. Since Great Britain and Japan were close allies (the Anglo-Japanese Alliance of 1902) at the time, the Kongo was built in Great Britain. Designed by Sir George Thurston, the Kongo was an excellent design for the period and even more powerful than her British contemporary Lion-class battle cruisers. In common with all British battle cruisers, her armor was thin. The later H. M. S. Tiger battle cruiser was a close copy of the Kongo. This ship was the last major Japanese warship constructed overseas; the remaining three ships (Haruna, Hiei and Kirishima) in this class copied the Kongo but were built in Japanese yards. The “Kongo” name refers to a mountain in Japan. Kongo saw little activity during World War One but, in 1917, her sister Haruna was damaged by a mine in the Pacific laid by the German raider Wolf. The ship had torpedo bulges added in 1929–1931, which slowed the ship enough that she was re-designated as a “battleship.” A further comprehensive overhaul from January 1936 to January 1937 saw a new set of modern oil-fired turbines installed that increased speed to 30.5 knots, protection improvements (the belt armor remained the same but deck armor was thickened) that increased displacement to 31,700 tons, the addition of a characteristically Japanese “pagoda” foremast and yet another re-designation as a “fast battleship.” Although these modernization changes, which were made to all four ships of the class, made them useful fast carrier escorts, the Kongo class lacked the armor protection to be considered real “fast battleships.” During World War II, the Kongo and her sisters were often called on to use their speed to accompany the fast carriers in operations against Indonesia, Ceylon, Midway and Guadalcanal. At Guadalcanal, the Kongo and all her sisters were also used in a surface role and sent down the “Slot” to bombard Henderson Field. This use of these vulnerable ships resulted in the loss of Hiei to crippling cruiser shell hits and continuous air attacks and Kirishima to the radar-directed 16 inch shells of the fast battleship U. S. S. Washington. At the Battle of Leyte Gulf on October 20–25, 1944, Kongo was part of the Japanese surface force that broke through and engaged the U. S. escort carriers with disappointing results for the Japanese. On November 21, 1944, after a short refit when radar and additional antiaircraft guns were added, Kongo was sunk by torpedoes from the American submarine Sealion.

See other battleships: Fuso, Ise, Kawachi