The Ships of Battlegroup: Japan Fuso (BB)

Displacement	34,700 tons	Belt Armor	12 inches
Overall Length	698 feet	Deck Armor	3.9 inches
Beam	100.5 feet	Main Turret Armor	12 inches
Speed	24.7 knots	Main Guns	12 × 14″

Laid down on March 11, 1912, launched on March 28, 1914 and commissioned on November 18, 1915, the ship carried a main armament of twelve 14 inch main guns mounted two per turret; two centerline superfiring forward, two centerline superfiring aft and two centerline amidships that could fire to both sides. The Fuso was the name ship of a two-ship battleship class. The class was propelled by American coal-fired turbine engines that had oil-fired supplementary burners. The 14 inch guns qualified this class as "super-dreadnoughts" in the vernacular of the day. Compared with the contemporary Pennsylvania class in the United States Navy, they were faster with better compartmentalization but less heavily armored and lacking the very effective American "all-or-nothing" armor protection scheme. The word "Fuso" was an ancient Chinese name for Japan.

With the exception of some destroyers sent to the Mediterranean, watching for a few German commerce raiders and transporting troops to occupy German Pacific colonies, the Imperial Japanese Navy avoided action during World War One. Fuso went into the yards twice during the 1930s for modernization which, among other changes added new turbines with all oil-burners which increased her speed to over 24 knots, gave her a distinctively ugly "pagoda" tower foremast, added torpedo bulges and thicker horizontal armor, lengthened the hull and increased displacement from 30,600 to 34,700 tons. The Japanese Navy started World War Two with the best-trained and highest-morale ship crews in the world, especially when engaged in night actions and they had better torpedoes than any other nation. They were deficient in radar development, effective antiaircraft techniques and long-range gunnery.

During World War II, Fuso sortied rarely and avoided real combat (she retired without firing a shot during the Battle of Midway) until her and her sister ship Yamishiro and all but one of their consorts were sunk in an inferno of torpedoes, cruiser shells and battleship (California, Maryland, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and West Virginia—all but Mississippi had been at Pearl Harbor on the Day of Infamy) big guns at the Battle of Surigao Strait on the night of October 25, 1944. Here, the finely-honed Japanese skills at night fighting came to naught versus overwhelming numbers and far superior radar. This was the last battle in history where battleship fired on battleship.

For nearly sister ships, see: Ise and Hyuga .

For contemporary foreign battleships of the same vintage, see: Bretagne, Revenge, and Texas .

For a further discussion of what happened to the battleships of World War One, see the Introduction to these articles.