The Ships of Battlegroup: Japan Kirishima (BB)

Displacement	31,980 tons	Belt Armor	8 inches
Overall Length	728.5 feet	Deck Armor	2.75 inches
Beam	102.3 feet	Main Turret Armor	9 inches
Speed	30.5 knots	Main Guns	8 × 14″

Laid down on March 17, 1912, launched on January 12, 1913 and commissioned on April 19, 1915, the ship 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. Kirishima was part of the four-ship Kongo battlecruiser class that had coal-fired turbine engines with oil-fired supplementary burners. Japan lacked experience in designing large warships at the time and wanted a "model" like the ones in the Royal Navy. Since Great Britain and Japan were close allies (the Anglo-Japanese Alliance of 1902) at the time, the class was designed by Sir George Thurston, with the lead ship, the Kongo, built in Great Britain. In common with all British battle cruisers, her armor was thin. The remaining ships in the class, Haruna, Hiei and Kirishima, were all built in Japan. The later BritishTiger battle cruiser was a close copy of the Kongo . There is a mountain named "Kirishima" in Japan.

Kirishima saw little activity during World War One. The ship had torpedo bulges added in 1927–1930, which slowed the ship enough that she was re-designated as a "battleship." In a further comprehensive overhaul from June 1934 to June 1936 a new set of oil-fired turbines were installed that increased speed to 30.5 knots, there were protection improvements (the belt armor remained the same but deck armor was thickened) that increased displacement from 27,500 to 31,900 tons, a characteristically Japanese "pagoda" foremast was added and the ship received 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 class lacked the armor protection to be considered real "fast battleships."

During World War II, the Kirishima and her sisters were often called on to use their speed to accompany the fast carriers in operations against Indonesia, Ceylon, Midway and Guadalcanal. During the Guadalcanal campaign, the class was deployed in a surface role and sent down the "Slot" to bombard Henderson Field. This use of these vulnerable ships resulted in the loss of sister ship Hiei on November 13, after a pell-mell night surface action in which Kirishima was also involved but barely touched. Japanese night fighting skills were again of no avail as Kirishima herself was lost in "Ironbottom Sound" in the dark on November 14–15, 1942 to the radar-directed 16 inch shells of the Uited States’ battleship Washington at point-blank range.

For other nation’s "battlecruisers" that served in World War II, see: Dunkerque, Gneisenau, Guam, Repulse and Scharnhorst .

For other World War One ships extensively modernized between the wars, see: Andrea Doria, Caio Duilio, Conte di Cavour, Giulio Cesare and Repulse .

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