Japanese cruiser Kinugasa

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Career

Ordered:	1924 fiscal year
Laid down:	January 23 1924
Launched:	October 24 1926
Commissioned:	September 30 1927
Fate:	Sunk November 14 1942
Struck:	December 15 1942
General Characteristics
Displacement:	10,822 tons
Length:	595 ft (181.4 m)
Beam:	57 ft 9 in (17.6 m)
Draft:	18 ft 7 in (5.7 m)
Speed:	33 knots (61 km/h)
Complement:	625
Aircraft:	1
Armament:	6 × 8 in (203 mm) guns, up to 42 × 25 mm AA guns, 8 × 24 in torpedo tubes

Kinugasa was an Aoba-class heavy cruiser in the Imperial Japanese Navy, named after a mountain in Kanagawa prefecture.

Kinugasa was built at Kawasaki Shipyards in Kobe, Japan, and commissioned in September 1927. Her early service was as flagship of the Fifth Squadron (Sentai), and she operated for virtually her entire career with that unit and the Sixth and Seventh Squadrons. In 1928, she became the first Japanese combat ship to carry an aircraft catapult. Kinugasa served off China in 1928 and 1929 and on several occasions during the 1930s. Placed in reserve in September 1937, she was extensively modernized and did not recommission until the end of October 1940.

Kinugasa was assigned to the Sixth Squadron during the year leading up to the start of the Pacific War. In December 1941, the war's first month, she took part in the seizure of the American outposts at Guam and Wake Island. She participated in the Battle of the Coral Sea in May 1942 and in the heavy fighting to retake Guadalcanal later in the year.

During the Solomon Islands campaign, she took part in the Battle of Savo Island on 9 August, the Battle of Cape Esperance on 13 October and in the shelling of Guadalcanal's Henderson Field on 14 November 1942. While withdrawing on the morning after that bombardment, Kinugasa was sunk SW of Rendova at 09°06′S 157°14′E by planes based at Henderson Field and on the aircraft carrier Enterprise (CV-6). Of her crew, 511 are killed, including her captain and executive officer.

1 See also
2 References

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[edit] References

[edit] Books

D'Albas, Andrieu (1965). Death of a Navy: Japanese Naval Action in World War II. Devin-Adair Pub. ISBN 081595302X.
Dull, Paul S. (1978). A Battle History of the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1941–1945. Naval Institute Press. ISBN 0-87021-097-1.
Lacroix, Eric, Linton Wells (1997). Japanese Cruisers of the Pacific War. Naval Institute Press. ISBN 0870213113.