Japanese battleship Aki

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Career
The Japanese battleship Aki
Built:	Kure Naval Yards, Japan
Ordered:	1904 Fiscal Year
Laid down	March 15 1906
Launched:	April 14 1907
Completed:	March 11 1911
Fate:	Sunk as Target September 7 1924
General Characteristics
Displacement:	20,100 tons (normal); 21,800 tons (max)
Length:	146.9 meters @ waterline; 150 meters overall
Beam:	25.50 meters
Draught:	8.4 meters
Propulsion:	2-shaft Curtis Turbine, 15 boilers; 24,000 HP
Speed:	20 knots
Fuel	172 tons oil; 3000 tons coal
Complement:	931
Armament:	4 × 305 mm guns 12 × 254 mm guns 8 x 152 mm guns 7 x 80 mm guns 5 x 450 mm torpedo tubes
Armor:	belt: 100-230 mm barbette:180-240 mm turret: 180- 200 mm conning tower: 150 mm deck: 50mm

The IJN Aki (安芸) was a dreadnought type battleship of the Imperial Japanese Navy, designed and built in Japan by the Kure Naval Yards. The name Aki comes from Aki Province, now a part of Hiroshima prefecture. Its sister ship was the battleship Satsuma. She was designed as an all-big gun battleship, but shortages of 12 inch （305 mm） guns only allowed her to have a combination armament. For this reason, she is sometimes defined as a "Semi-Dreadnought" battleship.

The Aki was the last Japanese battleship built with coal-fired steam turbine engines, and the first Japanese battleship with turbine propulsion, which allowed her to reach a speed of 20.25 knots during trials in December 1910. The Aki's construction was delayed by some 10 months to allow for the completion of the cruiser IJN Tsukuba.

The Aki participated WW-1, patrolling the sea lanes south of Japan, in the South China Sea and the Yellow Sea, but without a notable battle record.

As a result of the Washington Naval Agreement, the Aki was decommissioned on 20 September 1923. It was expended as a target, and sunk by the IJN Nagato and the IJN Mutsu off of Nojimasaki, southern Boso Peninsula, Chiba on 07 September 1924, in a ceremony witnessed by the Crown Prince (future Emperor Showa) and the heads of all the departments in the Japanese military. However, some of its larger guns were salvaged, and re-used in coastal artillery batteries around Tokyo Bay, including those at Misaki, Kanagawa, Miura Peninsula, and at Jogashima.