Japanese cruiser Nachi
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| Career |  |
|---|---|
| Ordered: | 1923 |
| Laid down: | February 4, 1924 |
| Launched: | November 26, 1924 |
| Commissioned: | November 28, 1928 |
| Fate: | Sunk November 5, 1944 |
| Struck: | January 20, 1945[1] |
| General Characteristics | |
| Displacement: | 13,300 tons |
| Length: | 668.5 ft (203.76 m) |
| Beam: | 62.33 ft 9 in (19 m) |
| Draft: | 16.5 ft 7 in (5.03 m) |
| Speed: | 35.5 knots |
| Complement: | 920–970 |
| Aircraft: | 1 |
| Armament: | 10 × 8 in (203 mm) guns, 12 × 24 in torpedo tubes[2] |
Nachi (那智) was the second of the four-member Myōkō class of heavy cruiser of the Imperial Japanese Navy—the other ships of the class being Myōkō, Ashigara, and Haguro. She was named after a mountain in Wakayama Prefecture.
The ships of this class displaced 13,300 tons, were 201 metres long, and were capable of 36 knots. They carried one aircraft and their main armament was ten 8 inch guns.
Nachi was laid down at the Kure Naval Arsenal on 26 November 1924, launched and named on 15 June 1927, and was commissioned into the Imperial Navy on 26 November 1928. Her service in the Second World War started in the Dutch East Indies, where she engaged the enemy off Makassar on 8 February 1942, played a key role in the sinking of HMS Exeter and HMS Encounter in the battle of the Java Sea on 27 February 1942, and was engaged in another action off south Borneo on 1 March 1942. She then moved to the Aleutian Islands where she was engaged in the diversionary attack on the islands on 3 June 1942; she was back in the Aleutians when she was damaged on 26 March 1943 in the battle of the Komandorski Islands, and was engaged in an action at Kiska in July 1943. By October 1944 she was in the Philippines where she was damaged in the Battle of Surigao Strait on 25 October 1944.
She was finally sunk by aircraft from USS Lexington in Manila Bay on 5 November 1944. Of the crew, 807 were lost, including the captain; 220 survived. Its flag commander, Vice Admiral Shima Kiyohide, was not among them; he was ashore when Task Force 38 struck.
John Prados, in his book, Combined Fleet Decoded, writes that a major intelligence coup was the finding of a large set of code documents on tables and in drawers in the wreckage by U.S. Navy divers. They were surprised that the documents were not even in a safe. It was important because Nachi was flagship of the Second Striking Force at the time. Early Japanese radar equipment was also recovered.
The original wartime caption of a picture taken of the sinking Nachi by Lexington aircraft reads,
| “ | Note by target coordinator: We circled down to 20 feet to make sure there were absolutely no survivors. Fifteen or twenty oily figures were served with .50-caliber just to make sure.[3] | ” |
Contents |
[edit] References
[edit] Books
- D'Albas, Andrieu (1965). Death of a Navy: Japanese Naval Action in World War II. Devin-Adair Pub. ISBN 0-8159-5302-X.
- 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 0-87021-311-3.
[edit] External links
- Parshall, Jon; Bob Hackett, Sander Kingsepp, & Allyn Nevitt. Imperial Japanese Navy Page (Combinedfleet.com). Retrieved on 2006-06-14.
- Nachi tabular record of movement during WWII
[edit] Notes
| Myōkō-class cruiser |
| List of ships of the Japanese Navy |
