Fuso class battleship
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 Fusō (middle), with Yamashiro (foregound) and Haruna (more distant), Tokyo Bay, 1930s. |
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| Career |  |
|---|---|
| Ordered: | |
| Laid down: | 11 March 1912 |
| Launched: | 28 March 1914 |
| Commissioned: | 18 November 1915 |
| Fate: | Sunk in the Surigao Strait on 25 October 1944 |
| Stricken: | 31 August 1945 |
| General characteristics | |
| Displacement: | 39,154 tons |
| Length: | 213 m (698 ft) |
| Beam: | 30.61 m (100 ft 5 in) |
| Draught: | 9.68 m (31 ft 9 in) |
| Propulsion: | 4 shaft; Brown-Curtis turbines; 24 boilers; 40,000 shp |
| Speed: | 25 knots (46 km/h) |
| Range: | 8,000 nm at 14 knots (26 km/h) |
| Complement: | 1,400 |
| Armament: | 12 × 14-inch (356 mm) guns, 16 × 6-inch (152 mm) guns, 8 × 5-inch (127 mm) dual-purpose guns, up to 37 × 25 mm AA |
The Fusō class (Japanese: 扶桑, an old name for Japan), was a type battleship of the Imperial Japanese Navy, designed before the First World War.
Their 14-inch (356 mm) main gun turrets were placed in an unorthodox 2-1-1-2 style (The Yamashiro having her third turret reversed when compared to the Fusō) and with a funnel separating the middle turret placement. This placement was not entirely successful as the armoured section was needlessly lengthened and the middle guns had trouble targeting. However, Fusō's relatively fine hull form allowed her to obtain a speed of 23 knots (43 km/h) as completed.
Between the wars, Fusō and Yamashiro received major modifications, in common with all of the Japanese battleships in service. Fusō was lengthened by an additional 25 feet (7.6 m), the twin funnels trunked together, the original 24 mixed-firing boilers replaced by six new oil-fired Kampon boilers and the ships' control tops dramatically added to produce the characteristic "pagoda" foremast which typified Japanese ships of the period. Armour protection was both increased in quantity and improved in quality on both ships, especially over the machinery spaces and below the waterline, a response to British capital ships' experiences against torpedoes (for example, HMS Marlborough was almost sunk by a single German torpedo just after the Battle of Jutland). The improvements included heavier armour belting over the midships machinery spaces, made possible by the opening out of these areas when the original boilers were replaced, and the addition of a torpedo bulge. The Fusōs were capable of 25.4 knots (47 km/h) by the time these modifications were completed, a testament to the vastly improved efficiency of boilers in the 1930s.
Despite these modifications, the IJN considered that the Fusōs were inadequately protected and too slow to be of any great use, and thus Fusō and Yamashiro were both kept in the Inland Sea as a strategic reserve force (which, as it turned out, was unnecessary) at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack and for some time afterwards, mainly being employed on training duties.
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