Japanese battleship Aki

The nihongo|"Aki"|安芸 (戦艦)|Aki (senkan was a semi-dreadnought type battleship of the Imperial Japanese Navy, designed and built in Japan by the Kure Naval Arsenal. The name "Aki" comes from Aki Province, now a part of Hiroshima prefecture.

Background

Funding for "Aki" was approved as part of the 1904 Emergency Budget for the Russo-Japanese War, and was the second battleship (after "Satsuma") to be designed and built domestically in Japan. Due to priority given to the completion of the cruiser "Tsukuba", construction "Aki" took ten months longer than planned, but this allowed for various design defects discovered in the construction of "Satsuma" to be rectified in "Aki".

Design

"Aki" was the first Japanese battleship with turbine engine propulsion, which allowed her to reach a speed of convert|20.7|kn|km/h|0 during trials in December 1910. The incorporation of the turbine engines necessitated a third funnel on what was originally the same hull design as "Satsuma", increased the displacement by 450 tons, and the length of the hull by three meters. The turbine engines were imported from John Brown in Scotland.

"Aki" was initially designed as an all-big gun battleship (i.e. as a "Dreadnought"), but shortages of convert|12|in|mm|0|adj=on guns only allowed her to have a combination armament.

Operational History

"Aki" was commissioned on 1911-03-11. During World War I, from August 1914, "Aki" was assigned to patrol the sea lanes south of Japan in the South China Sea and the Yellow Sea, but without a notable battle record. Indeed the only notable event in her wartime career was running aground on 1914-11-16 on a sandbank in Tokyo Bay.

As a result of the Washington Naval Agreement, "Aki" was decommissioned on 1923-09-20. It was expended as a naval artillery target, and sunk by "Nagato" and "Mutsu" off of Nojimasaki, southern Bōsō Peninsula, Chiba on 1924-09-27, in a ceremony witnessed by Crown Prince Hirohito 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.

Gallery

References

*cite book
last = Brown
first = D. K.
year = 1999
title = Warrior to Dreadnought, Warship Development 1860-1906
publisher = Naval Institute Press
location =
isbn = 1-84067-529-2
*cite book
last = Evans
first = David
year = 1979
title = Kaigun: Strategy, Tactics, and Technology in the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1887-1941
publisher = US Naval Institute Press
location =
isbn = 0870211927
*cite book
last = Howarth
first = Stephen
year = 1983
title = The Fighting Ships of the Rising Sun: The Drama of the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1895-1945
publisher = Atheneum
location =
isbn = 0689114028
*cite book
last = Jentsura
first = Hansgeorg
year = 1976
title = Warships of the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1869-1945
publisher = Naval Institute Press
location =
isbn = 087021893X
*cite book
last = Schencking
first = J. Charles
year = 2005
title = Making Waves: Politics, Propaganda, And The Emergence Of The Imperial Japanese Navy, 1868-1922
publisher = Stanford University Press
location =
isbn = 0804749779

External links

* [http://homepage2.nifty.com/nishidah/e/stc0117.htm Materials of the Imperial Japanese Navy]