Japanese Battleship Kongo-- Part 4: The Sinking and Shipwreck

Within 15 minutes of detaching from the main force, the Kongo was listing 45 degrees and flooding uncontrollably.  At 5:18  the ship lost all power and the order was given to abandon ship.

At 5:24, while the evacuation was underway, the forward  14-inch magazine exploded, and the broken ship sank quickly with the loss of over 1,200 of her crew, including the commander of the  Third Battleship  Division and her captain.

The two escorting destroyers, the Hamakaze and Isokaze picked up the few survivors.  The Hamakaze rescued  7 officers and 139 men.  The Isokaze did the same for 6 officers and 85 men.  The total rescued out of the 1360 complement was just 347.

The wreck of the Kongo has not yet been found.  The wreck of the sistership IJN Hiei was found in 2019 by  Paul Allen.

The Kongo is believed to have sunk in  350 feet of water approximately 55 nautical miles northwest of Keelung. 

She was one of only three British-built battleships sunk by submarine attack during World War II.  The other two were the HMS Royal Oak and the HMS Barham.  (Remember, the Kongo was built in Britain.)

--GreGen

Kongo-Class Japanese Battleships-- Part 3

Every battlecruiser built was always there to maximize speed and armament at the loss of armor.  The same with the Kongo-class of Japanese battlecruisers.  During the interwar period of time, all four ships in the class were  modernized and had their  armor heavily upgraded.

In addition, the anti-aircraft weaponry was also seriously upgraded.

A QUICK LOOK AT THE FOUR KONGO-CLASS SHIPS

Name, Builder, Laid Down, Launched, Completed, Fate.

KONGO:  Vickers, Barrow-in-Furness England / 17 Jan 1911 / 18 May 1912 / 16 Aug 1913 / Torpedoed and sunk by the submarine USS Sealion, 21 November 1944.

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HIEI:  Yokasuka Naval Arsenal, Yokosuka Japan /  4 Nov 1911 / 21 Nov 1912 / 4 Aug 1914 / Sunk during the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal, 13 November 1942.

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KIRISHIMA:  Mitsubishi Shipyard Co. Nagasaki, Japan / 17 March 1912 /  1 Dec 1913 /  19 April 1915 / Sunk during the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal, 15 December 1942.

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HARUNA:  Kawasaki Dockyard Co., Kobe, Japan  /  16 March 1912  /  14 Dec 1913  /  19 April 1915  /  Sunk by U.S. aircraft, 28 July  1945; broken up  from 1946.

Interesting that two were sunk with two days of each other.  And three were sunk in the month of November.  One was built in Nagasaki.

--GreGen

Kongo-Class Japanese Battleships-- Part 2

The Kongo-class battleships of the Japanese Navy were among the most active capital ships during the war.  The Hiei and the Kirishima acted as escorts during the attack on Pearl Harbor while the Kongo and Haruna supported the invasion of Singapore.  

All four participated in the  battles of Midway and Guadalcanal.  The Hiei and the Kirishima were both lost at the Naval battle of Guadalcanal in November 1942.  The Haruna and Kongo both shelled  the American Henderson Field airbase on Guadalcanal.

The two remaining Kongo-class battleships spent most of 1943 moving between Japanese naval bases before participating  in the major naval campaigns of 1944.  They both engaged American naval forces during the Battle of Leyte Gulf  in late October 1944.

The Kongo was torpedoed and sunk by the submarine USS Sealion in November 1944, while the Haruna was sunk at her moorings by an air attack on  Kure Naval Base in late July 1945, but later raised and scrapped.

These were the Japanese ships cartoons used to show with their huge foremast areas.  Well, after looking at pictures of the rest of the ten Japanese battleships I'd have to say all had those huge foremast areas.

--GreGen

Japanese Battleship Kongo and Her Class (Built As Battlecruisers)

From Wikipedia.

This is the battleship that the Sealion sank.

The Kongo was the lead ship of a class of four battlecruisers and was built for the Imperial Japanese Navy in Britain before World War I.   It was the last major Japanese warship to be built somewhere else than in Japan.  The other three sister ships were built in Japan.

Battlecruisers were somewhat like a battleship, but had less armor, generally somewhat smaller guns and higher speed.  The HMS Hood which was sunk by the German battleship Bismarck was a battle cruiser.

The other three sister shups of the class were the Haruna, Kirisima and the Hiei

During the late 1920s, all but the Hiei were reconstructed and reclassified as battleships.

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GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS (of the Haruna)

LENGTH:  704 feet

BEAM:  92 feet

SPEED:  27.5 knots

COMPLEMENT:  1,193

ARMAMENT:

Eight 14-inch guns in 4 turrets

Sixteen 6-inch guns

--GreGen