IJN Ise

IJN Ise Story

In the 1910s, Imperial Japan identified the first true dreadnoughts, forming the "Fuso class". Examples of these arrivals are IJN Fuso himself and sister ship IJN Yamashiro. The couple actively operated during the First World War (1914-1918) and served until 1944 - the Second World War (1939-1945).

Both ended up lost.

From the beginning, a new design was introduced around the same time before World War I to follow the more successful qualities of the Fuso class. This gave birth to the Ise class, which was largely a modification of the earlier ships, including the rearrangement of the 14-inch main guns on six twin-gun turrets instead of the Fuso's four triple guns.

The rearrangement helps to deploy the primary weapons along the length of the ship to avoid the simultaneous destruction of multiple primary artillery stations with a single direct strike. The 6" gun's secondary battery has been replaced by the more useful 16 x 5.5" guns, which are mounted on a single gun mount.

The weapon kit adds a 4 x 3" gun for anti-aircraft (AA) roles, and a 6 x 21" torpedo tube for engaging surface combatants at long distances.

The Ise-class armor is slightly better than the previous Fuso-class, with a protection capacity of about 1,000 tons. Armor varies from 11.8 inches on the belt to 3.3 inches on the deck and 10 inches on the main turret. Better performance is expected with 24 new boilers installed inside, which power 2 steam turbines and put out 45,000 hp on 4 shafts under the stern.

The speed reaches 23 knots and the range is nearly 9,700 nautical miles.

Kawasaki of Kobe, Japan was contracted to build IJN Ise. She was commissioned on April 11, 1913, and saw her laying the keel on May 10 of that year. She was launched on November 12, 1916 for testing and evaluation purposes, and commissioned on December 15, 1917.

Her sister, the IJN Hyuga, was built by Mitsubishi in Nagasaki and commissioned a year later.

Ise measures up to a length of 683 feet, a beam of 94 feet and a draft of 29.3 feet. The displacement is 31,760 tons under standard load and 37,100 tons under full load. The crew number is 1,198. In its original form, the warship had a double mast profile with two funnels in the middle of the ship. The deck line is unobstructed from bow to stern.

The location of the main tower has two forward, two mid and two facing aft.

During the 1928-1929 overhaul, the IJN Ise's superstructure was enlarged and better aircraft supports were introduced. From 1931 to 1932, when her air defenses were completely replaced, the warship became the focus of a major modernization effort.

Once again, the layout has been expanded to be more in line with the "pagoda style" common to other IJN ships. Her stern section has been modified to allow up to three recoverable biplanes to be launched from the stern using a single ejection system.

A larger rebuild took place in August 1935 and continued until March 1937 - with more armor protection and better power output.

On December 7, 1941, IJN Ise had been in a back-up support role when Imperial Japan and the United States went to war after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The Type 21 air search radar was added in May 1942 during repairs following an accident on the ship. Following a disastrous defeat at the hands of the Americans at the Battle of Midway in 1942 (losing several valuable carriers), the Ise-class was designated a "hybrid carrier" while retaining some of its dreadnought qualities. This includes the addition of a full flight deck at the rear, as well as a hangar mount that replaces the rear turret. The air wing turned into a total of twenty-two aircraft, all of the recoverable seaplane type (salvaged by cranes).

The aircraft will be launched from a single catapult system. This work was carried out before the end of 1943.

Despite being rebuilt, Ise and her sister never used the air wing for combat missions and were therefore never tested as hybrid carriers throughout the war. Instead, the two ships were primarily used as decoy ships in a "cat and mouse" game between the IJN and the United States Navy (USN) during the Pacific campaign.

This was the case at the Battle of Leyte Gulf in October 1944, and as part of the same battle, Ise was able to furiously use her weapon at the Battle of Cape Engano. However, due to lack of basic resources such as fuel, the two ships were rarely used towards the end of the war and languished in port. U.S. Navy fighter jets then affected Ise's wartime when they attacked where Ise was docked on July 28, 1945 - Ise took away in an attack on Wu involving some 240 U.S.

Navy fighter jets two bombs. In a desperate last-ditch effort, Ise was positioned as a floating air defense (AA) battery between Kure and Kurahashi Island, and suffered another attack on July 24, 1945, when 60 U.S. Navy aircraft arrived.

Additional damage caused her to sink where she docked, and subsequent salvage efforts proved unsuccessful. She lay there until the war ended in August 1945, and was removed from the Naval Register in November of the same year. Their scrapping took place between 1946 and 1947 and officially ended.

Specification

Basic

Roles

Performance

Armor

Wing