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was a warship of the Imperial Japanese Navy during World War I and World War II. Designed by British naval engineer George Thurston, she was the third launched of the four ''Kongō''-class battlecruisers. Laid down in 1912 at the Mitsubishi Shipyards in Nagasaki, ''Kirishima'' was formally commissioned in 1915 on the same day as her sister ship, . ''Kirishima'' patrolled on occasion off the Chinese coast during World War I, and helped with rescue efforts following the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake. Starting in 1927, ''Kirishima''s first reconstruction rebuilt her as a battleship, strengthening her armor and improving her speed. From 1934, a second reconstruction completely rebuilt her superstructure, upgraded her engine plant, and equipped her with launch catapults for floatplanes. Now fast enough to accompany Japan's growing carrier fleet, she was reclassified as a fast battleship. During the Second Sino-Japanese War, ''Kirishima'' acted primarily as a support vessel and troop transport, moving army troops to mainland China. On the eve of World War II, she sailed as part of Vice-Admiral Chuichi Nagumo's ''Kido Butai'' as an escort for the six carriers that attacked Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941. As part of the Third Battleship Division, ''Kirishima'' participated in many of the Imperial Japanese Navy's early actions in 1942, providing support for the invasion of the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) and in the Indian Ocean raid of April 1942. During the Battle of Midway, she provided escort to Nagumo's four carriers, before redeploying to the Solomon Islands during the Battle of Guadalcanal. She escorted Japanese carrier fleets during the battles of the Eastern Solomons and Santa Cruz Islands, before sailing as part of a bombardment force under Admiral Nobutake Kondō during the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal. On the evening of 13 November 1942, ''Kirishima'' engaged American cruisers and destroyers alongside her sister ship . On the night of 14/15 November, in one of only two battleship duels of the Pacific War, ''Kirishima'' heavily damaged before being crippled in turn by the battleship . ''Kirishima'' capsized and sank in the early morning on 15 November 1942 in Ironbottom Sound. ==Design and construction== ''Kirishima'' was the third of the Imperial Japanese Navy's s, a group of capital ships designed by the British naval engineer George Thurston. The class was ordered in 1910 in the Japanese Emergency Naval Expansion Bill after the commissioning of in 1908. The four battlecruisers of the ''Kongō'' class were designed to match the naval capabilities of the other major powers at the time; they have been called the battlecruiser version of the British (formerly Turkish) battleship .〔Gardiner and Gray (1980), p. 234〕〔Jackson (2008), p. 27〕 With their heavy armament and armor protection (which took up 23.3% of their approximately 30,000 ton displacement),〔 ''Kirishima'' and her sister ships were vastly superior to any other Japanese capital ship afloat at the time.〔 The keel of ''Kirishima'' was laid down at the Nagasaki shipyards of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries on 17 March 1912, with most of the parts used in her construction manufactured in Japan.〔〔 Due to a shortage of available slipways, ''Kirishima'' and her sister ship were the first two capital ships of the Imperial Japanese Navy to be built in private Japanese shipyards.〔 After her launch on 1 December 1913, ''Kirishima''s fitting-out began later that month.〔 On 15 December 1914, Captain Kamaya Rokuro was assigned as her chief equipping officer,〔 and she was completed on 19 April 1915.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Japanese battleship Kirishima」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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