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''Kongō'' (金剛, "indestructible", named for Mount Kongō) was a warship of the Imperial Japanese Navy during World War I and World War II. She was the first battlecruiser of the , among the most heavily armed ships in any navy when built. Her designer was the British naval engineer George Thurston, and she was laid down in 1911 at Barrow-in-Furness in Britain by Vickers Shipbuilding Company. ''Kongō'' was the last Japanese capital ship constructed outside Japan. She was formally commissioned in 1913, and patrolled off the Chinese coast during World War I. ''Kongō'' underwent two major reconstructions. Beginning in 1929, the Imperial Japanese Navy rebuilt her as a battleship, strengthening her armor and improving her speed and power capabilities. In 1935, her superstructure was completely rebuilt, her speed was increased, and she was equipped with launch catapults for floatplanes. Now fast enough to accompany Japan's growing carrier fleet, ''Kongō'' was reclassified as a fast battleship. During the Second Sino-Japanese War, ''Kongō'' operated off the coast of mainland China before being redeployed to the Third Battleship Division in 1941. In 1942, she sailed as part of the Southern Force in preparation for the Battle of Singapore. The ''Kongō'' fought in a large number of major naval actions of the Pacific War during World War II. She covered the Japanese Army's amphibious landings in British Malaya (part of present-day Malaysia) and the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) in 1942, before engaging American forces at the Battle of Midway and during the Guadalcanal Campaign. Throughout 1943, ''Kongō'' primarily remained at Truk Lagoon in the Caroline Islands, Kure Naval Base (near Hiroshima), Sasebo Naval Base (near Nagasaki), and Lingga Roads, and deployed several times in response to American aircraft carrier air raids on Japanese island bases scattered across the Pacific. The ''Kongō'' participated in the Battle of the Philippine Sea and the Battle of Leyte Gulf in 1944 (October 22–23), engaging and sinking American vessels in the latter. The ''Kongō'' was torpedoed and sunk by the submarine while transiting the Formosa Strait on 21 November 1944. She was the only Japanese battleship sunk by submarine in the Second World War, and the last battleship sunk by submarine in history.〔 ==Design and construction== The ''Kongō'' was the first of the Imperial Japanese Navy's ''Kongō''-class battlecruisers, which were almost as large, costly and well-armed as battleships, but which traded off armored protection for higher speeds. These were designed by the British naval engineer George Thurston and were ordered in 1910 in the Japanese Emergency Naval Expansion Bill after the commissioning of in 1908. These four battlecruisers of the ''Kongō'' class were designed to match the naval capabilities of the battlecruisers of the other major naval powers at the time, and they have been called the battlecruiser versions of the British (formerly Turkish) battleship .〔Gardiner and Gray (1980), p. 234〕〔Jackson (2008), p. 27〕 Their heavy armament of 14-inch naval guns and their armor protection (which took up about 23.3% of their approximately 30,000-ton displacements in 1913) were greatly superior to those of any other Japanese capital ship afloat at the time.〔〔 The keel of the ''Kongō'' was laid down at Barrow-in-Furness by Vickers Shipbuilding and Engineering on 17 January 1911. Under Japan's contract with Vickers, the first vessel of the class was constructed in the United Kingdom, with the remainder built in Japan.〔 The ''Kongō'' was launched on 18 May 1912, and then transferred to the dockyards of Portsmouth, England, where her fitting-out began in mid-1912.〔 All parts used in her construction were manufactured in the U.K.〔 The ''Kongo'' was completed on 16 April 1913.〔 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 Kongō」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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