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was the lead ship of her class of armored cruisers built for the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) in the late 1890s. As Japan lacked the industrial capacity to build such warships herself, the ship was built in Britain. She served in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05 during which she participated in the Battle of Chemulpo Bay and the Battle of the Yellow Sea without damage, although her luck did not hold out during the Battle of Tsushima. Early in World War I, ''Asama'' unsuccessfully searched for German commerce raiders until she was severely damaged when she ran aground off the Mexican coast in early 1915. Repairs took over two years to complete and she was mainly used as a training ship for the rest of her career. The ship made a total of 12 training cruises before she was crippled after running aground again in 1935. ''Asama'' then became a stationary training ship until she was broken up in 1946–47. == Background and description == The 1896 Naval Expansion Plan was made after the First Sino-Japanese War and included four armored cruisers in addition to four more battleships, all of which had to be ordered from British shipyards as Japan lacked the capability to build them itself. Further consideration of the Russian building program caused the IJN to believe that the battleships ordered under the original plan would not be sufficient to counter the Imperial Russian Navy. Budgetary limitations prevented ordering more battleships and the IJN decided to expand the number of more affordable armored cruisers to be ordered from four to six ships. The revised plan is commonly known as the "Six-Six Fleet".〔Evans & Peattie, pp. 57–62〕 Unlike most of their contemporaries which were designed for commerce raiding or to defend colonies and trade routes, ''Asama'' and her half-sisters were intended as fleet scouts and to be employed in the battleline.〔Milanovich, p. 72〕 The ship was long overall and between perpendiculars. She had a beam of and had an average draft of . ''Asama'' displaced at normal load and at deep load. The ship had a metacentric height of .〔Milanovich, pp. 74, 80〕 Her crew consisted of 676 officers and enlisted men.〔Jentschura, Jung & Mickel, p. 72〕 ''Asama'' had two 4-cylinder triple-expansion steam engines, each driving a single propeller shaft.〔Milanovich, p. 81〕 Steam for the engines was provided by a dozen cylindrical boilers and the engines were rated at a total of . The ship had a designed speed of and reached during her sea trials from . She carried up to of coal〔 and could steam for at a speed of .〔 The main armament for all of the "Six-Six Fleet" armored cruisers was four eight-inch guns in twin-gun turrets fore and aft of the superstructure. The secondary armament consisted of 14 Elswick Ordnance Company "Pattern Z" quick-firing (QF), guns. Only four of these guns were not mounted in armored casemates on the main and upper decks and their mounts on the upper deck were protected by gun shields. ''Asama'' was also equipped with a dozen QF 12-pounder 12-cwt guns〔"Cwt" is the abbreviation for hundredweight, 12 cwt referring to the weight of the gun.〕 and eight QF 2.5-pounder Yamauchi guns as close-range defense against torpedo boats. The ship was equipped with five torpedo tubes, one above water in the bow and four submerged tubes, two on each broadside.〔Milanovich, p. 78〕 All of the "Six-Six Fleet" armored cruisers used the same armor scheme with some minor differences, of which the most important was that the two ''Asama''-class ships used less tough Harvey armor. The waterline belt ran the full length of the ship and its thickness varied from amidships to at the bow and stern. It had a height of , of which was normally underwater. The upper strake of belt armor was thick and extended from the upper edge of the waterline belt to the main deck. It extended from the forward to the rear barbette. The ''Asama'' class had oblique 127 mm armored bulkheads that closed off the ends of the central armored citadel.〔Milanovich, pp. 80–81〕 The barbettes, gun turrets and the front of the casemates were all 152-millimeters thick while the sides and rear of the casemates were protected by of armor. The deck was 51-millimeters thick and the armor protecting the conning tower was in thickness.〔Chesneau & Kolesnik, p. 224〕 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 cruiser Asama」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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