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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 often served as a flagship and participated in most of the naval battles of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05. The ship was lightly damaged during the Battle off Ulsan and the Battle of Tsushima. ''Izumo'' was ordered to protect Japanese citizens and interests in 1913 during the Mexican Revolution and was still there when World War I began in 1914. She was then tasked to search for German commerce raiders and protect Allied shipping off the western coasts of North and Central America. The ship assisted the armored cruiser in early 1915 when she struck a rock off Baja California. In 1917, ''Izumo'' became the flagship of the Japanese squadron deployed in the Mediterranean Sea. After the war, she sailed to Great Britain to take control of some ex-German submarines and then escorted them part of the way back to Japan. The ship spent most of the 1920s as a training ship for naval cadets and became flagship of the IJN's China forces in 1932 during the First Shanghai Incident. ''Izumo'' participated in the Battle of Shanghai five years later and was not damaged, despite repeated aerial attacks. The ship played a minor role in the Pacific War, supporting Japanese forces during Philippines Campaign until she struck a mine. She returned to Japan in 1943 and again became a training ship for naval cadets. ''Izumo'' was sunk by American carrier aircraft during the attack on Kure in July 1945. Her wreck was refloated and scrapped in 1947. ==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, ''Izumo'' 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 . ''Izumo'' displaced at normal load and at deep load. The ship had a metacentric height of .〔Milanovich, pp. 74, 80〕 Her crew consisted of 672 officers and enlisted men.〔Jentschura, Jung & Mickel, p. 74〕 ''Izumo'' had two 4-cylinder triple-expansion steam engines, each driving a single propeller shaft.〔Milanovich, p. 81〕 Steam for the engines was provided by 24 Belleville 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〔Brook 1999, p. 112〕 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. ''Izumo'' 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 four submerged torpedo 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. The waterline belt of Krupp cemented armor 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 ''Izumo'' 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 6 inches thick while the sides and rear of the casemates were protected by of armor. The deck was thick and the armor protecting the conning tower was in thickness.〔Chesneau & Kolesnik, p. 225〕 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 Izumo」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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