The Pacific War Online Encyclopedia
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| Tonnage | 5832 tons standard displacement |
| Dimensions | 532' by 46'6" by 15'9" 162.15m by 14.17m by 4.80m |
| Maximum speed | 31.7 knots |
| Complement | 439 |
| Aircraft | 1
catapult 1 seaplane |
| Armament | 4 5.5"/50
guns 4x2 25mm/60 AA guns 10x4 Long Lance torpedo tubes (no reloads) |
| Protection |
238.3 tons 1.5" (38mm) + 1" (25mm) HT machinery belt 1.1" (28mm) HT deck (machinery) 1.8" (45mm) HT deck (magazines) 0.8" (20mm) gun shields 1.5" (38mm) + 0.5" (12mm) HT conning tower |
| Machinery |
4-shaft Mitsubishi-Parsons-Gihon turbines (90,000 shp) 12 Kampon boilers |
|
Bunkerage |
1260 tons fuel oil |
| Range | 4000 nautical miles (7400 km) at 14 knots |
| Modifications |
1942-9-9: Converted to fast transports. 4x4
torpedo tubes
removed to make room for two Daihatsu
landing craft and two depth charge rails with 9 depth
charges each. 1944: Kitakami converted to carry 8 kaiten. Light AA armament increased to 10 25mm and 4 13mm/76 AA guns. Type 13 and Type 21 radar installed. |
The Ois were
completed in 1920-21 as part of the Kuma
class. They were
converted to torpedo cruisers before the start of the war, and carried
a
massive arsenal of these weapons. Their development was supported by a
new doctrine for night fighting tactics in which massive numbers of Long Lance torpedoes would be
launched outside battleship gun range at night to
ravage the American fleet as
it approached Japan. For reasons of secrecy, the conversion was not to
take place until the fleet was ordered to transition to a war footing,
which took place on 15 August 1941.
The conversion removed the three aft 5.5" guns
(leaving only the four forward guns) and added ten sets of quadruple
torpedo tubes. The tubes had no reloads, but a rail system was
installed to allow torpedoes to be shifted from one side of the ship to
the other. The addition of so many torpedoes cost the ships almost five
knots of speed and significantly reduced their endurance.
Following the battle of Midway, the ships were
converted to fast transports by removing some of their torpedo tubes.
Plans to remove additional tubes to make room for additional landing
craft were never carried out, but Kitakami
was eventually converted into a Kaiten
carrier.
| Hashirajima
|
||
| Spelled Ooi or Ohi in some references.
Torpedoed 1944-7-19 in the South
China Sea by Flasher. |
References
Gogin (2010; accessed 2013-3-19)
Lacroix
and Wells
(1997)
Whitley
(1995)
The Pacific War Online Encyclopedia © 2006, 2008-2009, 2012 by Kent G. Budge. Index
