Design of the Ise Class
The Ise class Battleships were ordered in 1913. They were designed with lessons learned from winning experience during the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905). They were in the graving docks when World War One erupted and Japan declared war on Germany. The two ships of the Ise class (Ise and Hyuga) were right at 30,000 tons full load, 195m (640 feet) long and their coal burning power plants drove them at 25 knots. Their 1300 man crew was protected by an armor belt of up to 12 inches thick and they manned a dozen 360mm (14 inch) and 36 smaller guns. On paper they were comparable to the slightly larger British HMS Queen Elizabeth-class and almost an exact match in size and armament as the USS Pennsylvania-class battleships while being slightly faster.
Commission and Early Service
Completed too late to see combat in World War One the Ise and Hyuga nevertheless completed uneventful patrols in the waning days of the conflict. The pair spent the better part of three years either off the Russian coast or in the ice bound harbors of Petropavlask and Vladivostok during the Japanese Intervention in the Russian Civil War. During the late 1930s the ships patrolled off of the Chinese coastline and supported the invasion of China. A series of refits between 1928 and 1937 saw the pair's coal fired boilers replaced with a more streamlined oil-fired set, catapults and cranes fitted for a trio of seaplanes, the secondary weapons upgraded to a better fit of anti-aircraft guns and pagoda-style observation towers erected for better fire control. These upgrades raised the total full weight to 40,169 tons fully loaded and dropped the best expected speed to 23 knots even on the improved power plants.
World War Two
By 1939 even with these extensive modifications the pair was considered largely obsolete. They were both outgunned by and much slower than the more modern USS North Carolina and HMS King George V classes of Allied battleships. World War Two opened for Japan on December 7th 1941 and the 25-year old Ise was staged 1,000 miles away from Japan to the Bonin Islands briefly and held in reserve there before rejoining her sister ship Hyuga in Japanese home waters. The pair attempted to chase down the
Doolittle Raider's Carrier task force in 1942 but other than that they did not see any service that year. The ships were then converted to hybrid aircraft carriers and became much more active. Both were lost in combat in 1945.
Sources:
Howarth, Stephen The Fighting Ships of the Rising Sun: The Drama of the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1895-1945. Atheneum. 1983
Jentsura, Hansgeorg Warships of the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1869-1945. Naval Institute Press. 1976
Jane’s Fighting Ships (1914-2006 editions)
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