Japanese Battleship Asahi

Japanese Battleship Asahi

Asahi (朝日, Asahi?) was a pre-dreadnought battleship built for the Imperial Japanese Navy in the late 1890s. As Japan lacked the industrial capacity to build such warships herself, the ship was designed and built in the UK. The ship participated in every major naval battle of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905 and was lightly damaged during the Battles of the Yellow Sea and Tsushima. The ship was reclassified as a coastal defence ship in 1921 and served as a training and submarine depot ship after she was disarmed in 1923 to meet the terms of the Washington Naval Treaty. Asahi was modified into a submarine salvage and rescue ship in 1927 before she was placed in reserve in 1928. She was recommissioned in late 1937, after the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War, and used to transport Japanese troops. In 1938, the ship was converted into a repair ship and based first at Shanghai, China and then Camranh Bay, French Indochina from late 1938 to 1941. Asahi was transferred to Singapore in early 1942 to repair a damaged light cruiser and ordered to return home in May. She was sunk en route by an American submarine with very little loss of life.