Design and Construction
Hiei was the second of the Imperial Japanese Navy's Kongō class battlecruisers, a line of capital ships designed by the British naval architect George Thurston. The class was ordered in 1910 in the Japanese Emergency Naval Expansion Bill after the commissioning of HMS Invincible in 1908. The four battlecruisers of the Kongō-class were designed to match the naval capabilities of the other major powers at the time; they have been called the battlecruiser versions of the British (formerly Turkish) battleship HMS Erin. With their heavy armament and armor protection (the latter of which made up 23.3% of their approximately 30,000 ton displacement), Hiei and her sister ships were vastly superior to any other Japanese capital ship afloat at the time.
The keel of Hiei was laid down at Yokosuka Naval Arsenal on 4 November 1911, with most of the parts used in her construction manufactured in Britain. She was launched on 21 November 1912, and fitting-out began in December 1913. On 15 December 1913, Captain Takagi Shichitaro was assigned as her chief equipping officer. She was completed on 4 August 1914.
Read more about this topic: Japanese Battleship Hiei
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