Japanese Battleship Mutsu

Japanese Battleship Mutsu

Mutsu (陸奥), named after Mutsu Province, as per Japanese ship naming conventions, was the Imperial Japanese Navy's (IJN) second Nagato class battleship. When commissioned in 1921, she and her sister-ship were the first battleships in the world with 16 inch (actually 16.1 inch, or 410 mm) guns and were considered the Japanese navy equivalents of the British Navy’s Queen Elizabeth class. At the time of their completion in 1920–21, their armament, armour and speed made them the most powerful capital ships in the world and they remained the most powerful battleships in the Imperial Japanese Navy until the completion of the Yamato class. It was not until 1937 that the US Navy became aware that their actual speed was considerably higher than the 23 knots they had previously assumed, which resulted in a redesign of the South Dakota class to provide them with a higher speed.

The Nagato class were extensively modified in the 1920s and 1930s after the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 limited the battleship tonnage of the Japanese (and other) navies and allowed no new construction for several years. As a result of the treaty, they were the last battleships built by Japan until the Yamato class battleships of the late 1930s.

The sparing of Mutsu was a condition of the Japanese Government's signing the Washington Naval Treaty. Not only was she was the most modern and powerful ship in the fleet at the time, she was also the first battleship designed by Japanese naval architects. Her construction had been funded by public subscription, most notably Japanese school children, which meant that she was greatly admired by the Japanese people. As a result it would have been domestically and politically unacceptable to scrap her so soon after her construction. The battleship Settsu was decommissioned instead.