Japanese battleship Mutsu

Japanese battleship Mutsu

Mutsu (Japanese: 陸奥; named after the ancient Mutsu Province) was the second and last Nagato-class dreadnought battleship built for the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) at the end of World War I. She continued to serve through World War II until an internal explosion killed 1,121 of the people on board. In 1923 she carried supplies for the survivors of the Great Kantō earthquake. The ship was modernized in 1934–1936 with improvements to her armour and machinery, and a rebuilt superstructure in the pagoda mast style. Other than participating in the Battle of Midway and the Battle of the Eastern Solomons in 1942, where she did not see any significant combat, Mutsu spent most of the first year of the Pacific War in training. She returned to Japan in early 1943. That June, one of her aft magazines detonated while she was at anchor, sinking the ship with the loss most of the 1,474 people on board, with only 353 survivors. The IJN investigation into the cause of her loss concluded that it was the work of a disgruntled crew member. The navy dispersed the survivors in an attempt to conceal the sinking in the interest of morale in Japan. Much of the wreck was scrapped after the war, but some artifacts and relics are on display in Japan, and a small portion of the ship remains where she was sunk.

Also on this shelf

Florida Highway Patrol.

Japanese battleship Hatsuse.

Japanese battleship Mutsu

Also on this shelf

See also