August 11, 2013

What's in a Name?

As part of her general policy of displaying awesomeness in the comments, Suburban Banshee points out that the name of the new Japanese 'destroyer' has great cultural significance, approaching that of Ise or Yamato.

Interestingly, in stark contrast to ships named Yamato, the Izumo's naval namesake was one of the longest serving and most storied Japanese ships ever.



Built in 1898 in England  Izumo was an armored cruiser armed with 4x8 inch and 14x6 inch guns. An off the shelf export design that Armstrong/ Elswick developed for developing nations navies, Izumo outlived most of her half sisters by decades.

She was the flagship of the cruiser force and very heavily engaged in the Russo-Japanese War,  leading the raid on Vladivostok, participating in the hunt for the Russian corsair squadron, and seeing action at the pivotal battles of Ulsan and Tsushima.  After the war the ship also did all manner of diplomatic missions and saw action in the Mexican civil war (rescuing Japanese nationals). During WW1 the ship served in the Pacific, Indian ocean and also was flagship of the Japanese force in the Mediterranean. Izumo oversaw the internment of the High Seas fleet, and finally escorted the war prize U-boats to Japan.

In the interwar years she did show the flag operations as a training ship.

During the Sino Japanese war the old ship was assigned as the flagship of the naval contingent, served as a shore bombardment vessel and during the naval battle of Shanghai sank a Chinese warship and shot down a warplane.

 During WW2 she captured USS Wake and sank HMS Peterel. After that, the old ship served as a training and coast defense ship until sunk at Kure in 1945 by USN planes launched fro.....

Wait.

Back up.
DDH 183's namesake was the flagship during.....Oh.

Oh my.

Messages indeed.

UPDATE: Oh never mind...Teh Banshee had already said all that in an earlier comment.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 02:09 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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