For the Navy, it is a very normal phenomenon to use new technologies and adopt new ship designs when building ships. Of course, these new technologies and new ship designs are not always reliable at first, and there will always be problems due to various reasons. Before World War II, Japan had ship accidents under extreme environments and conditions, which were the famous "Tomorrow Incident" and "Fourth Fleet Incident" in history. So what are the causes of these two accidents? What shortcomings of the Japanese Navy have been exposed behind the scenes? What are the effects of these two accidents on the Japanese Navy?
1. Youzuru Incident
During the interwar period, the Japanese Navy referred to small high-speed torpedo boats as "mine ships". Like the mainstream naval countries at that time, mine ships mainly performed auxiliary tasks. However, after the signing of the "Washington Naval Treaty", the Japanese navy’s tonnage was far lower than that of his imaginary enemy, the United States. This greatly affected the Japanese navy’s "70% of the United States", because the number of their capital ships could not reach the United States’ seven. to make.
Taking this into consideration, Japan has considered building auxiliary ships under 600 tons that are not within the bounds of the treaty. In other words, piling up enough armaments on a tonnage of no more than 600 tons can reduce the number of the US fleet in the "nine-stage gradual reduction tactic".
Based on this requirement, Japan designed and built the "Chidori" class minecraft with a displacement of 533 tons. Although it is called a minecraft, it is actually a destroyer. The Chidori class is 82 meters long, 7.4 meters wide, and has a draft of 2 meters. It relies on two steam turbines and two heavy oil boilers to provide power. It has a maximum horsepower of 11,000 horsepower and a speed of 30 knots.
and its firepower is also piled up frantically. The bow is equipped with a single 127 mm naval gun, and the rear of the hull is equipped with a twin 127 mm naval gun. In addition, it is equipped with two 533s with reloading capabilities. Millimeter torpedo tube. can be said that on such a small hull, the Chidori class has destroyer-class firepower.
However, such a design is definitely going to be a problem. Such heavy arms coupled with towering bridges eventually caused the center of gravity to be too high and the ship's ability to recover during sailing was poor. During the trial voyage of the first ship of the "Chidori" class, the "Chidori" minecraft, the "Chidori" only made a slight turn, and all showed a 30° tilt. The frightened the high-level Japanese navy who watched at that time, but because the "Chidori" class minecraft has such a powerful firepower and can function as a destroyer, it is still welcomed by the Japanese Navy.
As the center of gravity is too high, the problem of tilting is prone to occur in calm sea conditions, which is alleviated by installing bulges on both sides of the ship. But it needs to be pointed out that this is still a temporary solution, not a permanent cure. If there will be problems, the Japanese navy can only pray to the gods.
However, such an unreliable design still has a problem, which is the famous "Youhe Incident". On March 6, 1934, the "Chidori" and "Tomori" of the Chidori-class minecraft and the light cruiser Ryota launched night combat training. The three warships arrived at the Temple Island Channel on the evening of March 11, 1934, and began training at about 1:35 on the 12th.
However, the wind and waves at that time were too severe, which had too much impact on the ship. The light cruiser Ryota felt it was difficult, and the two battleships "Chidori" and "Tozuru" also felt difficult, so the three warships ended at 3:25. The exercise began to return to the Sasebo military port. However, at 4 o'clock in the morning, the fleet encountered more fierce wind and waves in the waters near Dali Island, and a terrifying triangle wave was formed. Twelve minutes later, the mine ship "Youhe" disappeared. After daybreak, the Japanese navy began searching for the missing "Tomoro" mine ship, and finally found the "Tomorrow" mine ship that had capsized. Only 13 of the 103 officers and soldiers of the ship survived, and all the others were killed.
2. The Fourth Fleet Incident
The "Tomozuru Incident" was a disaster to the history of the Japanese Navy. The new warship that was just designed had not waited for the enemy to see the shadow of the enemy, and it had an accident without even a month after its completion. The Japanese navy is under attack. finally decided that this was due to the inaction of the design department and did not insist that the ship was in the storm.The resilience of the following is caused by the first consideration.
On the one hand, the Japanese Navy asked the design department to reflect on it. On the other hand, it also completely refitted all the similar small heavy-duty warships in its fleet, in order to avoid the second "you crane incident". However, good fortune is unparalleled, and misfortunes never come singly. Before the Japanese navy could calm down the aftermath of the "Youhe Incident", the worse "Fourth Fleet Incident" occurred in 1935. The impact of this incident was even worse, almost A major earthquake occurred inside the Japanese Navy.
In July 1935, the Japanese Navy basically completed the restoration and improvement of the ship, so the entire fleet began to gather and prepare for the autumn exercise. However, before the start of the exercise, the destroyer "Congyun" had cracks caused by metal fatigue in the bow. Although Shigeru Makino of the Ship Administration Division thought this was a dangerous signal and suggested that all special-type destroyers not participate in the exercise, the proposal was rejected .
was then held on September 25, 1935. The autumn exercise was held as scheduled. The fleet responsible for playing the U.S. military in the exercise was the Fourth Fleet and the selected warships, including: the aircraft carrier "Dragon Xiang" and "Fengxiang", and the submarine mothership "Big Whale". ", four "Myoko" class heavy cruisers, nine light cruisers "Zi Shang" and "Fubuki" class destroyers as well as "Kamikaze" class and "Muzuki" class destroyers. Before the start of the
exercise, two typhoons were approaching Japan. Typhoon No. 1 was advancing towards the northern part of Honshu after passing through the Kanto Plain. Typhoon No. 2 was in the waters between Guam and the Ogasawara Islands. Instead of advancing to the mainland of Japan, it was advancing toward the exercise area at a speed of 60 kilometers per hour. At that time, the commander of the Fourth Fleet Moto Matsushita attached great importance to Typhoon No. 1, so he did not set off on September 24 in order to avoid the typhoon. After avoiding Typhoon No. 1 at Hakodate Port, the fleet drove to the exercise area east of Honshu Island on September 25, 1935, preparing to participate in the exercise. However, at this time, the speed of Typhoon No. 2 increased to 90 kilometers per hour, and it was advancing toward the exercise area.
In the morning of the 26th, the fleet arrived in the Tsugaru Strait. Matsushita Motomoto also received a warning about Typhoon No. 2 from the cargo ship Kokura Maru. According to the current situation, the Fourth Fleet will meet Typhoon No. 2 in the afternoon. encounter. Z4z then ordered the ships to close the watertight doors and portholes to prepare to fight the wind and waves. At 3 o'clock in the afternoon, the Fourth Fleet encountered the forward of Typhoon No. 2. The wind speed reached 50 meters per second and the waves reached a maximum of 35 meters.
At this time, Matsushita Motomoto still did not order the fleet to turn around, but believed that it was of great significance to the crew to overcome the typhoon, so he did not choose to make the fleet turn around. At 4:30 in the afternoon, the Fourth Fleet entered the area with the strongest typhoon wind. The Fourth Fleet was immediately destroyed by the typhoon. Not only many destroyers were damaged to varying degrees, but even the main warships were seriously damaged. The whole incident can be said to be appalling, and the Japanese Navy's autumn exercise was also forced to end.
3. The aftermath of the accident
Compared to the "Touka" incident in which only a "Touka" mine was overturned, the losses of the "Fourth Fleet Incident" were more terrifying, and the entire Fourth Fleet was almost devastated. . Especially in this accident, the capitals of the special destroyers "Hatsuki" and "Yugiri" were severely broken, causing serious losses and casualties, which shocked the Japanese Navy. . After all, these special-type destroyers are to be used in future wars with the United States. If they can't even handle the wind and waves now, what can they do in the war? So the Japanese Navy urgently established an investigation committee headed by Admiral Nomura Yoshizo to investigate.
The result of the investigation committee is that the new shipbuilding technology, welding technology, was used extensively in the new warships, and the riveting structure was reduced. As a result, the strength of the warship was insufficient, which eventually led to tragedy. In addition, the sea conditions encountered by these warships are unprecedentedly harsh and have far exceeded the sea conditions considered in the design of warships. Generally speaking, the ratio of wave height and wavelength to 1/20 during a typhoon is terrible, but the typhoon encountered by the Fourth Fleet at that time reached 1/10, which is almost a natural disaster level. In other words, the Japanese Navy’s investigation committee classified the accident as a result of insufficient knowledge of Pacific weather and defects in new shipbuilding technology.
asBased on an objective analysis, what the Japanese Navy's investigation committee said is insufficient knowledge of Pacific weather, but it is a fact. As a supplement for , the Japanese Navy has also set up weather observation stations on several islands in the Western Pacific, and dispatched weather observation ships to understand the structure of the typhoon and master the methods to deal with the typhoon.
However, the Japanese Navy Investigation Committee attributed all the remaining problems to the use of welding technology, which is the reason for some pretexts. After all, at the time, everyone was using welding technology to combine riveting technology. This was not the only way Japan did when it built warships. Even if there is a gap between the welding technology mastered by the Japanese and the United States and other countries, such consequences should not occur.
The reason is that these destroyers and the "Chidori-class" minecraft are a problem. The design emphasizes the firepower configuration too much, which causes the overall center of gravity of the ship to be too high. The problem of can be said to be a common problem in Japan's special destroyers at the time. They are the same as the "Chidori class". The has the problems of poor seaworthiness, severe ship sway, poor resilience, and high center of gravity. These problems have caused even greater problems in actual navigation, that is, for these powerful firepower allocations, the overall strength of the ship has been further weakened.
The reason why Japan uses welding technology is also to reduce tonnage. Then, once encountering extreme sea conditions such as typhoons, problems are prone to occur. Normally designed destroyers will be half-dead by the typhoon. What about these special destroyers with many hidden dangers in design?
Conclusion
In fact, the Japanese Navy did not realize the problem. After the investigation committee concluded, the Japanese Navy immediately inspected all ships and improved the firepower configuration of special destroyers to increase stability and lower the center of gravity. the goal of. However, it is inevitable that accidents occurred frequently in the Japanese Navy from 1932 to 1935, which completely exposed its design flaws. After the "Fourth Fleet Incident," the conservative and backward Japanese shipbuilding expert Hiraga Joe was invited back. Under his leadership, the stability and seaworthiness of the new ships of the Japanese Navy have been improved. For , Hiraga also strictly abolished all welding technologies. Under the guidance of Hiraga, who had an unusually distrustful and hostile attitude towards new technologies, the Japanese navy’s ship design became increasingly conservative, and he was no longer willing to adopt any new technologies. Technology too.
References: "The vast ocean is a casino"
"The History of the Old Japanese Navy"
"The History of the Japanese Navy"
