Mikasa, 1:700 Resin Model by Tim Watson
Mikasa, built by Vickers in Britain in 1899-1901, is preserved at a permanent berth in Yokosuka, near Tokyo, the world's only surviving pre-dreadnought battleship. The 15,000-ton Mikasa was Admiral Togo's flagship at the Battle of the Yellow Sea in August 1904 and the Battle of Tsushima in May 1905, in which the Japanese annihilated the Russian combined Baltic and Black Sea fleets. Undercutting then-accepted theories of eugenics and white racial supremacy used to justify imperialism and racial oppression, the Japanese victory over a European empire cast doubt upon the prevailing wisdom at the outset of a new century, and heralded Japan's ascendancy as a world power. Because of her pivotal role in a decisive point in Japan's emergence on the world stage, Mikasa (seen here in a 1:700 model by Tim Watson) holds a position in Japanese history analogous to that of HMS Victory in British national consciousness.
Mikasa's design closely followed the British Majestic class but with improved guns and mountings analogous to the British advances at the time (London class). In keeping with the latest British practice, the funnels were placed along the centerline instead of side-by-side as in the original Majestics. Mikasa and her near-sister Asahi were the most recently completed battleships in the Japanese fleet as hostilities opened. Like the Majestics, they had a prominent docking bridge and secondary control station at the aft end of the superstructure. Like the British model, they had their secondary armament in an armored box battery amidships, and single turret protection for the 6" guns at the corners of the citadel. Mikasa was a special beefed-up version with additional size and power, and extra armor forward, intended to act as flagship of the entire Japanese fleet -- a rôle she played with distinction.
Mikasa's specifications:
Dimensions: 432' x 76' x 27'6" Displacement: 15,140 tons. Armament: (4) 12"/40 Mk VIII, (14) 6"/40, (20) 12-pdr, (8) 3-pdr, (4) 2.5-pdr, and (8) Maxim guns; (4) 18" torpedo tubes. Armor: 9"/4" belt, 10" turret, 10-14" barbettes, 12" bulkheads, 3" deck. Fuel capacity: 700 tons of coal std; 1,690 tons maximum. Propulsion: (25) Belleville boilers; (2) 3-cyl 15,000-HP inverted vertical triple expansion engines, shafted to twin screw. Speed: 18 kts (made 18.6 on trials; could steam easily at a sustained 18 kts in 1906.) Crew: 860.
Metric specifications:
Dimensions: 131.7m x 23.2m x 8.4m Displacement: 15,140 tons. Armament: (4) 30.5 cm/40, (14) 15.2 cm/40, (20) 12-pdr, (8) 3-pdr, (4) 2.5-pdr, and (8) Maxim guns; (4) 450 mm torpedo tubes. Armor: 229/102 mm belt, 254 mm turret, 356/254 mm barbettes, 305 mm bulkheads, 76 mm deck. Fuel capacity: 700 tons of coal std; 1,690 tons maximum. Propulsion: (25) Belleville boilers; (2) 3-cyl inverted vertical triple expansion engines developing 11,186 kW, shafted to twin screw. Speed: 33.34 km/hr (made 34.5 on trials; could steam easily at a sustained 33.3 km/hr in 1906.) Crew: 860.At left, a photo of Mikasa with calligraphy by Adm. Togo, used to raise funds to restore the ship in the 1920s. At the time she was built, the British were building up Japan as a counterbalance to Russian power in the Far East. Britain's first overseas alliance was the Anglo-Japanese Pact of 1902, aimed at exactly this end. British shipyards continued building warships for the Japanese through WWI, and sharing techniques with Japanese shipyards as well. Meanwhile the Japanese were assiduously amassing the technical expertise and yard facilities to build for themselves (their last foreign-built capital ship was the Kongo of 1913). By 1904 Togo's fleet included 5 modern battleships and 8 armored cruisers, totaling about 60 vessels; two even more powerful pre-dreadnoughts were building in Britain, but were not completed in time for the war.
At right, Adm. Togo Heihachiro, strategic mastermind of Japan's naval victory in the Russo-Japanese War. As a young officer, Togo had trained in Britain's Royal Navy and was well-versed in warship construction and tactics. At the time of the final battle in 1905, Rozhdestvensky's Russian fleet opposing Togo included both modern warships and museum pieces in a motley assemblage. The unwieldy fleet of more than 50 vessels was forced to steam 18,000 miles in the harshest conditions, coaling ship in tropical heat, sleeping with sacks of fuel stored in every corner of the ships. Knowing they were engaged on a likely suicide mission, badgered and bullied by their Commander-in-Chief, the men stoked the boilers in 115-degree heat, lived with gritty coal dust embedded in every inch of their bodies for months on end. The 8-month voyage was beset by mutiny, desertion, hysteria, and suicide. Under the circumstances, the outcome was a foregone conclusion. Of the 38 warships that had started from the Baltic, only 3 made it past Togo to Vladivostok; 4 out of the 5 new Russian capital ships were sunk. In all, 22 Russian ships were sunk and 7 surrendered; 4,000 Russians were killed and about 8,000 taken prisoner. The Japanese lost 3 torpedo boats; their 'butcher's bill' was 116 killed and 538 wounded. After the victory, a huge lighthouse was erected on Tsushima Island, funded by public subscription in Japan and named to honor the doughty admiral.
The lopsided victory at Tsushima was looked upon, in part, as a triumph for British naval technology, although the brilliant tactics of Adm. Togo and the superior discipline and gunnery of his command deserve most of the credit. They stood in contrast to the extreme bungling of the Russians (not even holding a conference of commanders on the eve of battle or otherwise communicating any battle plan to them): bungling that mirrored a rotten regime on its last legs.
Coming almost exactly 100 years after Nelson's Battle of Trafalgar, Tsushima was, like Trafalgar, a decisive victory accomplished against a nominally superior force. Naval theorists pounced on the great fleet action and drew lessons from it, leading to the Dreadnought era naval arms race (1906-1922). However, Tsushima was destined to be the last decisive all-surface-fleet action in history. Despite the vast resources pumped into the quest for naval hegemony, lasting control of the seas eluded the Great Powers. Mastery was not decided on the seas in World War I. Frustrating the enormous resources of treasure and planning that were expended building the dreadnought fleets, these armadas fought only briefly and indecisively at Jutland -- the two main fleets were closed for action for little more than an hour all told; by the next war, the battleship had been largely eclipsed by aircraft.Just after the Treaty of Portsmouth was signed ending the war in the Far East, Mikasa was moored at the Sasebo naval base in Kyushu when a devastating fire broke out, detonating one of her magazines and sinking her in 33 feet of water with the loss of 339 lives -- far more than she had endured in battle. The ship was raised and laboriously repaired, but by the time she was back in service, the advent of the Dreadnought had relegated her to second-string status. By WWI she had been demoted to third-class battleship. In 1921 she became a coast defense ship. Then in 1925 -- by special dispensation of Washington disarmament treaty signatories -- she became a decommissioned museum ship at Yokosuka, commemorating the Tsushima victory. Interestingly, the cult of the battleship took strong root in Japan. This country built a formidable battle fleet making it the #3 naval power between the wars, and ended by creating the 70,000-ton behemoths Yamato and Musashi in the very twilight of the battleship era (completing just before Pearl Harbor). These two monsters -- easily the largest and most heavily armed battleships ever constructed -- were notorious fuel hogs. Soon American bombers and subs were constricting Japan's oil supply from Indonesia, and through 1944 and early 1945 Japan's ultimate weapons languished in port under camouflage nettings, while their crews chafed to get into action. In the final phase of the war, the Japanese Admiralty bowed to appeals from idealistic young officers and sent Yamato to Okinawa on the mother of all kamikaze missions. After enduring dozens of direct hits from American bombers and multiple magazine explosions (plus possible scuttling by her own crew), Yamato's hull was ripped into 3 sections and she went to the bottom. Meanwhile, Mikasa herself became a target for American warplanes just as WWII was ending. As a precaution, her guns were dismantled during the 7-year occupation that followed Japan's defeat.
Yet it was in large part due to the patronage of U.S. Admiral Chester Nimitz that the former Imperial Flagship was reprieved and restored. As relations between the two countries mellowed and Japan became a key ally in the Cold War, reminders of Japanese militarism were not regarded with the same reflexive horror as in the immediate postwar period. Partly with American contributions, Mikasa was restored starting in 1958. In 1961 she was placed on permanent display on the Yokosuka waterfront, a stone's throw from the great naval base leased to the U.S. Navy since 1952. There she lies to this day, the only remaining pre-dreadnought battleship. The protected cruisers Olympia (U.S., 1895) and Aurora (Russia, 1903) and the armored cruiser Gyorgy Averof (Greece, 1910) also still exist as museum ships to bring the pre-dreadnought era to life; while the mighty Texas (completed 1914, fought in WWI and WWII), preserved near Houston, is the one and only remaining dreadnought battleship in the world.
A nice quarter view of Mikasa, bustling off on some urgent mission. Funnel bands denote ship's identity for fleet. Original British-style fighting tops on the masts mark this as a pre-1906 photo.
Mikasa under fire as she negotiates the turn after crossing Rozhdestvensky's "T" at the start of the battle. As the first ship in line, the flagship suffered more hits in this phase than any other vessel in the Japanese fleet, but none of these blows damaged her critically.
The Mikasa as a national icon, vintage photo used on a Navy Commemoration Day postcard, 1938. Note original fighting tops with Maxim guns, intended for close-in combat in the Nelsonian manner.
Top view of the Mikasa's deck layout reveals the symmetrical hand (or influence) of Sir William, White, as do all British battleships of the time.
The ship today at Mikasa Waterfront Park in Yokosuka, just SE of Kamakura in Kanagawa-ken. The landscape and water design, feauring floodlit fountains and a man-made waterfall, has won the venue an award as one of the top 20 urban parks in Japan.
