Chapter 921 A Brief History of the Japanese Navy’s Self-Explosion Part 1

Regarding the cause of the sinking of the Akashi protected cruiser, this matter remained an unsolved mystery until decades later, because everything that could be investigated sank to the bottom of the sea with the Akashi protected cruiser. No one can understand what caused this battleship to sink like this...

The captain of an American submarine that was nearby at the time was specifically questioned by the US government after returning to China. The captain said frankly that he never launched an attack on the Japanese fleet because the six torpedoes he carried before departure were brought back perfectly. Pearl Harbor.

As for the mine explosion, this was later considered to be very unlikely because neither side had laid mines in this area. As for the mine's anchor chain being broken, a certain mine floated over and then hit the warship. This probability is really low!

The Americans later believed that the responsibility lay with Japan. The Japanese retorted that my ship was so good that it exploded. As a result, two years later, after another Japanese armored cruiser, the Izumo, exploded in Manila Bay, everyone realized that the Bismarck Sea incident might really be a problem of the Japanese themselves...

What the world didn't expect is that as the only outlier in the world, Prince Ruprecht immediately concluded after receiving relevant reports that the Akashi's self-destruction might be Japan's own trouble. He might not be able to figure out the specifics. The reason cannot be determined to be a man-made accident or the temperature of the ammunition depot is too high, but 80% of the time it will be the fault of the Japanese, because there are many such incidents in the history of the Japanese navy!

There are these sayings about the navies of various countries before World War II on the Internet in later generations. The Germans were big ships carrying small cannons. The British lit firecrackers on their battlecruisers, but what about the Japanese navy? The training intensity of "Moon Moon Fire Water Wood Metal Gold" is one. But if the battleship self-destructs without incident, it definitely counts as one! Because the frequency and "record" of Japanese warships' self-destruction are a bit too much!

Who was the first battleship to self-destruct in the old Japanese Navy? The famous Mikasa! On September 11, 1905, just a week after the conclusion of the Treaty of Portsmouth between Japan and Russia, in the early morning, the battleship Mikasa, anchored at Pier 10 of the Sasebo Naval Port, suddenly erupted near the ammunition depot on the rear right side of the battleship. There were a lot of eye-rolls and constant explosions. After discovering the problem, the naval personnel immediately stopped manpower to put out the fire. However, in the end, the Japanese failed. With an earth-shattering loud noise, all 858 officers and soldiers on the ship were killed. At least 500 people returned to the arms of a certain aunt together with this flagship of the Japanese combined fleet and a hero in the Russo-Japanese War...

And this was just the beginning. After the "Three Uncles" opened the record, at 4:08 a.m. on April 30, 1908, near Magong Island in the Penghu Islands, the Songdao, which served as a training ship, was on the bridge of the same class ship. A big explosion suddenly occurred next to the sign! This explosion was very clean and complete, opening a large hole directly on the starboard side. The battleship instantly tilted 5 degrees, then 16 degrees, and finally sank directly to the bottom of the sea.

Although the number of casualties this time was not high, only 207,

But "the quality is still very high"! Not to mention anything else, one of them is a buddy named Dashan Gao, and he has a father named Dashan Yan... (If you are not sure, you can search on Baidu.) And because it was a training ship, the explosion directly led to the deaths of 33 35th Marine Second Lieutenant Candidates.

The third self-destruction buddy is also quite famous. In 1917, after the European battlefield had been reduced to a pot of porridge, and after the glorious Battle of Jutland became the swan song of the battleship, the Japanese Navy, unwilling to be lonely, came up with another Something that caught the world’s attention….

At about 3 p.m. on January 14, 1917, the Japanese battlecruiser Tsukuba just stopped broadcasting in Yokosuka. With an explosion that shook the earth, a huge fireball soared from the front deck of the Tsukuba! The front ammunition depot of the Japanese Navy battleship exploded. It was also a very sudden event and a devastating blow. The front of the battleship was almost broken off and then sank to the bottom of the sea. There is no need to investigate this incident. It is the fault of the main gun ammunition depot. It is simple and clear.

However, not long after the battlecruiser Tsukuba died, another Japanese battleship also successfully completed the feat of "self-destruction"! This self-destruction is no small matter. This is the first 20,000-ton battleship of the Japanese Navy to self-destruct! Japan's last-level quasi-dreadnought, or the Japanese battleship Hanoi, which can be called Japan's first-level dreadnought, exploded at the Tokuyama Bay naval port on July 12, 1918.

The whole process went like this. At 3:51 p.m., a suspected explosion occurred in the starboard ammunition depot at the front of the Hanoi. A few minutes later, disaster struck. Also on the front deck, an explosion like a volcanic eruption directly destroyed the entire ship. The front of the battleship exploded into a pile of fragments! In just 4 minutes, this Japanese first-class dreadnought sank to the bottom of the sea, and then exposed its propeller and butt to the water...

As a dreadnought ship, the "results" of this explosion were very impressive. About 60% of the ship's officers and soldiers, and 600 lives, were wiped out in the fire and explosion. And then the ship just sank….

The explosion of the Hanoi was sensational, exciting, and brilliant, but compared with a certain self-destruction in the later battles, it definitely pales into insignificance! This battleship is the unprecedented explosion of the Mutsu battleship in the history of world battleship explosions!

On June 8, 1943, the battleship Mutsu, one of the former "Seven Greats", suddenly exploded while anchored in Hiroshima. The same mysterious explosion, the same fatality, and the same dry-sinking of the ship. The battleship that served that year The Mutsu, which was known as the "National Battleship" at that time, did not die under the gunfire of the opponent's battleships, nor did it die under the terrifying bomber attacks of the US emperor, but eventually fell in the hands of its own people... ..

From this point of view, Japanese warships have a glorious tradition of self-destruction! At this moment, the Akashi in this dimension is not a battleship exploding. It represents the glorious tradition of the old Japanese Navy's combined fleet! at this moment! The souls of Mikasa, Matsushima, Tsukuba, Kawachi, and Mutsu-class battleships from another plane are possessed! However, what is worse than other contemporaries of the Japanese Navy is that the time of Akashi's self-destruction is too sensitive, which directly caused a series of problems and troubles in addition to self-destruction...

If the self-destruction incident of the old Japanese Navy ended here, it would not be enough to prove the horror of this tradition and the inevitability of history! Because some people will ask a question: Why did all the Japanese warships sink after they blew themselves up? Are there any warships that did not sink after they blew themselves up? Of course there is!

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