Sunday Battleship Blogging: IJN Mutsu

New feature, serving three purposes. One, it enables my battleship obsession. Two, it serves as long term preparation for a project on the spread of Mahanianism across the international system. Third, it gives me something to do with the blog on otherwise slow Sunday mornings.

Mutsu was the second and last vessel of the Nagato class, one of the last battleships built outside the restrictions of the Washington Naval Treaty. Commissioned in 1921, Nagato and Mutsu were the first battleships in the world to be armed with 16″ guns. Battleships with 16″ guns were controversial in 1921, because only the IJN and the USN were possessed of such vessels. Mutsu carried 8 16″ guns, displaced 43000 tons, was 752′ long, and could make 27 knots.

Mutsu became a pawn at the Washington Naval Treaty negotiations. The Washington Naval Treaty was intended to freeze future naval production, as well as to freeze existing naval power arrangements. The Royal Navy and USN would be allotted 18 capital ships each, and the Japanese 10. In return, neither the Royal Navy nor the USN would fortify any East Asian bases, giving the Japanese the advantage in their home waters. This ratio assumed broad unit-to-unit equality, however, and the distribution of the biggest ships, those with 16″ guns, was unequal. The Americans possessed 4, the Japanese 2, and the British none.

The Americans and British initially demanded that the Japanese scrap Mutsu, as the Americans had agreed to destroy their fourth 16″ ship, the USS Washington. The Japanese protested, insisting that the Mutsu had been purchased with the donations of Japanese schoolchildren. The eventual compromise allowed the Japanese to keep Mutsu, and granted special dispensation to the Royal Navy to construct two additional 16″ ships.

Nagato and Mutsu compared well with their contemporaries. Their weapons and armor were equivalent or better, and each could make 27 knots, very fast for a battleship of the time. Since the major navies were prohibited from building new ships, Mutsu was extensively reconstructed between 1934 and 1936.

During World War II, Mutsu participated in several major battles without ever firing a shot. Although Japanese carrier battle groups were slower than their American equivalents, Mutsu was rarely used for carrier escort. Instead, like most other older battleships, she pointlessly rushed from point to point in search of enemies that had already moved on.

On June 8, 1943, Mutsu blew up. 100 visiting flying cadets and 40 instructors are among the over 1100 that die on the ship. Initial suspicion falls on British midget submarines, but it is later determined that no such attack was possible. The real cause is never determined, although some argued that improperly constructed 16″ shells were the culprit, while others contend that a disgruntled seaman was responsible.

The IJN initiates a cover up of the disaster. The survivors of the explosion are dispatched to remote island garrisons. Efforts to salvage Mutsu fail and are eventually abandoned, although the IJN later manages to siphon 580 tons of oil out of Mutsu’s tanks.

Roughly 85 battleships participated in World War II. About 30 sank from various causes. Mutsu has the distinction of being the only one to randomly explode for no good reason.