page_title: List of battleships of Japan
section_title: Ise class
hierarchical_section_title: List of battleships of Japan / Dreadnought battleships / Ise class
caption_attribution_description: English: Ise after her first reconstruction
context_page_description: Between the 1890s and 1940s, the Imperial Japanese Navy built a series of battleships as it expanded its fleet. Previously, the Empire of Japan had acquired a few ironclad warships from foreign builders, although it had adopted the Jeune Ecole naval doctrine which emphasized cheap torpedo boats and commerce raiding to offset expensive, heavily armored ships. To counter the Imperial Chinese Beiyang Fleet in the early 1890s, however, Japan ordered two Fuji-class battleships from Great Britain as Japan lacked the technology and capability to construct its own vessels. Combat experience in the First Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895 convinced the IJN that its doctrine was untenable, leading to a ten-year naval construction program that called for a total of six battleships and six armored cruisers. The two ships of the Shikishima class and the battleships Asahi and Mikasa were also purchased from Great Britain. Aware that they could not outbuild the Americans or British, the IJN decided that their ships would always be qualitatively superior to offset their quantitative inferiority.
context_section_description: The Ise-class battleships (伊勢型戦艦, Ise-gata senkan) were another pair of dreadnoughts built during World War I. Both ships carried supplies for the survivors of the Great Kantō earthquake in 1923. They were modernized in the interwar period with improvements to their armor and machinery and a rebuilt superstructure in the pagoda mast style. Afterward they played a minor role in the Second Sino-Japanese War.
  Despite the expensive reconstructions, both vessels were considered obsolete by the eve of the Pacific War, and neither saw significant action in the early years of the war. Following the loss of most of the IJN's large aircraft carriers during the Battle of Midway in mid-1942, they were rebuilt with a flight deck replacing the rear pair of gun turrets to give them the ability to operate an air group of floatplanes. A lack of aircraft and qualified pilots, however, meant that they never actually operated their aircraft in combat. While awaiting their air group, the sister ships were occasionally used to ferry troops and material to Japanese bases. They participated in the Battle off Cape Engaño in late 1944, where they decoyed the American carrier fleet supporting the invasion of Leyte away from the landing beaches. Afterward, both ships were transferred to Southeast Asia; in early 1945 they participated in Operation Kita, where they transported petrol and other strategic materials to Japan. The sisters were then reduced to reserve until they were sunk during American airstrikes in July. After the war, they were scrapped in 1946–1947.
caption: Ise underway after her modernization
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