page_title: Izumo-class cruiser
section_title: Armament
hierarchical_section_title: Izumo-class cruiser / Description / Armament
caption_attribution_description: English: An inside view of Japanese cruiser Izumo. Izumo is the Imperial Japanese Navy's first Izumo-class armored cruiser. 日本語: 出雲の内部。出雲は大日本帝国海軍の出雲型装甲巡洋艦の一番艦です。
context_page_description: The Izumo-class cruisers were a pair of armored cruisers built for the Imperial Japanese Navy in the late 1890s. As Japan lacked the industrial capacity to build such warships herself, the vessels were built in Britain. They were part of the "Six-Six Fleet" expansion program that began after the defeat of China during the First Sino-Japanese War of 1894–95. The sister ships participated in three of the four main naval battles of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05—the Battle of Port Arthur, the Battle off Ulsan and the Battle of Tsushima—but played a much more minor role in World War I.
  Iwate was first used as a training ship in 1916 and remained in that role for most of the rest of her career. Her sister, Izumo, was mostly used for training during the 1920s, but became flagship of the IJN forces in China in 1932. She was involved in the Shanghai Incident that year and in the Second Sino-Japanese War that began five years later. The ship was used in the early stages of the Philippines Campaign during the Pacific War until she struck a mine at the end of 1941. Izumo joined her sister as a training ship in home waters in 1943.
context_section_description: The main armament for all of the "Six-Six Fleet" armored cruisers was four Armstrong Whitworth-built 45-caliber eight-inch guns in twin-gun turrets fore and aft of the superstructure. The electrically operated turrets were capable of 130° rotation left and right, and the guns could be elevated to +30° and depressed to −5°. Each turret accommodated 65 shells, but could only be reloaded through doors in the turret floor and the ship's deck that allowed the electric winch in the turret to hoist shells up from the shell room deep in the hull. The guns were manually loaded and had a rate of fire about 1.2 rounds per minute. The 203-millimeter gun fired 250-pound (113.5 kg) armor-piercing (AP) projectiles at a muzzle velocity of 2,500 feet per second (760 m/s) to a range of 20,000 yards (18,000 m).
  The secondary armament consisted of fourteen Elswick Ordnance Company "Pattern Z" quick-firing (QF), 40-caliber, six-inch (152 mm) guns. All but four of these guns were mounted in armored casemates on the main and upper decks, and their mounts on the upper deck were protected by gun shields. Their 100-pound (45.4 kg) AP shells were fired at a muzzle velocity of 2,300 feet per second (700 m/s). The ships were also equipped with a dozen 40-caliber QF 12-pounder 12-cwt guns and eight QF 2.5-pounder Yamauchi guns as close-range defense against torpedo boats. The former gun fired three-inch (76 mm), 12.5-pound (5.7 kg) projectiles at a muzzle velocity of 2,359 feet per second (719 m/s).
  The Izumo-class ships were equipped with four submerged 18-inch (457 mm) torpedo tubes, two on each broadside. The Type 30 torpedo had a 100-kilogram (220 lb) warhead and three range/speed settings: 870 yards (800 m) at 27 knots (50 km/h; 31 mph), 1,100 yards (1,000 m) at 23.6 knots (43.7 km/h; 27.2 mph) or 3,300 yards (3,000 m) at 14.2 knots (26.3 km/h; 16.3 mph).
caption: Crewmen working the six-inch guns
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