page_title: List of battleships of Japan
section_title: Asahi
hierarchical_section_title: List of battleships of Japan / Pre-Dreadnoughts / Asahi
caption_attribution_description: Русский: Эскадренный броненосец "Асахи", июль 1900 года English: Picture of Japanese battleship Asahi, July 1900
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: Asahi was a slightly improved version of the British Formidable-class battleships. She became the flagship of the IJN's Standing Fleet and was later assigned to the 1st Fleet when the Combined Fleet reformed in 1903. At the start of the Russo–Japanese War, Asahi took part in the Battle of Port Arthur and was not damaged by Russian fire. At the Battle of the Yellow Sea, the ship was moderately damaged, although she hit and damaged Poltava and Tsesarevich in return. Asahi struck a mine two months later near Port Arthur, but was repaired in time for the Battle of Tsushima. There, she helped disable the battleship Knyaz Suvorov and dueled with the battleships Borodino and Oryol, taking no damage.
  She was a gunnery training ship for most of World War I until being rearmed in 1917 in time to escort troop transports during Japan's intervention in the Russian Civil War. Asahi was converted into a noncombat vessel during the 1920s and was then made a repair ship in 1937. On the night of 25–26 May 1942, Asahi was torpedoed and sunk by the submarine USS Salmon off modern-day Vietnam.
caption: Asahi in July 1900
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