Qualla: Japanese cruiser Kinugasa

Japanese cruiser Kinugasa: Introduction

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. Five hundred and eleven men went down with her. That is the number worth keeping in mind when you pass over these waters southwest of Rendova Island, where the Japanese heavy cruiser Kinugasa rolled onto her side at 11:22 on the morning of 14 November 1942 and disappeared into the Solomon Sea. She was fifteen years old. She had been, briefly, the first Japanese combat ship ever to carry an aircraft catapult. By the time American dive bombers found her on that last morning, she was a burning, listing wreck - her captain dead on the bridge, her executive officer beside him, her gasoline storage afire, and her engines gone. The crew stayed with her until she capsized.

Image: Unknown author | Public domain

Japanese cruiser Kinugasa: A Ship Built Heavy

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Imperial Japanese Navy, Public domain. Kinugasa was the second of a two-ship class named for Mount Kinugasa near Yokosuka. Kawasaki shipyards in Kobe completed her on 30 September 1927. She was meant to be an elegant compromise - fast, gunned, protected - but the compromises had already gone wrong by the time she slid...

Image: Imperial Japanese Navy | Public domain

Japanese cruiser Kinugasa: From Pearl Harbor to the Slot

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Imperial Japanese Navy official photograph per naval achives kept at museum, Public domain. On the day Pearl Harbor burned, Kinugasa was nowhere near Hawaii. She and Cruiser Division 6 were covering the invasion of Guam, and then the second assault on Wake Island. Through the first half of 1942 she worked the long supply lines out of Truk Lagoon, escorting troop convoys...

Image: Imperial Japanese Navy official photograph per naval achives kept at museum | Public domain

Japanese cruiser Kinugasa: Savo Island, Cape Esperance

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. The night action off Savo Island on 9 August 1942 was, from the Japanese perspective, almost perfect. Kinugasa and the cruisers of CruDiv 6 came down the Slot under darkness, launched flare-dropping floatplanes, and fell on the Allied screen covering the Guadalcanal landings. Fou...

Image: Unknown author | Public domain

Japanese cruiser Kinugasa: The Last Morning

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Imperial Japanese Navy, Public domain. Her luck was finite. After Kinugasa helped pound Henderson Field on the night of 14-15 October - 752 shells into the American airstrip on Guadalcanal - the bills came due. On the morning of 14 November 1942, American pilots found her returning from yet another bombardment run. At...

Image: Imperial Japanese Navy | Public domain

Japanese cruiser Kinugasa: Ironbottom Sea

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Imperial Japanese Navy official photograph per naval achives kept at museum, Public domain. These waters have a name that sailors use when civilians are not listening: Ironbottom Sound, Ironbottom Sea - the stretch of the Solomons where so much steel came to rest in 1942 and 1943 that the seabed here is, in places, a graveyard of ships. Kinugasa is part of that company,...

Image: Imperial Japanese Navy official photograph per naval achives kept at museum | Public domain