War News
15 April 1916 - The Imperial Chinese Navy sends the
Ching Yuan and the newly-commissioned
Fei Yun, both of the
Fei Yun class of light armored cruisers, to conduct a raid on coastal shipping near Fukue Island, where two months ago the Chinese battlecruiser
Kai Chi sank the Japanese battlecruiser
Tsukuba. Soon after 12:30 PM local time, a Japanese merchant ship is sighted, but two Japanese
Tone-class cruisers, accompanied by an escort of three destroyers, appear as the Chinese cruisers close in, and a running engagement commences shortly after 1:00 PM. For most of the next two and a half hours, the Chinese cruisers have the upper hand, sinking a
Minazuki-class destroyer and recording many more gunnery hits on the Japanese cruisers than they receive, but at 3:36 PM
Fei Yun is struck by a torpedo and soon begins sinking. Despite being in the presence of hostile warships, the destroyer
Kuang Hsing heroically closes with
Fei Yun to take off survivors, but is compelled to depart having recovered only 22 crewmen by the intensity of incoming shellfire. Despite now being outnumbered,
Ching Yuan continues the engagement with the Japanese cruiser force for almost another four hours, sinking a second
Minazuki-class destroyer around 6:20 PM and only breaking off the engagement around 7:30 PM. Neither of the Japanese cruisers was seen to sink, but one - later identified as
Tenryu - is last seen engulfed in flames, and it is learned that she was abandoned shortly after the close of the engagement. Post-war analysis of Japanese records reveal that
Mutsuki and
Satsuki are the destroyers which were sunk, but an unfortunate gap in the record leaves historians uncertain of which ship sank where.
7 June 1916 - A force lead by the battlecruiser
Kai Chi encounters the Japanese armored cruiser
Tokiwa and three
Minazuki-class destroyers. The Chinese destroyer
Kuang Kuei suffers moderate damage in the ensuing action, but all four Japanese ships are sunk,
Tokiwa having been far too slow to run away and the
Minazuki-class destroyers having suffered critical damage as they attempted to screen her.
12 July 1916 - The Chinese
Yung Pao-class scout cruiser
Kang Chi and the
Yuan Kai-class raiding cruiser
Teng Ying Chou, conducing a search-and-destroy patrol north of Shanghai, encounter the Japanese
Akashi-class scout cruiser
Niitaka, which has been raiding Chinese shipping for the past several months. In the ensuing action,
Teng Ying Chou is sunk while
Kang Chi and
Niitaka are severely damaged. The Ministry of Information proclaims this to be a Chinese victory while representatives of the Navy look on in stone-faced silence. Rumors abound that the impertinent reporters who asked during the news conference why a raiding cruiser and a scout cruiser were allowed to engage a ship which displaces more than both of them put together have been imprisoned for subversive activities.
16 August 1916 - The armored cruiser
Nan Jui, on patrol with the battlecruiser
Kai Chi, the scout cruiser
Yung Pao, the
Fei Yun-class light cruiser
Yang Wu, and the three surviving
Kuang Heng-class destroyers, comes under fire from a warship concealed by poor weather, soon revealed as an
Akashi-class scout cruiser. As
Kai Chi moves to engage, Japanese transports come into sight, and then a Japanese capital ship - the new battlecruiser
Kongo, commissioned this April and presumably just finished working up.
Kai Chi immediately
commences a two-hour-long duel with
Kongo, and while the battlecruisers exchange fire the Chinese cruisers and destroyers wreak havoc upon the ships of the convoy, sinking six of the seven transports as well as the armed merchant cruiser
Muro Maru and one of the three destroyers in the convoy's escort.
Kongo is reduced to a burning wreck and dead in the water by 12:18 PM
and the Chinese destroyers are ordered to deliver the coup de grace. Poor visibility due to foul weather enable the
Akashi-class scout cruiser, the surviving transport, and the two remaining Japanese destroyers to make good their escape.
(This engagement took place in some of the worst weather I've ever fought a battle in. At one point,
Kai Chi's speed was limited to just 17 knots, if I recall correctly, and wind conditions were at 'gale' for most of the engagement.)
Kai Chi delivered a warm and enthusiastic welcome to this newest member of the battlecruiser family, gifting it with no fewer than 50 15" shells over the course of their two-hour meeting. Despite
Kongo survivors' claims that their ship scored a 13" hit on
Kai Chi, the Imperial Chinese Navy maintains that there is no evidence of any shell heavier than 6" striking any Chinese vessel which participated in the engagement.
10 September 1916 - The Fujian Fleet sorties the
Ning Hai-class armored cruisers
Ning Hai and
Ping Hai and the
Fu Hsing-class second class cruisers
Heng Hai and
Chen Wei for a reconnaissance in force off the west coast of Formosa. No Japanese warships or significant coastal defenses are sighted, but
Chen Wei strikes a mine while returning to Foochow and sinks within minutes.
15 September 1916 - Despite the loss of
Chen Wei to a naval mine during a reconnaissance of potential assault beaches, the Army and Navy go ahead with the amphibious assault on Formosa. The landings are successful, and the Army secures a minor harbor and sizeable beachhead within the first few days, but Japanese resistance stiffens inland and further along the coast.
6 October 1916 - The
Cheng Ho-class raiding cruiser
Chi An encounters the Japanese cruiser raider
Izumi near Madagascar and elects to flee before a superior opponent.
4 November 1916 - The Fujian Fleet sorties the armored cruisers
Ning Hai,
Ping Hai, and
Nan Chen and the second class cruisers
Fu Hsing and
Heng Hai for a bombardment mission in support of the army fighting to recover the Chinese territory of Formosa, taken by Japan at the end of the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895. Japanese naval forces are briefly sighted in the vicinity of the raid's objective, but disappear in the darkness and elect not to attempt to interfere with the Chinese squadron's bombardment of coastal troop positions northwest of Takao. Having satisfactorily accomplished the bombardment during the night, the Chinese squadron begins a sweep north along the coast at daybreak, encountering and sinking a Japanese coaster which had lost its way in the darkness, but no other vessels are encountered - until, that is,
Ping Hai is torpedoed and sunk by a Japanese submarine, identified by post-war analysis as I-32. The Navy receives much criticism in the wake of the loss of
Ping Hai, and right-wing elements of the press seize upon this as an opportunity to attack the captain of the
Chi An - and by implication the Navy - for valuing the continued service of an overage and obsolescent raiding cruiser above the potential debilitation or destruction of a Japanese raider in the preceding month. Just as the first round of criticism begins to die down, it comes out that the new Chinese light cruiser
Fu Po had been torpedoed and sunk by a submarine in June, and a renewed storm of criticism engulfs the Navy.
17 November 1916 - The Navy lends the submarine S-3 to the Intelligence Service to slip a prominent Japanese revolutionary into the home islands. The submarine fails to return from its mission, and the revolutionary disappears without a trace. Post-war investigations are unable to determine the fate of either the S-3 or the Japanese revolutionary.
20 November 1916 - Taking advantage of the Navy's troubles, the Army pushes to have some of the Navy's funding reallocated to support a new offensive on the Korean Peninsula. The Minister of the Navy, hindered by the storm of criticism still battering the Navy and his direction thereof, finds himself unable to muster an effective opposition to this project despite popular sentiment in support of recovering Formosa.
7 December 1916 - The armored cruiser
Nan Jui intercepts the Japanese
Yaeyama-class scout cruiser
Chiyoda off the west coast of Honshu and sinks it in a brief engagement.
14 February 1917 - the Japanese garrison of Formosa surrenders.
18 March 1917 - Frustrated by months of elusive cruiser-raiders and indecisive interceptions, and wanting a victory entirely of their own to go with the surrender of the Japanese garrison of Formosa the preceding month, the Navy sends the battlecruiser
Kai Chi, accompanied by the
Yung Pao-class scout cruiser
Chen Pien and the newly-commissioned
Lei Li-class destroyer leaders
Lei Li,
Lei Chien, and
Lei Hsun on patrol along the coast of the Korean peninsula. A Japanese force composed of the modern second class protected cruiser
Tone and four destroyers is encountered, driven into a cove, and sunk to the last ship in full view of soldiers fighting on the front line in the Army's Korean offensive. Naval prestige soars due to the high visibility of the engagement despite its very one-sided nature, and - at least for the moment - the Navy's critics are silenced.
29 March 1917 - Army counterintelligence personnel report suspicions that agents in the employ of Great Britain have stolen technical information on Chinese naval engine machinery. Upon being asked to evaluate the reliability of this information, naval engineering personnel with familiarity with both the British-built engineering plants of the
Kai Chi, the
Fei Yun-class cruisers, and the
Lei Li-class destroyer leaders and with the domestic Chinese engineering plants of the
Chen Yuan-class minesweepers inform the Minister's staff that they haven't heard such a good joke in a long time.
1 April 1917 - The Army calls its Korean offensive to a close, declaring it to be a great success. Two reporters overheard making remarks about a Western "Fool's Day" are arrested for subversive activity, but released later in the month.
12 June 1917 - The
Fei Yun class light cruiser
Fu Ching and the
Yung Pao-class scout cruiser
Chen Pei intercept and sink the Japanese
Itsukushima-class third class cruiser
Matsushima, which had been raiding Chinese merchant traffic in the Yellow and East China seas for many months.