Japanese battleship Haruna
was a warship of the Imperial Japanese Navy during :World War I and :World War II. Designed by the British naval engineer George Thurston and named after Mount Haruna, she was the fourth and last battlecruiser of the , amongst the most heavily armed ships in any navy when built. Laid down in 1912 at the Kawasaki Shipyards in Kobe, Haruna was formally commissioned in 1915 on the same day as her sister ship, . Haruna patrolled off the Chinese coast during World War I. During gunnery drills in 1920, an explosion destroyed one of her guns, damaged the gun turret, and killed seven men. During her career, Haruna underwent two major reconstructions. Beginning in 1926, the Imperial Japanese Navy rebuilt her as a battleship, strengthening her armor and improving her speed and power capabilities. In 1933, her superstructure was completely rebuilt, her speed was increased, and she was equipped with launch catapults for floatplanes. Now fast enough to accompany Japan's growing carrier fleet, Haruna was reclassified as a fast battleship. During the Second Sino-Japanese War, Haruna transported Imperial Japanese Army troops to mainland China before being redeployed to the 3rd Battleship Division in 1941. On the eve of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, she sailed as part of the Southern Force in preparation for the Battle of Singapore. Haruna fought in almost every major naval action of the Pacific Theater during World War II. She covered the Japanese landings in Malaya (in present-day Malaysia) and the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) in 1942 before engaging American forces at the Battle of Midway and during the Guadalcanal Campaign. Throughout 1943, Haruna primarily remained at Truk Lagoon (Micronesia), Kure Naval Base (near Hiroshima), Sasebo Naval Base (near Nagasaki), and the Lingga Islands (in present-day Indonesia), and deployed on several occasions in response to American carrier airstrikes on Japanese island bases. Haruna participated in the Battle of the Philippine Sea and the Battle of Leyte Gulf in 1944, engaging American vessels in the latter. In 1945, Haruna was transferred to Kure Naval Base, where she was sunk by aircraft of Task Force 38 on 28 July 1945. Design and construction Haruna was the fourth and last of the Imperial Japanese Navy's Kongō-class battlecruisers, a line of capital ships designed by the British naval engineer George Thurston. The class was ordered in 1910 in the Japanese Emergency Naval Expansion Bill after the commissioning of in 1908. The four battlecruisers of the Kongo class were designed to match the naval capabilities of the other major powers at the time; they have been called the battlecruiser versions of the British (formerly Turkish) battleship . Their heavy armament and armor protection (which contributed 23.3 percent of their displacement) were greatly superior to those of any other Japanese capital ship afloat at the time. The keel of Haruna was laid down at Kobe by Kawasaki on 16 March 1912, with most of the parts used in her construction manufactured in Japan. Due to a shortage of