The Kirishima was an Imperial Japanese Navy battlecruiser that was launched on 1 December 1913 and commissioned two years later. The ship was built at the Mitsubishi Shipyards in Nagasaki, and she was commissioned on the same day as her sister ship, the Haruna. In 1927, Kirishima was rebuilt as a battleship, and she was used as a supply ship and troop transport during the Second Sino-Japanese War and as a support ship during the "Oriental blitzkrieg" period of World War II from December 1941 to June 1942. On 15 November 1942, in one of the only two battleship duels of the Pacific War, Kirishima was sunk by USS Washington (BB-56) after heavily damaging USS South Dakota (BB-57), capsizing that morning.
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The Kirishima sinking