What the dreadnoughts
lacked in speed was made up in that of four battle cruisers launched
after 1912. These were the _Kirishima, Kongo, Hi-Yei_, and _Haruna_,
with the good speed of 28 knots. Their displacement was 27,500
tons, and they carried in their primary batteries eight 14-inch
guns and sixteen 6-inch guns.
At the time Japan entered the war she had in building four
superdreadnoughts with the tremendous displacement of 30,600 tons.
These vessels, the _Mitsubishi, Yukosaka, Kure_, and _Kawasaki_,
had been designed to carry a main battery of the strength of the
U. S. S. _Pennsylvania_, and to have a speed of 22.5 knots.
The first move of the Japanese navy in the Great War was to cooperate
with the army in besieging the German town of Kiaochaw on the Shantung
Peninsula in China, but the operation was soon more military than
naval. Japanese warships captured Bonham Island in the group known
as the Marshall Islands, and, having cleared eastern waters of
German warships, scoured the Pacific in such a manner as to chase
those which escaped into the regions patrolled by the British navy.
The German vessels which made their escape were among the eleven
which were separated from the rest of Germany's navy in the North
Sea at the outbreak of hostilities. They were, with the exception of
the _Dresden_, the _Leipzig, Nuernberg, Scharnhorst_, and _Gneisenau_.
It was weeks before they were first reported--on September 22 at
the harbor of Papeete, where they destroyed the French gunboat
_Zelie_, and after putting again to sea their location was once
more a mystery.
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