In 1962, the Film "Jia Wu Fengyun" produced by Changchun Film Studios Deng Shichang led the Zhiyuan battleship to crash into the enemy ship Yoshino after running out of ammunition and was unfortunately killed by a torpedo. In the play, Deng Shichang's last words of "crashing into Yoshino" and Wang Cheng's sentence "Firing at me for victory" in another movie, "Heroes and Children", have become the collective memory of an entire generation of Chinese audiences. If Japan is a country that has caused serious harm to the Chinese nation, then the Yoshino is probably the one that the Chinese people remember most of all the warships of the great powers that invaded China in those years.
For many years, there was a saying about the Yoshino that the ship was originally booked by China, but because Empress Dowager Cixi misappropriated the naval funds, the Chinese side was unable to pay the final payment, and the ship was cut off by the Japanese side. This has been mentioned in many film and television dramas about the Sino-Japanese War, but this view, which has been repeatedly mentioned in film and television dramas, is not in line with historical facts. As early as 1888, when the Beiyang Navy was established, the Chilean Navy ordered a cruiser from Britain and named it Esmeralda.
After the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War in 1894, Li Hongzhang proposed to resell all the new warships of the Chilean Navy to form a task force to directly attack the Japanese mainland. The Esmeralda was on the list of warships to be purchased at the time, but the plan was abandoned halfway through due to Japanese obstruction. Later, the Esmeralda was repurposed by the Japanese and renamed Waean. Chile later named a more modern cruiser ordered by Britain before the Sino-Japanese War, similar in design to Yoshino, Esmeralda.
I don't know when some people in China began to use the old Esmeralda and the new Esmeralda as a sister ship of the Yoshino to make up the Yoshino that was supposed to be sold to China. In fact, the failed warship purchased by the Qing government at that time was the Chilean Navy's Blanco Englada. The ship was more displacement and more powerful than the Yoshino, but only half a knot slower than the Yoshino. The Qing government failed to buy this warship for two reasons: one was that the price exceeded the qing government's ability at that time; the other was that Japan tried every means to obstruct the destruction.
That's where the claim that Yoshino was first sold to China ends here. Now let's go back to the case of the warship Yoshino itself: the Yoshino has a displacement of 4150 tons and a length of 109.73 meters. Although the displacement of the Yoshino does not appear to be particularly large, the speed of the Yoshino is as high as 23 knots. The Yoshino was one of the fastest ships in the world at the time, compared to the beiyang navy's ships. At that time, the two largest ironclad ships of the Beiyang Navy, the Dingyuan and Zhenyuan, had a displacement of 7335 tons, but the speed was only 14.5 knots.
Deng Shichang's "Zhiyuan" ship has a displacement of only 2300 tons, but its speed is only 18 knots. The key is that Deng Shichang's Zhiyuan ship is still the fastest of all the warships of the Beiyang Marine Division. In addition to its speed, Yoshino also had an absolute advantage in firepower: Yoshino was fitted with four of the most advanced large-caliber rapid-fire guns of the time, so the barrel of the Yoshino could fire 5-6 rounds per minute. The Yoshino had a shell velocity of 671 m/s and an effective range of 8,600 m. The number of gun barrels of the Beiyang Marine Division was quite large, but the rate of fire was more than ten times worse than that of others.
During the Battle of Toshima on 25 July 1894, three warships flagship Yoshino captured the gunboat Hoe, the sinking transport ship Takasei, and the battleship Hiroyoshi. During the battle, Yoshino was lightly wounded by one shell from the 150 mm tail gun of the Jiyuan. During the Battle of Daidonggou on September 17, 1894, the Yoshino led the cruisers Takachiho, Akitsuzu, and Wave Speed to the right flank of the Beiyang Marine Division as the leader of the Japanese guerrilla formation: they quickly sank the two weak ships of Chao Yong and Yang Wei with overwhelming medium-caliber rapid-fire gun fire, and then severely damaged the Qiongjia ship Zhiyuan.
The Zhiyuan ship was wounded and caught fire in many places under the siege of the Japanese ships. Deng Shichang, who was the conductor (captain) of the Zhiyuan ship, resolutely ordered the ship to crash at full speed into the starboard side of the Japanese capital ship "Yoshino". Deng Shichang's move was determined to die with the enemy. The officers and men of the Japanese ships concentrated their guns on the Zhiyuan ship. During this process, a shell hit the torpedo tube of the Zhiyuan ship, causing the torpedo inside the tube to explode. Deng Shichang, who fell into the sea after the zhiyuan ship exploded and sank, refused to let his entourage save them with a lifebuoy. In the end, Deng Shichang, who was 45 years old at the time, was martyred together with more than 250 officers and men of the ship.
After sinking the Zhiyuan ship, the Japanese ship surrounded and sank the Beiyang Marine Division's capital ship Jingyuan armored cruiser, and then seriously injured the yuan armored cruiser. At this point, except for the two ironclad ships of zhiyuan and Dingyuan, the other warships of the Beiyang Marine Division were almost defeated. The Yoshino became a hit in this naval battle, and it also became a nightmare for the Beiyang Marine Division. Later, Yoshino took part in the lushun landings, the siege of Weihaiwei, and the reception of Taiwan. It can be said that the Yoshino was in the limelight throughout the Sino-Japanese War.
In mid-June 1900, 24 warships of the British, French, Russian, American, Japanese, German, Austrian, and Italian armies launched an attack on our Dagukou Battery under the command of the Tsarist admiral. This time, the Yoshino once again participated in the military operation of invading China. Under the stubborn resistance of the defenders of Tagu, six Allied warships were sunk and 200 people were killed. At the height of the war, the Dagu defender Luo Rongguang was martyred. The Dagu defenders, who had lost command, were defeated by the Allies in a leaderless state. The Yoshino flaunted its might again in this naval battle.
In 1904, Japan fought with Russia for northeast China and the Korean Peninsula: on May 10, 1904, the two sides fought over Lushunkou. At this time, the Yoshino, who had participated in the Sino-Japanese Naval Battle, had been in service in the Japanese Navy for 12 years. Due to the old condition of the entire ship of the Yoshino, it could no longer play the vanguard and play the leading role, but was incorporated into the protective cruiser team. Yoshino's mission in this battle was mainly to cooperate with the main fleet in the siege and blockade of the Russian fleet at Lushunkou.
On the morning of May 15, 1904, five warships of the Japanese Combined Fleet, including Hatsuka and Yashima, opened their positions outside Lushunkou and fired fiercely at the Russian warships in the harbor with all their artillery fire. At about 1 p.m., the five Japanese ships that blockaded Lushun began to return. The Japanese ships encountered thick fog on their way back, and as a result, they sailed into the minefield of the Russians in the thick fog. At 22:50 that night, the battleship Chu Otter first struck and exploded. The other ships lowered their sampans to rescue the crew, while risking their lives to approach the Chu Otter.
It wasn't long before the battleship Hachishima triggered two mines in succession on the Hatsuki mine line, causing a massive influx of seawater. The two Japanese ships burst into flames at the same time, and the Japanese troops on the ship were suddenly in disarray. At this time, the nearby Yoshino was panicked when he heard the mine explode. The Yoshino only wanted to evacuate to safety as quickly as possible in the thick fog, but before she could run far, she was hit by the armored cruiser Kasuga, which was sailing at high speed. The collision caused a large opening of about 10 meters to appear on the starboard side of the Yoshino. For a time, seawater poured into this mouth.
The Yoshino then had a severe tilt in the hull and soon sank to the bottom of the sea. Only 99 of the Yoshino's 413 crew members were rescued by other warships, and all the others sank with Yoshino into the Yellow Sea of China, which had sailed several times. The Yoshino, which had flaunted its might in the Battle of Kasuga, was eventually sunk by another Japanese warship. Looking back at Deng Shichang's last words at that time, it was more like a prophecy: the Yoshino was actually sunk in the end, and it was also sunk by Japan's own warships.