was the lead ship of her class of armored cruisers (Sōkō jun'yōkan) built for the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) in the late 1890s. As Japan lacked the industrial capacity to build such warships itself, the ship was built in Britain. She often served as a flagship and participated in most of the naval battles of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905. The ship was lightly damaged during the Battle off Ulsan and the Battle of Tsushima. Izumo was ordered to protect Japanese citizens and interests in 1913 during the Mexican Revolution and was still there when World War I began in 1914. She was then tasked to search for German commerce raiders and protect Allied shipping off the western coasts of North and Central America. The ship assisted the armored cruiser in early 1915 when she struck a rock off Baja California. In 1917, Izumo became the flagship of the Japanese squadron deployed in the Mediterranean Sea. After the war, she sailed to Great Britain to take control of some ex-German submarines and then escorted them part of the way back to Japan. The ship spent most of the 1920s as a training ship for naval cadets and became flagship of the IJN's China forces in 1932 during the First Shanghai Incident. Izumo participated in the Battle of Shanghai five years later and was not damaged, despite repeated aerial attacks. The ship played a minor role in the Pacific War, supporting Japanese forces during Philippines Campaign until she struck a mine. She returned to Japan in 1943 and again became a training ship for naval cadets. Izumo was sunk by American carrier aircraft during the attack on Kure in July 1945. Her wreck was refloated and scrapped in 1947. Background and description The 1896 Naval Expansion Plan was made after the First Sino-Japanese War and included four armored cruisers in addition to four more battleships, all of which had to be ordered from British shipyards as Japan lacked the capability to build them itself. Further consideration of the Russian building program caused the IJN to believe that the battleships ordered under the original plan would not be sufficient to counter the Imperial Russian Navy. Budgetary limitations prevented ordering more battleships and the IJN decided to expand the number of more affordable armored cruisers to be ordered from four to six ships. The revised plan is commonly known as the "Six-Six Fleet".