The Japanese destroyer was the lead ship of the s, built for the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) during the late 1910s. The ship served in the Second Sino-Japanese War during the 1930s and spent the Pacific War on escort duties in Japanese waters and the East China Sea. She was sunk by an American submarine in early 1944 near Formosa. Design and description The Minekaze class was designed with higher speed and better seakeeping than the preceding s. The ships had an overall length of and were between perpendiculars. They had a beam of , and a mean draft of . The Minekaze-class ships displaced at standard load and at deep load. They were powered by two Parsons geared steam turbines, each driving one propeller shaft, using steam provided by four Kampon water-tube boilers. The turbines were designed to produce , which would propel the ships at . The ships carried of fuel oil which gave them a range of at . Their crew consisted of 148 officers and crewmen. The main armament of the Minekaze-class ships consisted of four Type 3 guns in single mounts; one gun forward of the superstructure, one between the two funnels, one aft of the rear funnel, and the last gun atop the aft superstructure. The guns were numbered '1' to '4' from front to rear. The ships carried three above-water twin sets of torpedo tubes; one mount was in the well deck between the forward superstructure and the forward gun and the other two were between the aft funnel and aft superstructure. They could also carry 20 mines as well as minesweeping gear. In 1937–38, Minekaze was one of the ships that had her hull strengthened, funnel caps added and her fuel capacity reduced to . Early in the war, Nos. 2 and 3 guns and both sets of aft torpedo tubes were removed in exchange for four depth charge throwers, 36 depth charges, and 10 license-built Type 96 light AA guns. These changes reduced their speed to . Construction and career Minekaze, built at the Maizuru Naval Arsenal, was the lead ship of this class. The destroyer was laid down on 20 April 1918, launched on 8 February 1919 and completed on 29 May 1920. Upon commissioning, Minekaze was teamed with sister ships , , and , at the Sasebo Naval District to form Destroyer Division 2 under the 2nd Fleet. From