("White cloth") was one of 32 s built for the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) in the first decade of the 20th century.
The Kamikaze-class destroyers were improved versions of the preceding .[1] They displaced 381LT at normal load and 450LT at deep load. The ships had a length between perpendiculars of 227feet and an overall length of 234feet, a beam of 21feet and a draught of 6feet. The Kamikazes were powered by two vertical triple-expansion steam engines, each driving one shaft using steam produced by four Kampon water-tube boilers. The engines produced a total of 6000ihp that gave the ships a maximum speed of 29kn. They carried a maximum of 100LT of coal[2] which gave them a range of 1500nmi at a speed of . Their crew consisted of 70 officers and ratings.[3]
The main armament of the Kamikaze-class ships consisted of two 40-calibre quick-firing (QF) 3inches 12 cwt guns[4] on single mounts; the forward gun was located on superstructure, but the aft gun was at the stern. Four 28-calibre QF three-inch 8 cwt guns on single mounts were positioned abreast the superstructure, two in each broadside. The ships were also armed with two single rotating mounts[1] [3] for 450adj=onNaNadj=on[5] torpedoes between the superstructure and the stern gun.[1]
Shirotae was laid down at Mitsubishi's shipyard in Nagasaki on 25 July 1905 and launched on 30 July 1906.[2] Completed on 20 November 1906, the ship saw service in World War I and ran aground in Jiaozhou Bay, China, on 31 August 1914 during the Siege of Tsingtao. She was wrecked beyond repair on 3 September.[6]