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Asahi was a pre-dreadnought battleship built in Britain for the Imperial Japanese Navy in the late 1890s. As flagship of the Standing Fleet, Asahi was in every major naval battle of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05. The ship saw no combat during World War I, but participated in the Siberian Intervention in 1918. Reclassified as a coastal defence ship in 1921, Asahi was disarmed two years later to meet the terms of the Washington Naval Treaty , then served as a training and submarine depot ship . The ship was modified for marine salvage and rescue before being placed in reserve in 1928. Asahi was recommissioned in late 1937, after the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War , and used to transport Japanese troops. In 1938 the ship was converted into a repair ship and based first at Japanese-occupied Shanghai , China, and then Camranh Bay , French Indochina , from late 1938 to 1941. The ship was transferred to occupied Singapore in early 1942 to help repair a damaged light cruiser and ordered to return home in May. Asahi was sunk en route by the American submarine USS Salmon , but most of the crew survived.
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