I.J.N. GUN BOAT SETA / HIRA

Set was a Japanese gunboat from the interwar period and World War II. The keel for this vessel was laid in April 1922, and the launch took place in June of the same year. The unit probably entered service in 1923. The total length of the ship at the time of launching was 54.9 meters and a width of 8.2 meters. The displacement of the vessel was about 250 tons, and the maximum speed did not exceed 15 knots. The deck armament - at the time of launching - consisted of two 80 mm guns and 6 7.7 mm machine guns. Seta was the leading unit of the class of ships of the same name, with a total of 4 gunboats. This class of gunboats was built under the Japanese fleet expansion program approved in 1920 and was an almost exact copy of the Toba gunboat, having almost identical dimensions, on-board armament and external appearance. It was also assumed that the Seta gunboats would operate primarily on rivers and in the coastal zones of China and Japan. Set's gunboat, from the 1920s, operated on the initial established waters and basins. It also took part in the Japanese-Chinese war of 1937-1945. The gunboat sank as a result of the bombing in November 1944 in the port of Shanghai. However, the wreckage of the ship was lifted from the bottom, and after necessary repairs, it entered service first in the fleet of the Republic of China, and from 1949 (under the name Min Jiang) it served in the PRC fleet.