The Japanese destroyer IJN Yukikaze underway in December 1939.
The IJN Yukikaze (雪風, "Snowy Wind") was a Kagero-class destroyer in service with the Imperial Japanese Navy during World War II. She was the only member of her class to survive the war. The attrition rate of Japanese destroyers was extremely high due to heavy, prolonged combat and the need to use them to transport supplies to scattered Japanese island garrisons.
Early in the war she took part in the invasions of the Philippines and the Dutch East Indies. She participated in the battles of Midway, Santa Cruz, South China Sea, Leyte Gulf, and Philippine Sea, as well as a lengthy stint on Guadalcanal troop runs and the naval battles around that island. Between these major engagements, Yukikaze participated in escort duty for ships in transit, particularly in the redeployment of Shinano, where she rescued the crew of another one of the carrier's escorts after she was torpedoed by a Dutch submarine and sunk. She spent the last months of the war on security duty in Japanese harbors and survived many Allied air raids.
After the war, she was used as a transport to bring home Japanese military forces still abroad. Yukikaze, Ushio, Shimakaze, and Hibiki were the only ships to survive among the 185 Japanese destroyers built before the war.
On July 6th 1947, Yukikaze was transferred to the Republic of China as a war reparation, where she was renamed ROCS Tan Yang/Danyang (丹陽). In 1970, the Yukikaze was refurbished and repatriated to West Japan where it was preserved as a museum ship.