Kongo was launched in England on 18 May 1912, at Vickers. She was the only Japanese battleship built overseas. She began as a battlecruiser, four ships of the class, and between the wars she was rebuilt into a fast battleship. The portrait of her is from those early years, before the pagoda mast.
She screened the carriers at Midway and was not sunk there. On 25 October 1944 she was in Kurita's battle line off Samar. Hoel fired five torpedoes at the leading battleship that morning. American accounts and the Japanese record do not agree on whether that ship turned. No ship is credited with a hit from that spread, and it is not pinned to Kongo.
She got out of Samar. On 21 November 1944, in the Formosa Strait, the submarine Sealion hit her. She went down. That was not the Samar fight.