Commissioned in 1938, the Tone was the lead ship of her namesake class of heavy cruisers. She was 189.1m in length, and was powered by 4 turbines which allowed her to reach a top speed of 35kn. She had a range of 8,000 nautical miles at a 18kn cruising speed and was armed with 8 x 20cm/50 3rd year type guns (4 twin turrets), 8 x 127mm guns, 12 x 25mm AA guns, and 12 x 610mm torpedo tubes and also carried six floatplanes.



During WWII, the Tone was present at many of the major Pacific Theater engagements. At the beginning of the war, the Tone was present during the attack on Pearl Harbor and also went on to see action at the Battle of Java Sea, Battle of Midway, Battle of the Eastern Solomons, Battle of Santa Cruz, Battle of the Phillipine Sea, and the Battle of the Leyte Gulf. In July, 1945 the Tone, along with most of the surviving large Japanese Navy warships, was based at the Kure Naval Arsenal. On July 24th, Task Force 38 launched a large scale air raid on Kure and Tone was hit by three bombs which sank her.