Have you ever had one of those days? You know the kind I mean, the ones where nothing works and everything goes wrong? The little things build up on each other, you start making mistakes and getting annoyed, and by the end you just want it to be the weekend already. It's the kind of day where everything is almost right, but not quite.

For the Japanese Battleship Fuso, the entirety of her World War Two career was "one of those days."

First commissioned in 1915, the Fuso was technically around for World War One, but her duty patrolling the Chinese coast meant that she didn't actively participate. In 1930 she underwent a five-year modernization project, then a shorter four-year overhaul from 1937 to 1941.

Although she was adequately armed for an older ship, the Fuso's 14-inch guns were easily surpassed by most other Japanese battleships by the time war broke out. Despite the modernization efforts, the Fuso was showing her age.

It was in 1941 that the trouble began.

The Fuso was part of the battlegroup that attacked Pearl Harbor, but as a battleship with no aircraft she wasn't able to take part in the attack itself. She returned to Japan to have her guns replaced, and departed from drydock just in time for James Doolittle's daring bombing raid on Japan. Fuso chased after the American aircraft carriers that launched the attack, but she wasn't able to catch them. Almost, but not quite.

In 1942, the Fuso set sail with a small battlgroup to support the quiet occupation of the Aleutian Islands. Much further to the south, the rest of the fleet was beginning Operation: AL, better known to the rest of the world as the Battle of Midway. At Midway, the entire course of the war changed. Four Japanese aircraft carriers were sunk, along with a whole host of smaller ships. The Fuso was up in Alaska, and as a result was nowhere near the action.

Following the disastrous loss at Midway, the Japanese Navy scrambled to overhaul existing ships to serve as replacement carriers. The Fuso was set to become one of these replacements and almost did, but was instead relegated as a training ship for a year.

After her stint as a glorified dinghy for cadets, the Fuso was dispatched to Truk island. Japanese military intelligence had intercepted American communications that seemed to indicate an attack on Truk was imminent. The Fuso waited there for a few months, intercepted nothing, and sailed back to Japan.

For most of 1944 the Fuso did odd jobs here and there, serving as a training ship again, escorting a convoy that failed at its mission, and dodged the potshots that American submarines threw in her direction. In October, the Fuso joined the ragged Japanese fleet that had set out to stop the American invasion of the Philippine island of Luzon. Finally the Fuso saw real action. She had been waiting almost thirty years for the chance to fire her guns in anger, as they say in the navy.

Before any American ships came in sight, the Fuso was attacked by American bombers. Two bombs hit the old ship, destroying her reconnaissance planes and number two gun turret and causing her to list in the water a full two degrees. Vulnerable and jumpy, the Fuso's crew spotted a ship at 1:05 a.m. the next morning. For the first and only time, the Fuso let loose with her huge cannons.

The ship was the Japanese heavy cruiser that had been with the Fuso the previous night. A single shot from the Fuso hit, killing three Japanese sailors who had been confined to the sick bay.

Now so far this has been one depressing failure after another, but if the Fuso ever succeeded at anything it was depressing failures. She wasn't done yet.

Two hours later a couple of torpedoes slammed into the Fuso's side. Adding insult to injury, the American destroyer that had fired the torpedoes bore the honorable and lofty name of USS Melvin. The Fuso is reported to have literally broken in half, but refused to sink and instead burned on the surface for some time.

A number of the wrecked ship's crew survived, and they were picked up by the destroyer Asagumo, which was torpedoed and sunk shortly after. It's possible that some of the crew managed to reach the nearby island of Leyte, where it is likely they were killed on site by local FIlipinos.

In all, 10 of the Fuso's crew are known to have survived. The Fuso, in one posthumous act of failure, wasn't removed from the official fleet listing until August of 1945, almost a full year later.

So remember, if you're ever having one of those days where absolutely nothing goes right, be grateful that at some point the bad day will be over. The Fuso's bad day lasted 30 years.