Japan - Never built IJN ships.

[BB1987]

@Erik: My toughts about those oddly placed 6-inch gun mountings are that if those ships where ever got built somoeone would have noticed the flaw of an exposed ammunition magazine and modified the project in order to move the guns inside the armour belt.


By the way, here are two new drawings:


Noshiro proposed CLAA conversion:

in July 1944 a plan emerged to refit Noshiro as an anti arcraft cruiser, this called for the removal of the two type 98 80mm wing mounts to be replaced by four twin 100mm type 98 in shelded mounts, like the ones fitted on Oyodo, seventeen triple and eight single 25mm machine guns where also to be fitted for a total of 59 barrels; the plan do not materialized, and Noshiro eventualy got sunk in october 1944 during the Philippine Campaign.


The Kai-agano (also nown as C-44) Class Light Cruisers:

This class of light cruisers was designed in may 1941 for the Dai-Go-Ji Kaigun Gunbi Hojū Keikaku or Fifth Naval Armaments Supplement Program (also known as Maru 5 Keikaku or Circle Five Program) was an improved version of the agano-class, the hull was lenghtened by over 12 meters to a total lenght of 186,5 in order to fit a fourth 150mm (6-inch) twin turret aft of the mainmast, heavy anti-aicraft armament was to be composed of eight 80mm type 98 guns in four twin mounts fitted abaft the funnel; part of the hull lenghtening was also used to fit more powerful engines in order to mantain a top speed of 35 knots despite the increase of displacement, thus the funnel was also larger than the one of the standard Agano class.
Five ships (with hulls numbered from 810 to 814) where ordered in 1941, with other two (numbered 5037 and 5038) added in september 1942 under the Wartime Warship Construction Replenishment Program (Kai-Maru 5 Keikaku or Modified Circle Five Program) but eventually none of them was ever laid down neither recieved a name.

[emperor_andreas]

VERY nice!

[eltf177]

Very nice indeed!

[BB1987]

The Nagato class Battleship as originally designed:


the first design, dated 1916, shows more resemblance to the preceding Ise class because of the absence of the distinctive heptapodal foremast, initially concieved as a simple tripod like all the previous IJN battleships.

[emperor_andreas]

Beautiful!

[Hood]

Great work and a nice find.

[eswube]

Great work!

[BB1987]

The Mogami class Cruiser as originally designed:


When construction started, and untill 1933, the planned layout for the Mogami class Cruisers was quite different from what she turned out once works where completed; according to the original design the ships looked much like a light cruiser version of the preceding Takao class CA, the aft superstructure, equipped with hangar for the floatplanes and the searchlight platforms were much like that of Takao, and while the bridge had a different shape and slighty smaller dimensions it's appearance recalled clearly that of their bigger siblings.
The capsizing of torpedo boat Tomozuru in february 1934 however called in question the stability of all recently-built IJN ships, to overcome stability issues that emerged after inspections the extent of the superstructure was drastically reduced, leading to the definitive silouetthe wich the Mogami class ships recieved at the time of their completions.

[emperor_andreas]

I like it!

[BB1987]

a new entry, the G8 carrier project:


Dated 1933, it was the second preliminar design for the aircraft Carrier soryu, it featured a large sponson at the stern to maximize flight deck lenght and an unusual main armament composed of 6.1-inch guns mounted on the forecastle, below the flight deck.