Nihon Kaigun 1946

[KHT]

Just do their succesors.
Just go along the lines that there were several Yamato-ish projects during the '30s, but that the gun club wanted larger(or more) guns, becouse the Yoshinos are, after all a 1920s design with "only" 18-inch guns.

[Novice]

Beautiful work BB1987.
Maybe my eyes fail me but I couldn't see any radars on last ships posted, a thing which seem strange for a 1946 ship?

[BB1987]

Beautiful work BB1987.
Maybe my eyes fail me but I couldn't see any radars on last ships posted, a thing which seem strange for a 1946 ship?

actually the radar suite it's entierely there, type 13 AS on the mainmast, type 22 SS on the pagoda mast, just below and to the left of the greenhouse spotting top, type 21 AS above the rangefinders like on the Yamato class

[Novice]

THX BB1987. My eyes have finally deserted me it seems

[Erusia Force]

with her 15m rangefinder so high up, it is assumable that they could have slightly better effective range than the Yamato.

[BB1987]

this class was still missing, at least in their definitive form and with history (courtesy of Emperor_Andreas)



Amagi and Akagi as launched, Takao and Atago sported trunked funnels instead

At the start of the Pacific War, the Amagi-class ships were the most modern battle cruisers in the IJN's arsenal. Having undergone refits in the late 1930s, all four ships were now mostly identical. When originally completed, Atago and Takao had sported trunked funnels like those on the Kii-class battleships, but with the refit, all ships received the same general layout, and so it was much harder to tell them apart.


The Amagis at the end of their main reconstruction, the revised machinery layout led to a single funnel, negating the disctintive marks wich Takao and Atago previously had to differentiate them from the first two ships

The class first saw action in 1942, when Akagi was assigned to Ozawa's 1st Air Fleet as part of the heavy escort, replacing Hiei, which had been sunk during the Battle of the Hawaiian Islands in December 1941. Aircraft from Yorktown, Enterprise, and Hornet surprised Ozawa's force completely, turning three of Ozawa's four carriers (Soryu, Zuikaku, and Kamikaku) into raging infernos and leaving the Japanese force in chaos. Although the fourth carrier, Hiryu, counterpunched, finishing off Yorktown as a fighting unit (and leaving her easy prey for submarine I-168), the Americans managed to nail the Japanese ship as well. Seeing Hiryu ablaze, several other aircraft turned their attention to the surface ships, hitting Akagi with three 1,000-pound bombs. Normally, this damage, while considerable, wouldn't have slowed the battle cruiser, but Hornet's torpedo group, having managed to figure out they were going the wrong way, returned to Hornet, refueled, and hit Ozawa hard, putting four torpedoes into Akagi and sealing her fate.
In November 1942, Amagi headed to Guadalcanal with Kirishima, and was sunk at the 'bar room brawl' that came to be known as the 1st Battle of Guadalcanal. Hounded by destroyers and cruisers (and later by aircraft the following day), aflame from stem to stern, and her rudder jammed, Amagi's captain ordered her scuttled, despite orders from Admiral Yamamoto to save his ship. (It was only after a formal inquiry involving testimony from no less than thirty survivors that there was no way Amagi could have been saved was the Captain's career not scuttled as well.)


Amagi as she looked in late 1942 before her fatal engagement with the US fleet

Atago and Takao survived until the Battle of Leyte Gulf, when Atago's navigator made a error and inadvertently put her in the path of a swarm of torpedoes aimed at the leviathan Yoshino-class battleship Kitami. Despite frantic maneuvering, three torpedoes found their mark, which all but killed the battle cruiser's speed and maneuverability. She reversed course and attempted to sneak out of the battle area as her crew fought like cornered wildcats against the flooding. A bad situation became a thousand times worse when her escape attempt was noticed by battleships U.S.S. Alabama and U.S.S. Missouri, both of whom took it upon themselves to stop her. Atago's crew finally gave up their attempts to save her, and she sank with just over 200 dead two hours later. Takao slugged it out with battleship U.S.S. Illinois, and the nearly-equal fight (9 x 16-inch guns vs. 10 x 16-inch guns) went on for nearly forty-five minutes before aircraft from the nearby escort carrier groups joined the fracas and managed to put two torpedoes into the battle cruiser's guts, stopping her dead in the water and sealing her fate.


The two remaining Amagis as they looked in october 1944

[emperor_andreas]

Great work!

[emperor_andreas]

The Ibuki-class heavy cruisers did not make an appearance until May 1944, by which time they were sorely needed in terms of heavy cruisers. By this time, Japan had lost forty percent of its prewar heavy cruisers (Tone at the Battle of the Hawaiian Islands,Mogami and Mikuma in the disaster at Midway, and Furutaka, Niitaka, Aoba, Kinugasa, and Chikuma during the Solomons campaign), and - though some remained eternally optimistic that the war would end in a Japanese victory - it was doubtless that more losses would come soon.

Ibuki as completed, May 1944:

Rushed to the front lines, she completed her shakedown cruise en route to the fleet anchorage at Tawi Tawi, and upon arrival continued training her crew at anchor. She participated in the Battle of the Philippine Sea, where it was determined that the class needed more antiaircraft protection; this was incorporated into her sisters as they were commissioned: Kurama in late June 1944, Komaki in early August, and Asama in mid-September.

Asama in October 1944:

All four ships participated in the Battle of Leyte Gulf, which savaged Japan's heavy cruisers; in the course of three days, Myoko, Maya, Chokai, Hirado, Takasago, Suzuya, and Azuma were all sunk, with Nachi and Kumano added to the tally the following month. Incredibly, all four Ibukis survived the holocaust in the Philippines intact, the only class of cruiser to do so.

Kurama in April 1945:

Kurama was sent out with the Yamato task force to Okinawa, and was sunk with the other heavy ships in the task force. With the losses of Haguro in May and Ashigara in June, Japan's heavy cruiser force was rapidly dwindling. Finally, in July 1945, the U.S. Navy launched a massive air strike on the remnants of the Japanese fleet, sinking both Hakone and Ibuki, along with light cruisers Oyodo and Nayoro, large cruiser Iwate, battle cruiser Haruna, and training carrier Shimane Maru.

By February 1946, Komaki and Asama, the last of their kind in the Japanese Navy, had been rearmed thus:

The most notable difference was that all aircraft handling facilities had been removed and more antiaircraft guns added. However, Asama struck a mine and sank in the Inland Sea in June, leaving Komaki as the sole surviving Japanese heavy cruiser. In August, she greeted U.S. forces alongside battleships Nagato and Kawachi in Tokyo Bay, and would go on to have a long and proud career in Japan's post-war fleet.

[BB1987]

good job, now we have all the heavy cruisers too.

[emperor_andreas]

(I know these have been posted in the 'Real Ships' forum, but since BB1987 drew updated turrets, I decided to put them on this drawing, and use it for my AU.)

Oyodo and Niyodo as completed:


Tokoro and Omono as completed, and the first two as refitted:


The 'improved' Oyodo-class, the Isoshima-class, which removed the seaplane facilities and hangar on the stern, and added a third triple 6.1-inch turret:


And finally, the Oyabe-class ships, the Japanese answer to the U.S. Navy's Cleveland-class light cruisers. Mounting 18 x 6.1-inch guns, six ships were initially planned, but only three were completed by August 1946: