1920s Nihon Yusen Kaisha "Shaddow Fleet" Passenger Ships?

[Historiker]

Which where the three passanger ships of the Nihon Yusen Kaisha that were subsidized by the Ministry of Transportations and prepared for carrier conversion but never converted? How big where they and what would be their carrier specification?

Peattie mentions them in "Sunburst" page 62.

Peattie, Mark R.: Sunburst. The Rise of Japanese Naval Air Power 1909-1941, Annapolis 2001.


If possible please with literature. Thanks!

[rattovolante]

I found this through google books - no idea if the source is reliable (my field of study is early medieval history, I'm a bit outside my home grounds here [;)])
Paul E. Fontenoy, Aircraft carriers: an illustrated history of their impact, 2006, p. 80 says they were the Asama Maru liners

Limited preview in google books:
http://books.google.com/books?id=oSkklj ... q=&f=false
(3rd paragraph, starts about mid-page)


Combined fleet does not mention carrier-conversion capabilities, but confirms they were NYK ships http://www.combinedfleet.com/Asama_c.htm

[JWE]

ORIGINAL: Historiker
Which where the three passanger ships of the Nihon Yusen Kaisha that were subsidized by the Ministry of Transportations and prepared for carrier conversion but never converted? How big where they and what would be their carrier specification?

Peattie mentions them in "Sunburst" page 62.

Peattie, Mark R.: Sunburst. The Rise of Japanese Naval Air Power 1909-1941, Annapolis 2001.

If possible please with literature. Thanks!

Asama, Tatsuta, and Chichibu Marus. No a/g specs because they never got done. But they would have seriously sucked. Just look at the dog’s-breakfast they made of the Hiyo and Junyo. Sorry, don’t have any literature. This is right out of my butt.

Designed in 1924 for gosh sakes. What kind of “shadow” program could you do in 1924? The “shadow” thing looked at certain ships, to see what could be done with them. There was a provision for putting an elevator into No.1 hold and cutting down the superstructure to provide a hangar space (kinda) for what eventually became Hiyo/Junyo. Probably did the same thing for the Asamas.

But the so-called “shadow” specs were for contemporary planes. Dinky little elevators, dinky little hangers, for dinky little airplanes. So when the fit hit the shan, the specs were totally inappropriate to the birds they had to fly. Taiho would have been operational at least six months before she was, if Hiyo/Junyo didn’t sit in the yard waiting for the idiots to figure out that the planes were bigger than they planned on. Nan-deska!!!

Was it me, I would give them 27 planes.

[Historiker]

I don't have time for a mod anyway, but they might be a fair ASW platform, defenitly no front line carrier.
I have a mod in mind where any ship that was convertable IRL is convertable, too.

[Historiker]

John, do you have any literature that refers to this ships and its names? You must have the names from somewhere, no? [;)]
I can hardly write their names without haveing any printed source/literature. [:)]

[JWE]

ORIGINAL: Historiker
John, do you have any literature that refers to this ships and its names? You must have the names from somewhere, no? [;)]
I can hardly write their names without haveing any printed source/literature. [:)]

Hi Torsten,

I'm not sure exactly what you are looking for - but you might take a peek at combinedfleet:
http://www.combinedfleet.com/Asama_c.htm
This should get you started. Then there's this one with a bit more info:
http://www.derbysulzers.com/shipasamamaru.html
Asama and Tatsuta were sisterships. Chichibu was a near-sister, just a skoosh bigger. Base design for Asama was done in 1924; laid down in 1925, launched in 1927, entered service 1929. Tatsuta and Chichibu entered service a year or so later.

Ciao. J

[Q-Ball]

ORIGINAL: JWE

Taiho would have been operational at least six months before she was, if Hiyo/Junyo didn’t sit in the yard waiting for the idiots to figure out that the planes were bigger than they planned on. Nan-deska!!!

Really? Were they actually occupying the space where Taiho would have been, or is that just conjecture on resources spent on those ships?[&:] Just curious. IIRC, Taiho was laid down in fall of 1941. (but took a long time to complete obviously).

If conjecture, there are a whole bunch of misguided IJN projects that delayed or sucked resources from other more worthwhile ones, Shinano, Oyodo, and all those cruisers minelayers springing immediately to mind.

[JWE]

ORIGINAL: Q-Ball
Really? Were they actually occupying the space where Taiho would have been, or is that just conjecture on resources spent on those ships?[&:] Just curious. IIRC, Taiho was laid down in fall of 1941. (but took a long time to complete obviously).

Yepp'r. Hiyo launched from Kawasaki-Kobe #2 in late June '41, and Taiho's keel stringer was run, at Kawasaki-Kobe #2, literally 2 weeks later.

Junyo was the lead ship for the conversion work and had serious internal design problems. It took a long time to sort them out and till then, Hiyo sat, and Taiho waited. The good stuff is all in Japanese, unfortunately, but Sander Kingsepp and Katsuhiro Uchida have a very nice article about IJN CVs over at http://www.combinedfleet.com/articles.htm where this is noted. The source they translated says 4-6 months. Others I have seen say 6-8 months. So I split the difference and that's why I mention 6.

[Q-Ball]

ORIGINAL: JWE
Yepp'r. Hiyo launched from Kawasaki-Kobe #2 in late June '41, and Taiho's keel stringer was run, at Kawasaki-Kobe #2, literally 2 weeks later.

Now I hate the Junyos. I used to kind of like those ungainly weird CVs that aren't CVs. Now I hate them![:@]

Taiho was another overly builty and too expensive IJN project, but at least produced a nice ship. Might have come in handy in 1943, no?

[JWE]

I don’t mind them. They weren’t that bad. I have found some nice uses for them.

My caution was more for the “shadow fleet” stuff. It’s a nice paradigm, and everyone buys into it, but it was pretty bogus. Yes, Japan had what it called, a ‘shadow fleet’. Japan identified (and subsidized) many vessels that could be converted into naval auxiliaries. And it did so convert many of those vessels. But, I’m very sorry to say, there was no secret warship fleet hidden away in the bowels of the Japanese merchant marine.

Japan did manage to convert a couple purpose built AVs into decent CVLs, but that was it. The so-called merchant ‘shadow’ specs were to add compartments (topside), reinforce framing at potential gun locations, and raise deck height to accommodate movement of horses.

Simply put – there was no ‘shadow fleet’, over and above what anybody and everybody else could do, and was doing to a significantly higher degree. It was just Japanese terminology that, oh, so many people love to cite, without realizing what it really meant.

Oh, well, what the hell.

ORIGINAL: Q-Ball

ORIGINAL: JWE
Yepp'r. Hiyo launched from Kawasaki-Kobe #2 in late June '41, and Taiho's keel stringer was run, at Kawasaki-Kobe #2, literally 2 weeks later.

Now I hate the Junyos. I used to kind of like those ungainly weird CVs that aren't CVs. Now I hate them![:@]

Taiho was another overly builty and too expensive IJN project, but at least produced a nice ship. Might have come in handy in 1943, no?

[bklooste]

If they started Taihio as planned instead of bickering for 2 years they would have had it in 42 would have been very usefull