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Tiornu--What is L&W?

Lacroix & Wells, Japanese Cruisers of the Pacific War. Possibly the best warship reference ever published. Except mine, of course.
Hey, I just published a new 40-page booklet. Brand new, I haven't even gotten my copies yet. It's called In the Shadow of the Battleship, a trio of essays on the subject of WWII cruisers and the misconceptions surrounding them. It should be there on Amazon, reasonably cheap.

Last point about the refit of Mayas No.3 gun for more AA - I could see this being done to other Takao or maybe Nachi class CAs, as the firing arcs for the No.3 gun were pretty bad. However, if the Ibukis were to be based off the Mogami/Suzuya design, Id argue that this most likely would not have been done as the firings arcs were much less restricted on these designs.

I think AA was the priority for japanese at that time (late 43-44). They could replace the second turret in Suzuyas that while didn't had so bad firing angle wasn't in a good perfect either.

Well, several written sources lump the 815s in with the Katoris, so they were probably batch 2 of that class. Not a good basis for further development, building a larger number of Akizukis would have been better.

To do escorting(i am thinking of them as convoy escort flag) they might be cheaper ships than akizukis. They don't need the speed. Didn't they had a sort of mixed propulsion system also?

@John

The initial designs called for 8,500t standard displacement, with a speed of 37.5kts. Weaponry would have been 4xII 6in/50, 4xII 3in/65, 3xIIIx25mm and 2xIV 610mm TT (1 reload).

They would have been 20m longer, and 1m beamier, with a draft ~30cm deeper. Range of 6,000nm at 18kts. Two floatplanes.

Basically they were meant to be to a CL equivalent for the Shimakaze, and I believe intended to use the same high pressure steam turbine.


@Dili

Fair point about Suzuyas No.2 gun. However, the question is if the japanese would have done so given their mentality concerning the 'importance' of surface warfare.

They did it to most of their destroyers...

Thats true, but it might be because they saw torpedoes as being more important to a destroyers combat capability than a single turret.

Whatever the case, evidence suggests they were atleast laid down as 5 gun ships, so atleast in early 1942 there was clearly no plans to modify them that way. Well, never know aobut 1943, as Ibuki was being mutilated into a CVL by then...

Losing two guns on a cruiser with plenty of torpedoes probably wouldn't put the Japs off by that much.

I agree with Terminus.  I think keeping the Torps would have been a far higher priority to the Japanese on their DDs as well as cruisers.
 
@Elouda--that would be a solid fast CL (8 6" guns and 8 Long Lance Torps w/reloads).

If I may, this is my take on a realistic IJN CLAA, available at the outbreak of hostilities. The Japs had plans to turn all their old CLs into CLAA's (like the RN had done), but never got around to it pre-war.

My Kuma is the most powerful of the CLAA modifications; the Tamas and Sendais have fewer 12.7cm turrets and the Kitakamis are not converted from their torpedo cruiser configurations:

Terminus--That looks REALLY nice!  What did its AA firepower end up at?  Did you create these to be converted by the Japanese when the STARTS or are they converted prior to hostilities?  Would be great to allow the choice of conversion...
 

They begin converted. Once it gets time to AE'ify my mod, I'll probably set them up as conversion options. AA rating is 522 for the Kumas, 420 and 472 for the other two classes.

The Japs have plenty of stuff that they need their slipways for once the fighting starts anyway.

Sounds good to me.  Thanks for the thoughts with all this.
 

John,
 
I doubt that the CLAAs and most especially the CAAAs would fit into this sort of a mod for a variety of reasons.
 
1. They are very much "what if" ships designed with the typical Japanese fanaticism of creating a ship which was "best in the world" at one thing and most other capabilities and seakeeping be-damned.
 
2. In order to be "best in the world" at AAA I made the CLAAs incredibly fragile. They are basically quite large DDs with almost no armour and no ability to stand up to any Allied ships in a surface fight and limited ability to survive damaging hits. The CAAAs are tough, tough ships but, again, they have an achilles heel in that they are ruinously expensie ( 2/3rds of the cost of a main gunline BB for Japan ) and have almost no surface combat capability to fight anything larger than a DD.
 
3. I also made various upgrades to existing DD, CL etc designs which may be of benefit to this mod but, again, I reasoned that the IJN would have to gie up something in order to fit in all those extra AAA guns and radar. So, I removed the Long Lances and went back 1 generation in torpedo technology. The R&D and production which went into Long Lances now went into radar and AAA and thus the upgrades are justified.
 
In my mod the IJN is a significantly weaker daytime surface combat force and slightly weaker at night-time, its ASW is unchanged but its anti-aircraft ability is massively enhanced. This is because one of the key bases of my mod is that sometime in the mid-30s the IJN decided that aircraft would be the decisive weapon in the next war and thus decided that CV airgroup attacks and friendly CV defence would determine who won the next war. They abandoned the view that the decisive battle would be a surface battle and, instead, focussed on creating the planes and strike groups they would need to sink the USN battleline with airstrikes ( whilst surviving the counter-blow ).
 
Without this background I think that only portions of the third tranche of changes make sense in your mod. If I might suggest something for someone looking to improve AAA defence without changing too much.
 
1. Consider changing all 5 inch mounts to the 5 inch DP mount - the IJN could easily have done this.
 
2. Consider upgrading all 12.7mm and 20mm to 40mm Bofors.
 
3. Consider swapping out 40mm Bofors for a small 2 gun 3.9 inch mount.
 
Japan had all these mounts and none of those changes would effect seakeeping too much ( the 3.9 inch mounts for 40mm Bofors would be the biggest effect and so is the most questionable ). I you make the 5 inch DP and upgrade the 12.7 and 20mm to 40mm Bofors ( and even forget about the 3.9 inch mounts on anything smaller than a CL ) I think you'll still see a major improvement in survivability using only mounts they COULD have emplaced relatively quickly without having to cut torpedo tubes.
 
 
Really the stuff I put in is good in the AAA role but only because it is pretty useless at everything else ( except maybe ASW ). It is the end result of saying "Well, if the IJN could be so battle-line centric throughout the whole war what if the "young turks" had gotten into power in the mid-30s, assasinated all the battleline guys and taken things in a completely different direction with AT LEAST as much fanaticism as the "decisive battle in the dark of midnight" bunch. "   Your assumptions are different so my outcomes ( designs ) aren't really suitable, except for some of the early conversions ( 1942 and 43 ).

Thanks for jumping in Nemo.  I will read this and think on it some! 
 
I like replacing the 5" DP guns with the 3.9" guns.  Do you think that could have been done on the secondary armament of Japanese CA, BB, and CV? 
 

Eh, just FYI, the IJN 10cm twin mount weighed 40 tons including the weapons, while the dual 40mm mount AT MOST weighed 6.2 tons. It would be completely impossible to exchange one for the other without significant modification.

ORIGINAL: John 3rd

Thanks for jumping in Nemo. I will read this and think on it some!

I like replacing the 5" DP guns with the 3.9" guns. Do you think that could have been done on the secondary armament of Japanese CA, BB, and CV?

Definitely a possibility, the mounts were almost identical in size. The second batch of Yamatos were meant to have 10cm mounts instead of 12.7cm.

Thanks Terminus.  I will play around with this some and figure out HOW to Mod and then wait for AE to seriously test it.
 

re: 5 inch DPs ad 3.9 inch... Umm, I didn't talk about swapping 5 inch DPs for 3.9inchs. I talke about swapping single-use 5 inchers or dual purpose 5 inchers.
 
 
As to the 40mm being swapped for  3.9 inch. Well, you can't do it on a 1:1 ratio UNLESS you save topweight elsewhere but you can get around this two ways:
1. Swap a few 40mm Bofors for a smaller number of 3.9 inch mounts and/or
2. Swap them 1 for 1 but save a lot of weight elsewhere ( e.g. Move to 21 inch torpedoes and do away with the at-sea reloading gear --- That saves more than enough weight, and is, mostly, the option I went with ).
 
As always it is about the trade-offs. You can't get everything you want but if you prioritise better AAA then you can upgrade stuff easily enough E.g. You COULD if you wanted to be pretty radical swap 5 inch and 40mm for 3.9 inch DPs trading off the weight savings by downgrading the 5 inchers to upgrade some of the Bofors. Shae a couple of knots off to account for the additional weight since I doubt the 5inchers removed will balance all the weight added and "hey presto" you've got something which just might hae been possible if the will had been there.

Sorry, don't agree with that at all.

I was thinking about Terminus's Japanese designs Thread and decided that a more realistic work for Yamamoto's vision would be to cancel the Shinano and add two more Shokaku Class CVs.  These CVs would probably cost as much as the BB and be much more useful. 
 
Keeping in mind that Shinano would have been completed earlier if not for the conversion, when would a REASONABLE time been to expect two CVs to join the Fleet?  If they were laid down in 1940 (Circle Four) then would they be completed sometime in 1943 if they weren't accelerated?  Could they have been built slightly faster since they builders had already produced the first pair?
 
Since the designers would have built them as improvements over the original pair, what sort of reasonable improvement could have been made to make them more effective?  Would the Japanese have replaced the 5" DP mounts with Taiho's/Akatsuki's 3.9" AA guns?
 
Just brainstorming here...
 

The Japs had constant problems producing enough 10cm guns, so there might be issues finding enough to arm a pair of batch 2 Shokakus. I'm sure they'd like to do so, however...