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I've been doing a bit of fooling around with Adobe Illustrator, and made this chart showing the history of IJN CAs during WW2. If people like it, I can do other ship classes too. Would be interesting to track the destroyers this way... Used the TROMs on Combined Fleet for the data.

Very nice, thanks for sharing. It's amazing that only two were ordered after the start of the war given what the USA ordered and launched.

very nice work. other classes would be interesting to see also.

Leyte was a big "game over"

Very good work. The destroyers would be interesting to see.

Yes indeed, in addition to the six CAs lost during the battle itself, a further five were either picked off in the aftermath, or so severely damaged they were turned into AA platforms or hulks. Total of 11 Heavy cruisers lost from active service at Leyte.

Doing this reminded me of just how awesome (and lucky) the Americans were at Samar. Chokai was basically sunk by a 5-inch shell from a CVE or DE, which ignited her torpedoes and left the ship dead in the water. Suzuya was sunk by 2 bomb near-misses, one of which set off her torpedoes on deck. Chikuma gets rendered unnavigable by a lucky torpedo hit that disable one of her propellers and her rudder, leaving her a sitting duck for more.

They were tough ships, the IJN CAs - but ironically at Samar their Long Lance torpedoes did them more harm than good!

Japanese industry was limited. They could only produce enough steel for so many ships. The Yamato program was sucking up most of the resources when the war started, but after Midway, carrier construction became priority 1. The need to build and convert more carriers distorted everything else.

Once carrier aviation came into its own, surface ships fell into two categories: escorts and targets. Sometimes both. The only time surface ships larger than light cruisers ever squared off was when carriers were not around (due to being out of position as happened at Leyte, or the carriers were damaged) to do the job, or they were thrown a bone like when US surface ships engaged some of the ships fleeing Truk.

After Midway, the only warships larger than DDs that got serious attention were carriers and a few CLs already well along in the construction program. The Japanese realized what the realities of airpower were by then. They also knew the US had a massive carrier building program and were probably aware that it had been expanded beyond its original size.

Bill

Awesome chart. I would be interested in seeing the carriers next.

Very nice.

Thank you.

Regards,
Feltan

ORIGINAL: ChuckBerger

I've been doing a bit of fooling around with Adobe Illustrator, and made this chart showing the history of IJN CAs during WW2. If people like it, I can do other ship classes too. Would be interesting to track the destroyers this way... Used the TROMs on Combined Fleet for the data.

very informative... I'ld like to see the case for DDs and Escort ships but that'll be sort of impossible I guess

ORIGINAL: ChuckBerger

I've been doing a bit of fooling around with Adobe Illustrator, and made this chart showing the history of IJN CAs during WW2. If people like it, I can do other ship classes too. Would be interesting to track the destroyers this way... Used the TROMs on Combined Fleet for the data.

warspite1

ChuckBerger I have never seen (or thought of) information being presented in this way before but I am really impressed. This gives a real understanding of what was available at any one time in one easy to read format.

One suggestion I would offer is to put a single line at the end of each (where applicable) just to complete the picture. So for example:

Kako X Torpedoed by USS S-44 10/08/42

Just a thought.

Thanks for sharing this! Interesting chart, as others said, it would be interesting to see carriers and battleships.