bgire

I just received this book: http://www.hlj.com/product/KJS81504 This deals with the Japanese 1920's project of the hachi-hachi Fleet, an huge program to build 8 battleships and 8 battlecruisers. Of these only Nagato and Mutsu were commissioned, Akagi and Kaga converted to carriers, Tosa launched and expanded as target. This 179 page book is written in Japanese (I don't read it, arrrrgh!) but heavily loaded with 1:700 scale drawings of the four two-BB classes (Nagato, Kaga, Kii and Suruga) and the two four-battlecruiser classes (Amagi and No. 13) with original design, modified design (mainly with joined funnels) and alternate designs with high caliber guns (up to 41cm). Apparently they come redrawn from Yuzuru Hiraga original design and plans. The book begins with 8 pages with 16 CGI rendering of each class, then come 30 pages of pictures (including shots of the sinking of Tosa -expended as target- I had never seen before), 90 pages of 1:700 and 1:150 drawings (fold-out, profile, plan view, bridge & platforms, double, triple and quad main turrets, details) and finally 38 pages of Japanese text with some sketches. This book is a MUST for scratch-building those ships or kit-bashing from Amagi and early Nagato available kits. At $28 plus postage it is highly recommended! _Bruno

Thanks Tzoli, but please beware. I understand most of your sources come from the French uchrony forum "La France Continue". This forum is interesting, sometimes amusing but most (if not all) of the ship profiles presented are but the fruit of their authors' laaaarge imagination, not based on real studies, as I've been told and re-told by Robert Dumas ten years ago. Just looking at your sketch #6: fitting an heavy coning tower identical to that of original BB to port would have been a design fault, unless fitting and enormous blister below to compensate for stability. Even in that case the heavy asymmetric loads would have soon warped the hull beyond repairs. I'm sure no naval designer would have taken any risk at this. Aircraft carrier designers in France around 1940 would just have adapted an island design from that of Joffre or Painlevé, certainly NOT an early 21st Century copy-paste of a BB superstructure, which is but a naval design nonsense. A funny detail: this profile shows the two 152mm secondary battery directors on top of fore tower and aft of the stack... with NO 152mm turrets shipped. Directors for 100mm AA had been already designed since 1936 for the De Grasse class of light cruisers and they were very different. Also a lot of quad Bofors.. in 1940 France (AFAIK they were first installed aboard USN ships two years later). A 1940 time-line design with serious historical background would have put in lieu the new ACAD 37mm quad guns and the projected 37mm zenithal quad mounts with remote command, certainly not a Bofors material. The small sketch just above this present answer is a British design from D of P Captain Charles L. Daniel, suggested on April 3d, 1941. Daniel himself pointed out it was "in no sense a design", just intended to show the advantage of grouping heavy guns forward to limit displacement. He chose a Richelieu basis as this already shipped the quad turret configuration he needed to sustain his theory. He just put an Illustrious island (light structure, wing shaped, no coning tower) on a modified Richelieu hull. This wasn't even a project for any conversion. _Bruno

Hello again! What is your source for the two "carrier" versions of Jean Bart? The last one (full carrier) reminds me of a similar full deck proposal submitted around 1945-46 by the French Bureau of Ships on request by the Navy Department. According to Robert Dumas, this would have been infeasible: boiler room uptakes would have to get through the heavily armoured main deck (= hangar deck) by the centreline, then be angled to starboard to reach the base of the island, taking off an unacceptable amount of space in the hangar unless the armoured deck and machinery below being heavily modified at prohibitive cost and compromising the overall strength of this heavy hull in torsion. Robert Dumas saw this proposal as a "diplomatic" way from the "battleship lobby" to scuttle any attempt to convert a battleship into a carrier. Also the 1955 "real" Jean Bart had been bulged, making her a very brutal roller. Bulges were flush with the hull forward and aft. _Bruno