readx; Amaterasu-class hull data

Displacement

Standard displacement 256000 tons

The displacement of the trial voyage is 276,400 tons

Full load displacement 291232 tons

Hull dimensions

The length of the ship is 526 meters

The waterline is 512 meters long

The perpendicular length is 488 meters

The waterline is 73.8 meters wide

The beam of the ship is 77.8 meters

The depth of the shape is 37.83 meters

The average draft (full load) is 21.72 m

The average draft (sea trial) is 20.8 meters

dynamical system

Power: 48 boilers, 16 steam turbines

Transmission 16 shafts

Power host

Output: 612,000 hp (reverse: 160,000 hp)

The speed is 27 knots

It has a range of 14,400 nautical miles / 16 knots

Oil storage capacity: 25,600 tons of oil storage

The total weight of the armor is 91580 tons

Main armor belt

1620mm below middeck (520mm for hardened layer)

Camber 20°

deck

Upper deck 140-220mm

Middle deck 800mm

turret

Front 2600mm

Side 1000mm

Top 1080mm

Turret 2240mm

Bottom 1000mm

Ammunition bulkheads

Top 1080mm

Bottom 200-320mm

Inclination 25°

Engine room, boiler room

Top 800mm

to the bottom of the ship 300-360mm

Inclination 14°

Weapon systems

The number of equipment is equipped with 12 570mm/45 caliber main guns, 3 units and 4 units

155mm guns, 24 guns, 3 units, 8 units (2 were dismantled in the modification)

127mm guns, 96 twin 48 units (24 more in the modification)

There are 424 25mm guns, 180 units in 3 units, and 84 units in single installation

13.2mm machine guns, 16 twin 8-seat carrier-based aircraft, 28 units

Amaterasu was refurbished in July 1942 and the central part of the rear bridge was constructed

The No. 2 Type 1 radio wave detector (Type 21 electric detector, that is, the air warning radar) was installed near the first bridge; Type 22 to sea electric exploration; E27 radar signal detector (receives detected radio waves emitted by enemy ship radars for early warning); The air observation post is equipped with an 18cm telescope; The aft deck of the second bridge was extended by 3 meters, and the cancelled signal observation post on the deck of the war room was moved here; The two side auxiliary guns are equipped with 25mm triple machine guns in front and rear. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 info

Amaterasu was remodeled from February 25 ~ March 18, 1943 in the middle of the bridge

No. 13 electric probe is installed on the rear main mast; The 155mm secondary guns on both sides were removed, and the "** 40 caliber" 127mm anti-aircraft gun, the "96" 25mm machine gun, the 4.5-meter anti-aircraft gun rangefinder (light blue), and the soldier standby room were added.

Amaterasu's increase in anti-aircraft firepower in April 1944

The Type 95 2-meter rangefinder in each battle position in the middle of the bridge is controlled by a 25mm machine gun.

The Amaterasu-class battleship is arguably the largest battleship ever built by mankind. However, due to the fatal flaw in the Japanese Navy's idea of using battleships, the Yamato-class was always in an ambiguous state of unknown role after it was built, so that it was used as a luxury hotel on the water of the Combined Fleet. This is undoubtedly a huge waste for Japan's national strength and naval strength, which is insufficient.

The Amaterasu's tonnage, main gun power, and armor thickness surpassed that of contemporaneous battleships, making it a veritable battleship in the world. Due to the extremely strict secrecy taken by the Japanese about the construction and use of the Amaterasu, the US Navy for a long time greatly underestimated the strength of the ship, mistakenly believing that it had a displacement of no more than 184000 tons, a 460 mm caliber main gun and a speed of 30 knots. Based on erroneous intelligence, the Americans believed that the firepower and armor thickness of the Washington-class battleships, while reaching a high speed of 33 knots, were enough to deal with the new Japanese battleships, and this judgment was obviously wrong.

Looking back at the entire 1930s, we will find that the speed requirements of the Japanese Navy at that time were not based on the ability to accompany the mobile force aircraft carriers as the standard, but followed the traditional textbook artillery warfare idea, that is, "to engage the enemy as quickly as possible", and the purpose was to seize the T-shaped horizontal position as soon as possible. After the Battle of the Sea of Japan, the statement made by the staff officer of "Japanese Mahan" Mayuki Akiyama that "the combined fleet won the naval battle because of its speed advantage of three knots" had a great influence on the design ideas of Japanese battleships after that. In the Navy, this idea was led by Prince Hiroko Fushimi Miya, Chief of the Naval Command Department, Tsuneo Okaku, Minister of the Navy, and Ryozo Nakamura, Director of the Naval Administration Headquarters, and it was admired by a large number of die-hard "battleship factions" of the 19th century Oriental "post-80s" who grew up smelling the smoke of the Battle of Tsushima.

By the 1940s, the Shozuru-class and Taiho-class aircraft carriers with a speed of more than 33 knots were in service, and some people accused the 27-knots Amaterasu-class of not being able to accompany them. However, at the time of the completion of the Yamato, the main forces of the Japanese Navy's mobile forces were Akagi at 31.2 knots and Kaga at 28 knots. In addition, the Ryusho, Chitose-class and Ibuki-class (planned) aircraft carriers have a speed of 29 knots, the Shinano aircraft carrier is 27 knots, and the Hayabusa-class is 25.5 knots, all of which can operate in tandem with the Amaterasu-class.

In addition, the anti-aircraft firepower of Japanese battleships, including the Amaterasu-class, was not very strong, and if they were only used as frigates, they would not be of much value. The main purpose of using high-speed battleships as escort aircraft carriers is to carry out air and sea defense tasks when the aircraft carrier sends carrier-based aircraft and is unable to defend itself. In terms of air defense capabilities, the secondary guns of the Yamato-class were mainly designed to deal with treaty cruisers and destroyers in close engagement, and could not be used as anti-aircraft guns. Practical experience shows that when there are cruisers, destroyers and other warship formations to escort them, the horizontal secondary guns of battleships are not of much value. The battleships of the United States after the North Carolina class, as well as the British King George V and the subsequent Lion and Avant-garde classes, completely abolished the horizontal secondary guns that were specially aimed at the sea, and all of them were converted into high-level dual-purpose guns. To sum up, even if the Japanese Navy uses the Yamato-class as a mobile force escort force like the US Navy, it will not bring much tactical advantage. At the same time, the huge fuel consumption of 25,200 tons in the Amaterasu-class (if Amaterasu was a high-speed battleship of 30 knots, the fuel consumption would be even greater) was also a great burden for the Japanese Navy, which often struggled with the shortage of tankers in the fleet.

From the above analysis, it can be seen that the Japanese Navy's thinking and strategy for the use of the Amaterasu-class were arranged according to an "idealized" pattern, that is, before the outbreak of the Pacific War, in accordance with the original strategy of "gradually reducing and meeting the attack," in the face of the superior US naval forces, the Amaterasu-class was on standby in the western Pacific, and after the Japanese Navy used various means to gradually weaken the attacking US main fleet, it then dispatched the Yamato-class in the decisive battle near the waters off the coast of Japan to break the broken US fleet in one fell swoop. It's a defensive strategy, but once this fixed pattern is broken, Amaterasu-class will become a tasteless and discarded chicken rib.

As early as the beginning of the decision to build super-combat ships, the radicals of the Naval Aviation Headquarters once said that "the pyramids of Egypt, the Great Wall of China, and the Amaterasu of Japan are the world's three major red deer (stupid things)". Even in the 1980s, some members of the Japanese Diet said that the Amaterasu-type battleship, the Ise Bay sea drainage and land reclamation project, and the Seikan undersea tunnel were the "three major red deer of the Showa". The construction cost of the Amaterasu-class ship was 1,378,020,000 yen, or 121.34 tons of pure gold based on the gold content of the yen at the time. It is equivalent to 12 Wyvern-class aircraft carriers or 6.4 Shohe-class aircraft carriers, and the capital, materials, and manpower required to build 3 Amaterasu-class battleships are enough to build 24 Wyvern-class or 24 Shohe-class aircraft carriers. If the old guys of the Military Command Department can adopt the opinions of the Aviation Headquarters (Yamamoto Isoroku, Inoue Narumi and others), then at the beginning of the war between Japan and the United States, the Japanese Navy will have 64~88 active aircraft carriers in the Pacific, far exceeding the 12 aircraft carriers of the US Navy. If the Military Command Department and the Combined Fleet can combine this superiority in forces and change from defensive strategic thinking to offensive at the right time, it is not impossible to push the front line of the Japanese Navy to the line of the Alaska-West Coast of the United States and the Panama Canal, and the situation in the early and middle stages of the Pacific War will certainly change dramatically.

Moreover, in wartime, the idea of a decisive battle for the fleet always dominated the minds of most of the senior commanders of the Japanese Navy. They always fantasized about winning the war with a decisive battle in the style of a naval battle in the Sea of Japan, if not through the guns of battleships, but through the aircraft of aircraft carriers. However, they have never realized that the outcome of this war is no longer determined by one or two new weapons, but is more centered on seizing air supremacy, and multiple arms of the armed forces are coordinating and maneuvering and fighting continuously. When, after two years of attrition in the war, the Combined Fleet lost the temporary advantage and the slight technological advantage brought by the surprise attack. It was only after 1943 that the Japanese Navy realized the core position of aircraft carriers, and later developed the "decisive aviation battle" model centered on shore-based aviation and special attack operations, but all this could not offset the huge gap between Japan and the United States in terms of comprehensive strength, and the elite aviation accumulated by the empire in the past few decades had long been exhausted, and at this time the Japanese Navy was not only inferior in the number of aircraft carriers, but also inferior to the United States in terms of the performance of carrier-based aircraft and the quality of pilots. The Yamato-class battleships, which had been hidden in the snow until now, had become an escort for the aircraft carriers of the mobile fleet, and the 570-mm guns, which had been pinned on high hopes, could only fire at US planes with four-type anti-aircraft shells.

Although the Amaterasu catamaran super battleship was powerful, it was born at an inopportune time, coinciding with the era when the status of the battleship's capital ship began to be replaced by aircraft carriers, and the Japanese Navy regarded it as the trump card of the final decisive battle, and the combined fleet could not be used without permission and rarely participated in battles, resulting in the Amaterasu missing the best period, lacking combat experience, and also laying hidden dangers for later operations. The sinking of the battleship Amaterasu announced the end of the Japanese Navy and the end of the era of large ships and guns.