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preface

due to the lack of various photos and video materials, the unfinished ship is unfamiliar to many people and the details are quite vague.

among the unfinished ships, the 88 fleet is a relatively popular theme, with quite a few versions. not to mention the line drawings, there are countless models and game models. among them, some refer to the drawings drawn by the japanese navy, but most directly copy the structure of the nagato class. in fact, the upper structure of the 88 fleet's main ships starting from the kaga class has been quite different from that of the nagato.

in this article, we will refer to several sets of japanese naval drawings to reproduce the structure of the amagi class, and hope to provide a reference for model making, etc.

save flow: problems with war thunder modeling

references for this paragraph:

deagostini japan - weekly "the glorious japanese navy perfect file" 2018/6/12 no.11 unfinished "world's strongest" battleship/battlecruiser - eight-eight fleet battleship

guangrenshe - the capital ship of the eighth eighth fleet

hiraga joe memorial station-the inner side of the warships amagi and akagi, and the planes of the bridges (id: 20550301)

first, let's look at some of the corrections that everyone wants to see. this first article is just for corrections, so it mostly uses hand-drawn annotations, and there is no strict overlay operation. please wait for the subsequent update for detailed introduction. since this article was written in a hurry, there may be some details that were not noticed. readers are welcome to add.

judging from the modeling of war thunder, it should be an attempt to restore the newly built amagi. therefore, this article refers to the latest drawings drawn by the yokosuka naval arsenal, and analyzes the places that violate the newly built amagi. for the convenience of demonstration, the amagi bridge drawing drawn by tsuyoshi omoto will also be used (of course, this drawing is not completely accurate, and this article will only refer to the correct parts).

the analysis is quite long, so i have used other colors to highlight the conclusions of the savings flow for easier reading.

1. turret

i believe everyone has already discovered the problem with the turret.

(1) the turret is actually the state after nagato's modification, rather than a newly built state according to the overall style setting.

it should be noted that the turrets of the nagato class are different before and after the transformation. the turrets before the transformation were close to circular and had a relatively small space. during the transformation, the old turrets of the kaga class were used and modified.

during the 88th fleet period, the 8-meter rangefinder was first used on the mutsu. at that time, the influence of waves was not found, and the lower turrets (for example, the no. 1 and no. 4 turrets on the mutsu) were also equipped with rangefinders. the same was true for the amagi. each turret should have a rangefinder. after the nagato class was remodeled, the rangefinders on the lower turrets were cancelled, and the high turrets were equipped with 10-meter rangefinders.

comparison of the turrets of the tosa (above) and the modified mutsu (below). the red frame is the location of the side periscope sight after the modification, and the blue frame is the original side sight.

in addition to the rangefinder, other sighting equipment of the new and old turrets are also different. during the 88 fleet period, the original side sight was set on the front side of the turret top, close to the junction of the front and side of the turret (note the blue frame). during the reconstruction, in order to strengthen the defense of the top of the turret, the sight was moved to the side and adopted a periscope type (red frame).

the modification of the turret was accompanied by the strengthening of defense. before the modification, the frontal armor of the tosa was 305mm/40°, and after the modification it was 457mm/45°, which greatly strengthened the defense.

in addition, i think it is necessary to talk about the appearance of the turret.

comparing the above pictures, we can find that the turret shape drawn on the drawings of the kaga and amagi classes is consistent with that of the nagato class, and some models also use the shape in the drawings. but in fact, the completed turret of the kaga class is not a circular arc like nagato, but a new structure with a narrow front and a wide rear, which can increase the space at the rear of the turret.

the amagi class also had completed turrets, which were handed over to the army as fortress guns. unfortunately, no photos of these turrets were left. although it is impossible to confirm the appearance of the amagi class turrets, as a capital ship after the kaga class, it is likely that a new structure will be adopted.

(2) catapult installed on the turret

the method of installing a catapult on the turret was actually used on the fuso, but was abandoned because it was impractical. during the construction of the 88 fleet of the amagi class, there was actually no such design.

refer to the following drawing. at that time, a flat plate was set on the no. 4 turret (note, not no. 3) to allow fighters to take off from a short distance. for those who are familiar with the navy in world war ii, this method is not feasible, but it is feasible for early aircraft with a short take-off distance. for example, the following photo shows an aircraft taking off from the no. 2 turret of the battleship yamashiro:

a land-based aircraft taking off from the no. 2 turret of the yamashiro in 1922

it is for this reason that the akagi and kaga aircraft carriers had such a short takeoff deck in the middle, hoping to use a crane to lift the aircraft to the middle deck and then take off a short distance on their own (yes, the widely circulated claim that the 200mm turret and the compass bridge were set up to prevent the aircraft from taking off are wrong. the fact is that these structures appeared earlier than the upper hangar, so there is no question of crowding out). however, after the two ships were completed in 1927, the takeoff distance of the aircraft became longer and longer, and the originally planned three-stage flight deck became useless.

2. bridge

there are two outfitting drawings for the amagi class. one is the first outfitting drawing drawn by the technical department on september 1, 1919, and the second is the artillery armament drawing drawn by the yokosuka naval factory on september 19, 1921. it should be noted that there is a big discrepancy between the bridge structures of the two drawings. in terms of time, the latter is obviously closer to completion. war thunder's bridge modeling has the problem of confusing the two drawings.

it should be emphasized that the bridge of the amagi-class is quite different from that of the nagato-class, but the war thunder did not make this mistake.

(1) the rear part of the bridge deck was incorrectly constructed

it can be observed that the rear part of the bridge deck of the war thunder sky city (that is, the outside of the radio communication room) is rectangular, but observe the sky city drawing below:

the difference between the 1919 drawing (left) and the 1921 drawing (right)

the initial drawings in 1919 had rounded corners, and the drawings in 1921 had bevels, which are different from the war thunder modeling. relatively speaking, it is closer to the drawings in 1919, but it is not finished.

(2) is the location of the chart room wrong?

referring to the drawing by tsuyoshi auben on the left, there is a large chart room at the rear of the amagi bridge, with a large part exposed outside the mast. in the war thunder modeling, the picture is blurry, and it seems that the chart room is completely hidden inside the mast, which is problematic.

(3) there are obvious problems with the observation hole in the command tower

this is very difficult. the location of the modeled command tower should be fine, but the observation hole is obviously too large, more like some kind of support structure.

(4) the 3.5m secondary gun rangefinder is too high

the 3.5-meter rangefinders of the amagi-class are set on both sides of the compass bridge, rather than on the top of the compass bridge like the nagato-class. one of the reasons is that the compass bridge of the amagi-class is obviously smaller than that of the nagato-class, and it is impossible to set two rangefinders side by side.

from the blueprints, we can see that the amagi class has a special structure between the command tower and the compass bridge. this structure should be prepared for the rangefinder, which reduces the rangefinder's height to reduce its obstruction to the compass bridge's field of view.

the modeled compass bridge is obviously too high, causing the rangefinder position to move up as well.

(5) error in the compass bridge construction

as mentioned above, because the compass bridge was modeled too high, the 3.5-meter rangefinder was also moved up. the problem is far more than that. the modeled compass bridge is completely different from the 1921 drawing, but is somewhat close to the 1919 drawing:

red line: compass bridge outline; blue line: support column position

it can be seen that the compass bridge in the 1919 drawing is very large, with several pillars wrapped inside and a roof covering the entire part.

in the 1921 drawings, the size of the amagi-class's completed compass bridge was significantly reduced. from a bird's-eye view, the bridge plane passes through the centerline of the pillars, exposing the pillars outside the compass bridge. and from the plane of the secondary gun firing position above, some of the outer parts at the back are not covered.

there are no obvious problems with the modeling of the secondary gun firing position, so we will not introduce it here.

(6) searchlight error

the model shows that the lower searchlight has 4 searchlights, which are set in the same position as the upper searchlight. but in reality, the lower searchlight of the amagi class only has 2 searchlights, which are set at the front end. moreover, the front end of the lower searchlight plane is not prominent enough.

in addition, there is a 2.5-meter (? ) rangefinder installed on a slide rail on this floor, which can slide through the middle space of the pillar, but it has also been overlooked by many people.

schematic diagram of the rangefinder slide rail. due to the problem of clarity, the baseline length of the rangefinder cannot be accurately identified.

(7) the bottom of the rangefinder has a strange shape, the 3.5-meter rangefinder is missing, and the signal mast is in the wrong direction

the bottom of the range-finding station has a circle of large, very strange holes, just like the observation hole in the command tower below. it is suspected that this is a poor imitation of the wind shield structure added after the major modification of the nagato class, and its function is not clear.

there is a less noticeable detail about the amagi class, which is that the rangefinder is not only the 10-meter main rangefinder in the front like the nagato class, but also a small 3.5-meter rangefinder in the rear.

3.5m secondary gun rangefinder at the rangefinder

the signal mast during the 88th fleet period was different from the later modified one. it extended toward the side:

the right side of the picture is directly ahead, and this picture shows the state when the main rangefinder is turned to the starboard side.

you can refer to the photo of the nagato in 1925:

(8) the main gun command post should have a roof and the front end should be arc-shaped.

according to the 1921 drawings, the amagi-class main gun director was surrounded by a circle of covers, covering the main gun command post below, which was ignored during the modeling.

in addition, the modeled main gun command post is rectangular, but according to the 1921 drawings, the front end should be arc-shaped:

3. chimney

the evolution of the amagi-class funnel is shown in the figure above. in fact, the inclined double funnel structure only existed shortly after the design was decided. when the defense configuration diagram was drawn, the outfitting diagram drawn by the four departments later already had a combined funnel, not to mention the drawings drawn by the yokosuka naval arsenal in 1921.

i have seen someone holding this classic defense configuration diagram seriously, arguing that amagi never had a combined chimney, saying that this was a fiction in world of warships. i hope this argument will not appear again in the future.

back to the point, although this is not a mistake, it is more appropriate to use the merged chimney method when modeling. after all, the goal is to reproduce the finished state, so the modifications should be completed.

4. anti-aircraft guns

like some of the imaginary pictures of the 8th ship (13th ship), the amagi anti-aircraft guns modeled by war thunder are also 10-year-style 120mm anti-aircraft guns with semi-enclosed shields, just like the later heavy cruisers. but in fact, the 120mm anti-aircraft guns during the 88th fleet period did not have shields.

the picture above is the ten-year type 120mm single-mounted anti-aircraft gun drawn by oban gang. like the three-year type 76mm single-mounted anti-aircraft gun used earlier, it is a completely exposed gun position.

this 120mm anti-aircraft gun first appeared in the amagi-class blueprints, and some sources believe that the kaga-class would also use this type of anti-aircraft gun later. of course, due to treaty issues, the first to be adopted were heavy cruisers.