Akagi as a Battlecruiser

Not the original design but a hypothetical modernisation. But first a:

Health & Safety Warning

Have eye protection ready and pictures of the rebuilt Italian battleships!



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MMZ - 1/700 IJN 1/700 IJN "Never-Were" Design Battlecruiser Amagi 1944

I warned you, didn't I?

 

you know if they had a decent clothes dryer they wouldn't need so much clothesline.

 

*chuckle*That certainly explains it.

 

A lot of detail, wish I had the stamina to do something like that. Of course it depicted in 1944 could also been of a capsized hull sitting on the seabed floor.

 

Someone needs to tell that modeler to use thinly stretched CLEAR sprue for the rigging for the proper scale effect. Interesting concept though. She'd have gone the way of the Kirishima, Hiei, and Yamashiro.

 

A proposal for a bulge that can defeat a Type 90 warhead maybe?

 

It seems the model is a fake. Here is what someone else noticed:"looking her over again, it is apparent themodeller took two Nagatos but in splicingthem together forgot about engineroom placement and the need for alengthened bow - and some giveaway asthis is the "bowing" of the hull when you splice together models - see how theship "rides" the surface. The "saddle tank" bulges are spectacular,although some watertank experimentswould have dissuaded a designer of a realship since the reduction of speed wouldhave been at odds with the desire for a25 knot battleline unless you get some real forcing of boilers. (After all, does oneseriously expect the IJN to have engines& shafting so well forward absent turbo-electric engineering?)"

 

Beatuful model, pity for the out of scale looking rigging. But all that effort on a "what if", the "as planned" ship would have been nicer.
IMO the bulges are not that unreasonable, though they would look better on a monitor than on a BB, the "Pugliesi" anti torpedo cylinders of the Italian ships were probably wider, but internal to the hull, very nice model .
From the few drawings of Amagi I've seen the funnels are too widely spaced ant the midship turret a deck too high but had she been built as a BC she probably would have undergone one big refit before WW2 so "anything goes".
But for the AA suite she looks to be a match for most WW2 BBs.

 

I always like "what-if" subjects, so I have a hard time criticizing folk for making them.

I think the rigging of the model is atrocious, but perhaps with the photo LIGHTING it seems to stand out more than if we saw it in person. Some good fly-fishing line might have been better to use, AND to paint it black so it isn't so noticeable. That and the photographer needs to learn how to expand his "depth-of-focus"---it is really distracting to have the VERY CENTER of the pic in focus and EVERYTHING else blurry!

The enormous bulge seems out-of-place--I don't believe any other Japanese ship had such a "spare tire". The Japanese relished speed in their ships and "offensive" attributes, so I would doubt that they would have bulged their fastest gunships like that. If they only knew how poor American torpedoes were they needen't have bothered!

That all said, I enjoyed seeing that rendition!

 

Hector Bywater, in his speculative The Great Pacific War, has the sneaky Japanese steal a march on us by converting Akagi and Kaga back to gunnery ships!