Re: Fuso class
Fuso and Yamashiro represent the two oldest battleships in service with the IJN during WW 2. These two ships had several weaknesses in their design that by WW 2 were serious deficiencies for first line service (ie use in the battleline versus say, fire support of amphibious operations).
The first, and probably most important was that their deck armor was very thin by WW 2 standards. This leaves them extremely vulnerable to heavy shell hits.
The second is that their internal subdivision was haphazard. This is excerbated by the disposition of the turrets and their magazines. In this class it could take as much as 15 minutes or more to get the ship fully to general quarters. This is due to narrow passageways, low overheads, lack of quick acting hatches and a maze of poorly laid out compartments. An additional problem was that the 3rd deck was the damage control deck, as was common in WW 1 as opposed to the 2nd deck that most navies were adopting or modifying their ships to by WW 2.
Another problem was that as these ships aged and underwent repeated modification their stability became more marginal. Because Japanese shipbuilding techniques of the period were by no means uniform it is not known exactly what these ship's metacentric height was. It is likely that they had not been inclined recently to determine what that height was as this was not regular practice for the Japanese at the time.
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