On the IJN Tone thread, yamatoman brought up a good observation on the Takao class cruisers. Traditionally, on the IRCWCC and MWC shiplists, the Takao is listed at 3.5 units. Data from Conway's lists her standard displacement as 9,800ish tons, well short of the 12,000 tons required for 3.5 units. In Lacroix and Wells, the ship is given over 14k tons on 2/3 trial displacement, which is pretty close to what "standard displacement" (a made up term for the bean counters who wrote and signed the Washington Treaty) which is what the small gun rulesets use to determine units. the problem is, that the other Japanese cruiser classes (Mogami, Myoko and Tone) would all get 3.5 units as well. We have to have a standard of some kind, and it should be uniform. Personally, I support putting Takao back down to 3.0 units. The Japanese lied about their displacement, so we should abide by that. The Takaos will STILL be 35 knots which makes them superior to everything in the Allied fleet except the Omaha and the Kirov. I don't think they need the extra .5 units to boot.
That is a good point Mike. We need to look into it. I will look at my old IRC ruleset to see if there is anything that I can find that validates the reason for 3.5 units. If it should not get 3.5 units then that is the way it is. The rules are there for a reason. We need to follow them. All of them, not just the one's we like.
Just a thought. Curt has posted about this is well. Why not make classification based on full load displacement rather than standard displacement. As standrad displacement can mean one thing depending on the country.
That's one way to do it, but the old way isn't truly broken I think. If we did change to full load displacement, we'd have to either re-write the lines where ship units are cut off, OR inflate the shiplist and give everything more units. I'm not sure either is a direction that we want to go down, but it's definitely worthy to talk about and debate the pros and cons on.
Or another possibility is that ships get re-evaluated based on their standard tonnage to full load. If ship X has a differential of Y then they would get an increase in units, otherwise they would stay where they are.
Very true, they did but at the same time the ship list currently provides an excellent balance of ship capabilities among each other. I'm not sure that messing with that is a great idea. Regardless, I think that changing away from using standard displacement will make for a LOT of work, and have very little benefit. Just my humble opinion of course.
I think the only reason why this may be done is if there is a wide variation is ship displacements. I have seen sources that have given different displacements. How one country calculated standard displacement may not necessarily be how another would do it. Otherwise ship lists for the most part are well dome.
That's why I am a big fan of using a single source, right or wrong like the big gun guys do. They use Conways. Period. It doesn't really matter if the numbers are RIGHT as long as they are UNIFORM. The same standard of research applies to every ship in their book. Sometimes that formula works FOR a ship (Mogami's 37 knot listing) and sometimes it works AGAINST a ship (Iowa's 32.5 knot listing) The key thing is, it prevents arguments along the lines of "but the anatomy of the battleship Yamato says..."
Good point Mike. I would have to say that if a source like The Naval Institute has a book on a class that info out of that book should be looked at. In most cases you would think that it would be more reliable that a book that is cramming info in to it. Just a thought.
Oh I agree with you Bob. Some books are more reliable then others. I'm just saying with a one book, one rule standard, there is no room for argument.
I understand what you are saying there Mike. That would be the simple way to do it but, yest there is a but. But if a reliable source comes out like the Anatomy of the ship book that states, (just for an example) that in the book Anatomy of the Warship XXX, battleship XXX weighed 46,000 tons you have to consider it. I don't know, just thinking. I do know this, I will be searching for the foam that Swampy used for my cruiser superstructure until something better is found. Good thread. I'm a weasel, your a weasel, wouldn't you like to be a weasl to? HaHa.
Lacroix gives a standard displacement of 11,350 Long Tons as built. Standard Displacement is a legal term used by the Washington and London treaties and it has a specific definition. The Japanese stopped using standard displacement after they pulled out of the treaty and started using 2/3 displacement instead.
Japanese cruisers of the Pacific war, by Lacroix and Wells only shows the 2/3 displacement figure IIRC. My copy is currently at work so I can't look it up.
Page 814, right hand column, halfway down the page. I just spent the last 6 months correcting the Japanese cruiser stats for MWC and have spent waaaaay too much time in that book.
Hey Mike, What does Eric's Anatomy of the Cruiser Takao say? Just interested what the numbers are in there.
I don't know. I do know that "Japanese Cruisers of the Pacific War" is probably the most thoroughly researched and accurate volume in existence on Japanese WW2 cruisers. I'd trust it over Anatomy of the cruiser Takao any day.
I would have to agree on the book that you mentioned. I was just interested in what the Anatomy book shows. I know that a while back I had stumbled across some information that was wrong because people ahad mixed long tons, english tons and metric tons together. It was enough to change the list.
