Greetings, fellow Captains!
In a previous episode we told you about the cruisers of the American Tech Tree.
In this episode we'll talk about the Japanese cruisers.
Although grouped into general types—
cruisers, battleships, destroyers, and aircraft carriers—
ships are nevertheless unique in each country.
The Japanese cruisers are a perfect example.
They occupied quite a specific niche:
night hunters, able to strike any adversary, even significantly larger ships.
Unlike their American counterparts,
almost all the Japanese cruisers are equipped with imposing torpedo batteries,
and the damage caused by these batteries increases with each Tier.
The lower levels of the cruiser branch are given to light cruisers
designed to lead destroyer flotillas in battles;
they were properly armed and equipped for this role.
And starting at Tier V,
players go onto heavy cruisers with up-armored magazines,
tapered decks, and inclined armor belts.
To tell the truth, the armor on their main battery turrets is poor,
and their traverse and elevation rate is not impressive
(as opposed to the well mechanized turrets of the American cruisers).
But these weaknesses are balanced by the good ballistics of the 203-mm guns
and their quantity.
And the torpedo belt—
the armor along the waterline—
of the Japanese heavy cruisers is second to none in their type!
Tier II greets the player with the sturdy cruiser Chikuma,
built after the Russo-Japanese War
and taking into account lessons learned from those battles.
She is fast enough and well-armed:
eight 152-mm guns in top configuration.
But this ship can't be called ideal even for her time because of a lack of side armor
and a somewhat ineffective placement of the turrets
(yet, this distribution was typical for ships from the end of 19th
through the first two decades of 20th century).
The two cruisers that come next—
Tatsuta and Kuma, at Tiers III and IV, respectively—
are a bit closer to being ideal.
They are high-speed and maneuverable.
Designed for leading destroyer flotillas, these cruisers are actually enlarged destroyers.
The power plant takes up the whole interior of the central hull,
from bottom to upper deck.
As a result, they frequently suffer critical damage.
Compared to their predecessor,
the artillery changes to 140-mm rapid-fire guns in single-gun units.
Torpedo tubes appear.
Coupled with high speed,
these weapons make Tatsuta and Kuma ideal for aggressive attacks
using combined torpedo and artillery fire.
The first heavy cruiser—Furutaka—awaits the players at Tier V.
Together with Aoba—
a Tier VI ship—
she makes up the first generation of the Washington Treaty cruisers.
They were the first to have reinforced armor on the magazine and main gun turrets.
With their high speed, these cruisers can effectively fight against light enemy ships,
while their torpedo tubes and good guns allow them to fight against battleships as well.
The Tier VII cruiser Myoko
differs from her predecessors primarily in her reinforced main battery artillery (five turrets)
and improved armor,
including a torpedo belt that is really impressive for a cruiser.
In turn, her immediate descendants Mogami (Tier VIII) and
Ibuki (Tier IX) are upgraded versions of Myoko.
They have better developed armor
and are initially equipped with pretty powerful AA guns.
Yet, Mogami is worth a separate mention.
This cruiser was built with five three-gun turrets having caliber 155 mm.
Such design was meant to cheat the limit set by the Treaty of London:
cruisers with caliber up to 155 mm were not considered heavy.
But shortly before the war, all ships of this type were refitted with 203-mm guns.
This upgrade brought them in line with heavy cruisers in terms of their gun power.
Both variants are available in the game, and players are free to choose what they like most:
good one-shot damage with slow loading or a constant flow of relatively light shells.
The Tier X ship Zao is the pinnacle of the Japanese ship-design industry.
It was not built in reality; there was only a heavy cruiser project dated 1941.
If the project had been implemented,
Zao would have been the most modern and powerful among the Japanese cruisers,
and one of the top cruisers in the world.
Her 203-mm guns are assembled in three-gun turrets as on American cruisers,
but Zao has four such turrets—one turret more than her American counterparts possess.
In addition, the cruiser carries four quintuple torpedo tubes.
This torpedo battery makes Zao one of the most powerful,
not only among cruisers (perhaps inferior only to Kitakami),
but among all ships in the game.
Zao is also second to none when it comes to torpedo defense.
Summing up,
we can say that the Japanese cruisers are unique in many aspects
and differ from cruisers of other nations.
Their main features include good dynamics, plentiful artillery,
and powerful torpedo batteries.
Designed as fierce night fighters, they can defeat any enemy,
if used skillfully, regardless of the enemy's type or nation.
In our next episode we'll talk about the most threatening opponents of cruisers—
the mighty battleships.