Some were destroyed in battle,
others weren’t completed.
Some are laid up, and can only dream about battles…
But now they’re getting a new lease of life!
We recreate ships accurately,
according to their historical blueprints,
and send them into battle!
World of Warships: Dry Dock
The Washington Naval Treaty of 1922
defined the correlation of displacement for British,
American, and Japanese battleships as 5:5:3.
It deprived the Land of the Rising Sun
of the opportunity to be on par with the U.S.A. in terms of battleships.
All Japan would have needed to do
was design battleships that surpassed their foreign counterparts
by their combat characteristics.
However, design works in the early 1930s
clearly demonstrated that it was impossible to make a capital ship
with the required battle qualities
and still observe the treaty limitations on displacement,
main guns, and other elements.
Based on that, Japan approved a new naval doctrine
that denied all the international treaty limitations
that were to expire in 1936.
The main point in the navy replenishment program
was to construct gigantic battleships.
The technical design specification defined that the battleships
would be indestructible to artillery fire
and be more powerful than all existing
and designed battleships of the mid-1930s,
as well as any foreign battleship that could be built in the foreseeable future.
Japanese shipbuilders estimated possible characteristics
of projected American capital ships quite accurately
by guessing the approximate data
of the mightiest American Montana-class battleships.
That approach was employed by the Chief Designer of the Japanese Navy,
Vice Admiral Keiji Fukuda,
who carried out the primary development activities
for the future Yamato.
The first draft was made in the spring of 1934,
and the final design was approved in March 1937.
Twenty-four projects were created and consecutively reviewed in total—
all of them were designated A-140— only the last letters were different.
There are some highly interesting designs among the rejected variants.
One such design was A-140-J3,
which had twelve 410 mm guns housed in four triple turrets—
two turrets were placed at the bow and two at the aft,
as was common for standard American battleships
such as the Pennsylvania-class ones.
On the whole, this variant was extremely similar to Montana
which was designed later— they were similar in the number
and layout of their main guns, speed, and displacement.
At the same time, the number of 127 mm anti-aircraft guns
and 25 mm automatic guns was the same as on the future Yamato,
and the medium-caliber artillery was weaker—
the project had three 155 mm triple-gun mounts,
one mount less than on Yamato.
Project A-140-J3 was used as the basis
for Japanese Tier IX Premium battleship Hizen,
and you can helm her on the high seas of World of Warships.