Notes about the topic: For being one of the most advanced ships Japan designed and constructed before the Pacific war, these vessels are difficult to obtain information on. I often find they are sub-notes in writings. If they are the primary topic, it still deviates to other ships quite often. For this video, I focus on points directly related to changes in Tone's design. Tone's construction suffered two primary setbacks in the forms of the Tomozuru incident and the 4th fleet incident. I discuss what alterations were implemented on Tone related to the incidents, but I do not fully cover the incidents for this video. During the designing of Tone, it became clear that Japan was hesitant on making certain decisions like upgrading the main battery guns until construction had already begun. Exactly when they decided to up-gun Tone is unavailable to me, but for what I've gathered, it occurred in mid 1936. I do not cover the armor as I want to make a separate video about the armoring of Japanese cruisers. Sorry for any mispronunciations.
See Lacroix and Wells, Japanese Cruisers of the Pacific War, Chapter 10. This book took 30 years to write and is a magisterial history of japanese cruisers
Nicely done, as usual. I've noticed that finding photos of many of Japan's warships is difficult. Many we do have were taken by Allied forces. Decades ago I read that the scarcity is in large part due to the Japanese destruction of records in 1945, but I can't remember if that was a theory or supported fact.
Photography and footage regarding Japanese warships is an interesting topic on its own. I've seen three primary factors regarding the lack of imagery for their ships. The Japanese intentionally destroyed them, US bombing runs of Japan destroyed them, and many were just hidden away. In the decades following the war, several Japanese citizens spent their lifetime finding and collecting the photos for publication. One of the bigger names was Shizuo Fukui who's collection is at the Kure Maritime Museum and can be purchased online in books. As for plans, the Hiraga archive is a big name collection. One of the more memorable stories is about the first photo of Yamato published following the war. The photo was taken in October, 1941 during sea trials, but was not publicly known until 1948, 3 years after the war. To think people were finding photos and plans not just in the following years, but the following decades is crazy.
Totally enjoyed the background on these ships. Well researched, I learnt a lot on one of my favourite IJN ship. I consider them a beautiful design and apart from Tone at Midway that was bad luck, generally fulfilled there intended role. Learnt a lot....Well put together and presented, thank you.
I own Super Illustration of the heavy cruiser Mogami, published by Model Art, and have two books from Profile Morskie, of Mogami, and Mikuma, her sister ship, and I own Waldemar Goralski's book on Chikuma, however, I don't have his book about Tone, from the Super Drawings In 3d, series published by Kagero. Great video, as usual. Take care, and all the best.
I've looked into getting some of those for a few years but still have yet to do so. I should finally start purchasing some in the upcoming months. Thank you, take care as well.
The IJN Tone, the cruiser that failed to spot the US ambush at Midway. The failure of her spotter planes led to the greatest single Japanese naval loss of the entire war.
Actually it was Chikuma's #1 scout plane that failed to spot the American fleet on the outbound leg of its search plan. Tone's #4 plane took off late, cut short its search plan and ended up finding the American fleet earlier than it should have. Had Chikuma #1 spotted the Americans when it should have, Nagumo would have been given roughly an extra hour notice. The bigger failure was that between the two cruisers they only were asked to put up 4 planes for the morning search. Genda failed in leveraging the resources Japan had specifically put in place for this task.
Good video and interesting. I like visualizations, so the way I think of the IJN destroyer you mentioned is instability in the rolling axis, particularly when experiencing wind and wave forces from the side in heavy weather. The higher the center of gravity above the waterline, the more the ship will roll, roll too far and everyone is gonna get wet. The fuel state removes weight from the hull if not replaced by water. So, since the hull shape does not change, as fuel is expended actual displacement decreases, and the hull physically lifts higher out of the water. The waterline on the hull moves down. The superstructure has not changed weight, but every piece of structure and equipment is now a higher distance above sea level. Same weight higher above the fulcrum point, rolling gets worse. Hull lighter below the waterline, there is less mass below the fulcrum point to resit rolling / provide a righting force. Bad news.
All Japanese cruisers built after 1927 had Trawler bows. This type bow was excellent for the deep and usually rough Pacific Ocean. This flared bow shipped very little water in rough seas.
It was a couple of years ago that it was pointed out to me that after 1938, ie Chikuma, Japan didn't produce a single heavy cruiser and only the four Agano's (which were hardly world-class when they were built), meanwhile the USN and Royal Navy continued to churn out ships such as the Baltimore and Crown Colony classes. For a nation whose doctrine expected to use cruiser assaults as part of it's attritional phase to wear down a superior enemy force (ie the USN), not producing a modern heavy cruiser and only four light cruisers is quite illuminating to me as to why the IJN was never going to be able to win the Pacific War.
Japan never had a chance. They were competing in construction pre-war under naval treaties that limited US and GB construction while Japan was skirting or outright breaking the treaties. The biggest errors in the naval treaties is they only served to limit the allies pre-war. Neither the US nor GB would really have been threatened by Japanese naval construction IF they all dedicated an equal percentage of GDP. They were happy not having an arms race despite it only benefitted their future opponents. Furthermore, Japan was so focused on the attack that they failed miserably to provide adequate merchant marine and escorts pre-war. Starting in 1943 the vast majority of construction went to escorts and transports. What was left went towards carriers. They were just never that competitive in naval production capacity.
@@Alopen-xb1rbof course Japan or any other nations in the world has no chance against the words richest and industrial powerhouse USA. By 1916, the USA GDP surpassed the entire GDP of the British Empire, making them by far the richest countries in the world. Moreover, the USA has the world biggest industrial capacity backed by almost unlimited natural resources. In 1940-41, Japan produced 20,000 cars where as the USA manufactured 4,000,000 cars. Japan or any other countries does not have a chance winning against an affluent and industrial monster called the US of A.
Very cool getting such detail of our Navy's adversaries in the Pacific. I appreciate your research and hope others who do would comment, LIKE , Subscribe and Share your work with their friends. Have a Great Thanksgiving!! Love, David
They were the most popular cruisers in the IJN due to having the most comfortable crew quarters. It's interesting that the next class of cruisers were going back to the Mogami design, think there may have to much shot dispersal for these ships?
Very interesting episode. Whenever I read about the Tone class before, the origin story was "the IJN wanted more fleet reconnaissance, but the carriers wouldn't do the job under their doctrine, so they designed the Tone class to carry a large number of planes." However, your version says that the large plane contingent was an almost-accidental consequence of solving the dispersion problem. What sources are there on the design history? I can see how the popular history settled on the first version since the second one is subtle and not an issue that most people would perceive, let alone think worth solving.
@@g.t.richardson6311 Sure, once you've built them that way, you ought to use them the same way. I asked because I'm curious about what the designers were thinking.
@@telescoper agree Sorry wasn’t trying be a jerk Always was fascinated by Japanese navy history Built many models as a kid in the 70s I think the first one I ever did was sister ship chikuma
I have found Japan's experiments with use of floatplanes for their vast empire fascinating. Using heavy cruisers like Tone and Chikuma to carry extra floatplanes for recon and task force defense in addition to the ones used on the battleships was an interesting concept.
I think that the difficulties of handling, launching, and recovering floatplanes outweighed the detriments of assigning carrier planes to the task. While it means that the carrier planes were unavailable for immediate strike until their recon flights were complete, it had the benefit of making more planes available for recon, and Japanese carrier planes had a quite notably long range. By comparison, US carriers had a scouting squadron in their air groups which were standard capability dive bombers, and scouts by designation only, so could be used for either task. US float planes had nowhere near the range of carrier planes, so were used for shell spotting.
@mikearmstrong8483 It also seems different thought processes as well. The Americans already had a good number of airfields throughout the Pacific due to Pam Am Clipper routes as well as established military bases. Japan often used floatplanes from seaplane tenders like the Kamikawa Maru to establish seaplane bases and use floatplanes to provide air cover while airfields were being constructed. For example, Tulagi and Shortland Islands to cover building on Guadalcanal and Bougainville. The cruisers could add extra air cover and recon as well.
It is quite strange that none of jap. carriers carry any scout planes at all, as all reconnaissance were carry out by cruisers or battleships floatplanes.
most cruisers carry at least a floatplane for recon. Japanese cruisers carry more of them, to cover vast area in shortest time possible and also as backup in case one failed to report.
Question: what is the boundary between what constitutes a heavy cruiser or aviation cruiser? The refitted Mogami could carry 11 planes and was a CAV, whereas most CAs of the period only carried 2-3 planes. The Tone class with 6 planes fall somewhere in the middle: they carried more planes than most other cruisers (yet still only 6 planes), and their development was pre-war, unlike the post-Midway need for carriers which gave rise to the CAV Mogami, and planned conversions for other CAs. Would their relatively high air cover make them CAVs retrospectively? Even if only in terms of tactical deployment, were they used more like ordinary cruisers or like Mogami or another carrier capable vessel. I'd be curious to see what others think about it. Some sources I've seen list the Tone class as scout cruisers.
I've read that the Tone class were designated as "scouting cruisers" and "aircraft cruisers" in the Naval General Staff requirements of 1936. Mogami was likewise called an "aircraft cruiser" upon her modification. Mogami benefitted, in a sense, from the lessons learned at Midway - namely the need for more scout planes. By raising the "flight" deck up level with the uppermost deck as opposed to the Tone's having flight facilities on two decks, Mogami gained the space needed to significantly increase her flight group - though I don't think she was ever maxed out with planes. So, even though Mogami was an improved "aircraft cruiser" design, I believe all 3 ships were filling the same role - as a scouting/aircraft cruiser. As such they would not have been utilized in the same manner as the ordinary gun cruisers. If I understand your question correctly, I believe the Tone's and Mogami would have been utilized the same way - assigned specifically to the carrier fleet in order to alleviate scouting requirements from the carriers themselves. After the Philippine Sea battle their usefulness as scouting cruisers was better put to use with the main battle fleet.
@@robertdickson9319 Thanks for responding with that information, I've always found the Japanese post-Midway carrier hybrids interesting, but despite their uniqueness you don't generally see much discussion about them or how they were conceptualised tactically.
@@captaincool3329 Info on IJN ships is tough to come by in general - but yes, I would love to know more about Ise/Hyuga in particular; those two in particular have piqued my interest.
Tone & chikuma has the highest engine power output of any contemporary cruisers built by the other nations. Engine power output is comparable to that of battlecruisers of other navy as such the Tone class has 2nd highest speed of any cruisers built anwhere in the word. Only the Italian Trento class has higher speed than Tone class.
"Video will play after ads". This is a business choice that content creators make. Choosing mandatory ads instead of ads that can be viewed for 5 seconds and then skipped. This is why I, as the customer, have chosen NOT to view this video and why I have chosen to unsubscribe. Please do not misunderstand. The issue is not ads, the issue is ads that cannot be skipped.
It's not a decision I have made fyi. All types of ads are automatically set. According to my analytics, 60% of ads played are skippable. Only 13.9% have been of the unskippable type, which is the lowest of 4 types that YT uses on my channel. Thanks for commenting.
Thank you. This is interesting information to me. I was not aware of these numbers. However, I have a number of channels that I subscribe where I never get an ad that is not skippable. I wonder why this is so? @@centralcrossing4732
How do you know who's fault it is? Do you have some special knowledge or experience in this issue? As it happens, U tube seems to have done away with the "Video will play after ads" thing. Now they have two ad styles: The ad that can be skipped after 5 seconds and the ad that plays with the message "Video will play soon". Some times this goes fast and other times not so fast. @@godgoldgunsngolf6733
@@mbryson2899 Same reason I think the Richelieu class, the Dunkerque class, and the Nelson class were lame. Figure it out. But, if you want a cruiser to do a Banzai charge, I suppose they would be OK.
Notes about the topic:
For being one of the most advanced ships Japan designed and constructed before the Pacific war, these vessels are difficult to obtain information on. I often find they are sub-notes in writings. If they are the primary topic, it still deviates to other ships quite often. For this video, I focus on points directly related to changes in Tone's design.
Tone's construction suffered two primary setbacks in the forms of the Tomozuru incident and the 4th fleet incident. I discuss what alterations were implemented on Tone related to the incidents, but I do not fully cover the incidents for this video.
During the designing of Tone, it became clear that Japan was hesitant on making certain decisions like upgrading the main battery guns until construction had already begun. Exactly when they decided to up-gun Tone is unavailable to me, but for what I've gathered, it occurred in mid 1936.
I do not cover the armor as I want to make a separate video about the armoring of Japanese cruisers.
Sorry for any mispronunciations.
See Lacroix and Wells, Japanese Cruisers of the Pacific War, Chapter 10. This book took 30 years to write and is a magisterial history of japanese cruisers
Nicely done, as usual. I've noticed that finding photos of many of Japan's warships is difficult. Many we do have were taken by Allied forces.
Decades ago I read that the scarcity is in large part due to the Japanese destruction of records in 1945, but I can't remember if that was a theory or supported fact.
Photography and footage regarding Japanese warships is an interesting topic on its own. I've seen three primary factors regarding the lack of imagery for their ships. The Japanese intentionally destroyed them, US bombing runs of Japan destroyed them, and many were just hidden away.
In the decades following the war, several Japanese citizens spent their lifetime finding and collecting the photos for publication. One of the bigger names was Shizuo Fukui who's collection is at the Kure Maritime Museum and can be purchased online in books. As for plans, the Hiraga archive is a big name collection.
One of the more memorable stories is about the first photo of Yamato published following the war. The photo was taken in October, 1941 during sea trials, but was not publicly known until 1948, 3 years after the war. To think people were finding photos and plans not just in the following years, but the following decades is crazy.
Informative and professionally delivered- as usual. WELL DONE.
His intonation is terrible Wym 😂
@@rohanthandi4903 Go moan someplace else.
Totally enjoyed the background on these ships. Well researched, I learnt a lot on one of my favourite IJN ship. I consider them a beautiful design and apart from Tone at Midway that was bad luck, generally fulfilled there intended role. Learnt a lot....Well put together and presented, thank you.
Thanks for an interesting video explaining the development and characteristics of these ships.
I own Super Illustration of the heavy cruiser Mogami, published by Model Art, and have two books from Profile Morskie, of Mogami, and Mikuma, her sister ship, and I own Waldemar Goralski's book on Chikuma, however, I don't have his book about Tone, from the Super Drawings In 3d, series published by Kagero.
Great video, as usual.
Take care, and all the best.
I've looked into getting some of those for a few years but still have yet to do so. I should finally start purchasing some in the upcoming months.
Thank you, take care as well.
The IJN Tone, the cruiser that failed to spot the US ambush at Midway. The failure of her spotter planes led to the greatest single Japanese naval loss of the entire war.
Actually it was Chikuma's #1 scout plane that failed to spot the American fleet on the outbound leg of its search plan. Tone's #4 plane took off late, cut short its search plan and ended up finding the American fleet earlier than it should have. Had Chikuma #1 spotted the Americans when it should have, Nagumo would have been given roughly an extra hour notice.
The bigger failure was that between the two cruisers they only were asked to put up 4 planes for the morning search. Genda failed in leveraging the resources Japan had specifically put in place for this task.
Good video and interesting.
I like visualizations, so the way I think of the IJN destroyer you mentioned is instability in the rolling axis, particularly when experiencing wind and wave forces from the side in heavy weather. The higher the center of gravity above the waterline, the more the ship will roll, roll too far and everyone is gonna get wet.
The fuel state removes weight from the hull if not replaced by water. So, since the hull shape does not change, as fuel is expended actual displacement decreases, and the hull physically lifts higher out of the water. The waterline on the hull moves down. The superstructure has not changed weight, but every piece of structure and equipment is now a higher distance above sea level. Same weight higher above the fulcrum point, rolling gets worse. Hull lighter below the waterline, there is less mass below the fulcrum point to resit rolling / provide a righting force. Bad news.
All Japanese cruisers built after 1927 had Trawler bows. This type bow was excellent for the deep and usually rough Pacific Ocean. This flared bow shipped very little water in rough seas.
Nicely done. Looking forward to the presentation on armor as applied to these vessels.
It was a couple of years ago that it was pointed out to me that after 1938, ie Chikuma, Japan didn't produce a single heavy cruiser and only the four Agano's (which were hardly world-class when they were built), meanwhile the USN and Royal Navy continued to churn out ships such as the Baltimore and Crown Colony classes. For a nation whose doctrine expected to use cruiser assaults as part of it's attritional phase to wear down a superior enemy force (ie the USN), not producing a modern heavy cruiser and only four light cruisers is quite illuminating to me as to why the IJN was never going to be able to win the Pacific War.
Japan never had a chance. They were competing in construction pre-war under naval treaties that limited US and GB construction while Japan was skirting or outright breaking the treaties. The biggest errors in the naval treaties is they only served to limit the allies pre-war. Neither the US nor GB would really have been threatened by Japanese naval construction IF they all dedicated an equal percentage of GDP. They were happy not having an arms race despite it only benefitted their future opponents.
Furthermore, Japan was so focused on the attack that they failed miserably to provide adequate merchant marine and escorts pre-war. Starting in 1943 the vast majority of construction went to escorts and transports. What was left went towards carriers. They were just never that competitive in naval production capacity.
@@Alopen-xb1rbof course Japan or any other nations in the world has no chance against the words richest and industrial powerhouse USA. By 1916, the USA GDP surpassed the entire GDP of the British Empire, making them by far the richest countries in the world. Moreover, the USA has the world biggest industrial capacity backed by almost unlimited natural resources. In 1940-41, Japan produced 20,000 cars where as the USA manufactured 4,000,000 cars. Japan or any other countries does not have a chance winning against an affluent and industrial monster called the US of A.
Thanks for the information! I’m going to build a model of Chikuma in 1/350 scale, so I’m looking for all the knowledge I can find.
Very good presentation.
Very enjoyable 🤗
Very cool getting such detail of our Navy's adversaries in the Pacific. I appreciate your research and hope others who do would comment, LIKE , Subscribe and Share your work with their friends. Have a Great Thanksgiving!!
Love,
David
Minor minor quibble. I heard at least one "Tomoruzu" when it is actually the "Tomozuru".
Great video. Info on Tone's is very scare. Thks!
Great looking ships
Very interesting. Thank you.
I always thought it was kinda funny if a ship wanted to sink Tone, all it would have to do would be staying behind it.
Very nice!
They were the most popular cruisers in the IJN due to having the most comfortable crew quarters. It's interesting that the next class of cruisers were going back to the Mogami design, think there may have to much shot dispersal for these ships?
Very interesting episode. Whenever I read about the Tone class before, the origin story was "the IJN wanted more fleet reconnaissance, but the carriers wouldn't do the job under their doctrine, so they designed the Tone class to carry a large number of planes." However, your version says that the large plane contingent was an almost-accidental consequence of solving the dispersion problem. What sources are there on the design history? I can see how the popular history settled on the first version since the second one is subtle and not an issue that most people would perceive, let alone think worth solving.
Whatever the reason that is how they were used until Leyte Gulf
Good point
@@g.t.richardson6311 Sure, once you've built them that way, you ought to use them the same way. I asked because I'm curious about what the designers were thinking.
@@telescoper agree
Sorry wasn’t trying be a jerk
Always was fascinated by Japanese navy history
Built many models as a kid in the 70s
I think the first one I ever did was sister ship chikuma
I have found Japan's experiments with use of floatplanes for their vast empire fascinating. Using heavy cruisers like Tone and Chikuma to carry extra floatplanes for recon and task force defense in addition to the ones used on the battleships was an interesting concept.
I think that the difficulties of handling, launching, and recovering floatplanes outweighed the detriments of assigning carrier planes to the task. While it means that the carrier planes were unavailable for immediate strike until their recon flights were complete, it had the benefit of making more planes available for recon, and Japanese carrier planes had a quite notably long range. By comparison, US carriers had a scouting squadron in their air groups which were standard capability dive bombers, and scouts by designation only, so could be used for either task. US float planes had nowhere near the range of carrier planes, so were used for shell spotting.
@mikearmstrong8483 It also seems different thought processes as well. The Americans already had a good number of airfields throughout the Pacific due to Pam Am Clipper routes as well as established military bases. Japan often used floatplanes from seaplane tenders like the Kamikawa Maru to establish seaplane bases and use floatplanes to provide air cover while airfields were being constructed. For example, Tulagi and Shortland Islands to cover building on Guadalcanal and Bougainville. The cruisers could add extra air cover and recon as well.
@@CanadianSam999
True that. It also helped that the Japanese developed the only reasonably effective float plane fighter.
It is quite strange that none of jap. carriers carry any scout planes at all, as all reconnaissance were carry out by cruisers or battleships floatplanes.
most cruisers carry at least a floatplane for recon. Japanese cruisers carry more of them, to cover vast area in shortest time possible and also as backup in case one failed to report.
nice model
So the 1:10 width > length ratio was altered, but what did this mean in practice?
Question: what is the boundary between what constitutes a heavy cruiser or aviation cruiser? The refitted Mogami could carry 11 planes and was a CAV, whereas most CAs of the period only carried 2-3 planes. The Tone class with 6 planes fall somewhere in the middle: they carried more planes than most other cruisers (yet still only 6 planes), and their development was pre-war, unlike the post-Midway need for carriers which gave rise to the CAV Mogami, and planned conversions for other CAs. Would their relatively high air cover make them CAVs retrospectively? Even if only in terms of tactical deployment, were they used more like ordinary cruisers or like Mogami or another carrier capable vessel. I'd be curious to see what others think about it. Some sources I've seen list the Tone class as scout cruisers.
I've read that the Tone class were designated as "scouting cruisers" and "aircraft cruisers" in the Naval General Staff requirements of 1936. Mogami was likewise called an "aircraft cruiser" upon her modification. Mogami benefitted, in a sense, from the lessons learned at Midway - namely the need for more scout planes. By raising the "flight" deck up level with the uppermost deck as opposed to the Tone's having flight facilities on two decks, Mogami gained the space needed to significantly increase her flight group - though I don't think she was ever maxed out with planes. So, even though Mogami was an improved "aircraft cruiser" design, I believe all 3 ships were filling the same role - as a scouting/aircraft cruiser. As such they would not have been utilized in the same manner as the ordinary gun cruisers.
If I understand your question correctly, I believe the Tone's and Mogami would have been utilized the same way - assigned specifically to the carrier fleet in order to alleviate scouting requirements from the carriers themselves. After the Philippine Sea battle their usefulness as scouting cruisers was better put to use with the main battle fleet.
@@robertdickson9319 Thanks for responding with that information, I've always found the Japanese post-Midway carrier hybrids interesting, but despite their uniqueness you don't generally see much discussion about them or how they were conceptualised tactically.
@@captaincool3329 Info on IJN ships is tough to come by in general - but yes, I would love to know more about Ise/Hyuga in particular; those two in particular have piqued my interest.
*having a wonderful day*
Great video. Ty.
Junyōkan!
Next video would be Oyodo I guess?
Tone & chikuma has the highest engine power output of any contemporary cruisers built by the other nations. Engine power output is comparable to that of battlecruisers of other navy as such the Tone class has 2nd highest speed of any cruisers built anwhere in the word. Only the Italian Trento class has higher speed than Tone class.
"Video will play after ads". This is a business choice that content creators make. Choosing mandatory ads instead of ads that can be viewed for 5 seconds and then skipped. This is why I, as the customer, have chosen NOT to view this video and why I have chosen to unsubscribe. Please do not misunderstand. The issue is not ads, the issue is ads that cannot be skipped.
It's not a decision I have made fyi. All types of ads are automatically set. According to my analytics, 60% of ads played are skippable. Only 13.9% have been of the unskippable type, which is the lowest of 4 types that YT uses on my channel.
Thanks for commenting.
Thank you. This is interesting information to me. I was not aware of these numbers. However, I have a number of channels that I subscribe where I never get an ad that is not skippable. I wonder why this is so? @@centralcrossing4732
Ding dong. Contact TH-cam if you don’t like it. Not his fault
How do you know who's fault it is? Do you have some special knowledge or experience in this issue? As it happens, U tube seems to have done away with the "Video will play after ads" thing. Now they have two ad styles: The ad that can be skipped after 5 seconds and the ad that plays with the message "Video will play soon". Some times this goes fast and other times not so fast. @@godgoldgunsngolf6733
First!
pretty lame design, if you ask me.
They were faster and more heavily armored than the _New Orleans_ and _County_ classes. What's not to like?
@@mbryson2899 Same reason I think the Richelieu class, the Dunkerque class, and the Nelson class were lame. Figure it out. But, if you want a cruiser to do a Banzai charge, I suppose they would be OK.
@@powellmountainmike8853 What do you think of the _Konigsberg_ and _Fubuki_ classes?