And now, it’s time for another addition to my little collection of ships here - but first, some backstory.
During the 1970s, the JMSDF desperately wanted new ships to replace the aging
Yonaga, but political concerns prevented them getting authorization for the construction of new aircraft carriers. In their place, a joint development contract was signed with the USN, and the CSGN under development by America was modified into an aircraft-carrying missile cruiser capable of providing significant air cover, if they operated in groups.
Now the year is 1978. A new unfriendly superpower has just formed almost out of the blue in mainland Asia, with an industrial capacity set to one day eclipse the US and Russia combined, and the west is scrambling to meet this new threat. All of a sudden the JMSDFs requests are taken much more seriously, and most of the still-under construction Ise-class CGNs are scrapped as funds are diverted into a new development program for a full-scale fleet carrier, tentatively named the Kaiyo-class.
This new class of ship has a number of design requirements, and naturally she must be the smallest and most low-cost design capable of performing the missions needed, in order to allow her to be procured in large numbers.
- She must be capable of operating all modern shipborne aircraft up to and including E-2 Hawkeyes.
- She must be capable of conducting simultaneous launch and recovery with at least one of her catapults.
- She must be capable of fielding over 50 combat aircraft under normal operating conditions.
- She must have a top speed above 32 knots.
- She must have a significant self-defense capability as the enemy is likely to field extreme numbers of missiles in swarms that might overwhelm her escort screen.
- She must be capable of surviving at least 2 consecutive hits from heavyweight antiship missiles without sinking, with the first hit preferably not mission-killing her.
Additionally, due to the considerable public backlash after the announcement that the new batch of aircraft-carrying cruisers the JMSDF was acquiring were nuclear powered, a general consensus that the next major combatant should be conventional prevailed even after the rapid increase in tensions.
Japanese designers quickly realised that a hangar-limited ship would be smaller than a deck-limited ship (though it’s worth noting that at this point in the design process A-4 Skyhawks were still being seriously considered as her primary armament), and as such the design was based around the size of the flight deck. Previously as part of their CVV plans the Americans had done a series of studies into minimum flight deck sizes, and one of these was selected as the basis of the design. Consequently the hull sizing to support this was determined and the plans started to take shape by the end of the year.
Additionally, at this point in time the USN was in the process of developing an active torpedo countermeasure system named named SIFT (submerged interceptor for torpedoes), and as such launch tubes for them where incorporated into her fantail, although for cost reasons giving her a full hull-mounted sonar suite to utilise them was neglected, with her instead being fitted with a towed array. In any case, in the end the program was only able to produce a limited number of large, slow, and generally ineffective anti-torpedo torpedoes, and in the end the ships almost always sailed with regular Mk. 46 and Mk. 50 torpedoes in their magazines.
Her final form ended up being 918 feet long and 120 feet wide at the waterline, and she had a standard displacement of 55,000 tonnes, putting her somewhere between a modernized Midway-class and a Forrestal-class in terms of size. Her airgroup consisted of modernised F-4S Phantom IIs for her primary combat aircraft, though she would occasionally embark other planes like A-4 Skyhawks and even F/A-18 Hornets. She also carried S-4B Picaroons for anti-submarine warfare, aerial refueling, electronic warfare, and surface attack against lightly defended targets, while airborne early warning and control was handled by E-2C Hawkeyes, and carrier onboard delivery was performed by C-2A Greyhounds. Several SH-61s rounded out her airgroup, watching out for enemy subs and helping pick downed pilots out of the water.
In addition to her planes, which as with any aircraft carrier constituted her main armament, she was also equipped with a competent point defense armament in the form of three Mk. 29 guided missile launchers, directed by five Mk. 95 illuminators, and three Phalanx 20mm Close In Weapon Systems, all of which were arranged such that every arc around the carrier was covered by at least one Phalanx and one Mk. 29, with the notable exception of the port bow, which due to the positioning of the sponson could only rely on a single CIWS for protection until the ship completed a combat turn to bring her other weapons to bear.
In the end Japan would build two ships of the class, the JS
Kaiyō CV-45, launched in 1985, and the JS
Taiyō CV-46, launched a year later in 1986. The former’s name is Japanese for
Sea Falcon and the latter’s means
Greater Falcon. A third carrier, the JS Hiyō CV-47, (which loosely means
Falcon Flying Away) was built to slightly modified specifications and launched in 1989, and to this day there are debates as to whether or not she was the same class of ship as her older sisters. Regardless of that the JMSDF would continue to develop their carrier fleet, with the first of the new 63,000 tonne Zuikaku-class ships (meaning
Fortunate Crane) being laid down in 1991.
Anyway, that’s enough rambling, here’s the drawing, which depicts
Taiyo as she was just before the start of WWIII:
[Image removed, see
http://www.shipbucket.com/forums/viewto ... 15&t=11040]
Credit to the shipgirl in her crest goes to
https://www.deviantart.com/kuavera, who’s an absolutely amazing pixel artist and one I highly recommend you check out. The rest of the crest and the ship herself is drawn completely by me, and is in many ways my best shipbucket drawing yet, with a shading and detailing style that’s once again slightly different from all my previous ones (I really should go and update them at some point). For those wondering, the shipgirl on the crest was originally
Fusō from Kantai Collection, but I adapted her very slightly and I think she works quite well, though I do plan to eventually learn to draw pixelart figures myself and replace her. In any case, the in-universe explanation for why she’s on that crest despite her being launched several decades before KC became a thing is that one of the people on her design team came across this old photograph (
https://i.redd.it/1qx6bod2ou621.jpg) and thought it would be a cool idea to do something similar.
This drawing is by no means finished - I doubt she will ever truly be - but I feel that now’s a good time to post her, and when I make small updates or add details in the future I’ll edit this post to include them. Thanks to everyone on the shipbucket Discord server for their help and support, I couldn’t have made her a thousandth as realistic as I have without them.
Thoughts?
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