When a country goes to war, it goes to war not with the fleet it wants, but with the fleet it has. To this one might add: even when a country refits that fleet, it refits them not with the equipment it wants, but with the equipment it has. Imperial Menghe, the least technologically advanced of the great powers in the mid-20th century, knew both adages all too well.
Gijang-class cruiser (CL Uljin, AA refit, 1942)
Displacement: 6,739 tonnes standard, 7,545 tonnes full load
Length: 165.1 meters at waterline, 168.0 meters overall
Beam: 16.85 meters including bulges
Draft: 5.28 meters at full load
Propulsion: 6 oil-fired and 4 coal-fired boilers supplying two steam turbines at 90,000 shp each
Speed: 32.6 knots
Range: 3,432 nautical miles
Complement: 512
Armament:
- 4x2 Type 32 Mod N 130mm gun in Type 36 dual-purpose mount
- 12x2 Type 38 37.5mm AA gun in Type 41 powered, water-cooled mount
- 13x1 Type 37 20mm AA gun in Type 40 manual single mount
- 2x2 Type 39 550mm torpedo
- Depth charges
- Mines
The four Gijang-class light cruisers, laid down between 1922 and 1925, were originally intended as fleet scouts and forward screen combatants. By the late 1930s, however, it was becoming apparent that they were ill-suited to these roles. With eight manually-traversed 125mm Type 10 guns, seven of which can fire in a broadside, they were outgunned by some of the latest heavy destroyers being built in Sieuxerr. These guns were also low-angle only, with anti-aircraft armament limited to four 75mm high-angle guns and a number of 12.5mm HMGs, making the cruisers vulnerable to air attack. After suffering serious setbacks in late 1940 and early 1941, the Imperial Menghean Navy decided to convert Uljin, one of the two remaining Gijang-class cruisers, into an anti-aircraft cruiser as part of her post-combat repairs.
Uljin's main armament after this refit consisted of eight 130mm dual-purpose guns, specifically Type 32 Mod N guns in Type 36 dual-purpose mounts. These mounts had powered elevation and traverse controls, powered ramming, assisted loading from ready trays, and automatic fuse-setting mechanisms, but they were only partly enclosed, with the traverser, pointer, and hydraulics protected from sea spray and machine gun fire by an open-backed shell and the rest of the mount exposed. The mounts also lacked built-in ammunition hoists: instead, 130mm shells were lifted from the forward and aft magazines by the ship's four original ammunition hoists (plus a fifth hoist added in refits) and carried to the mounts by crew. Though fully enclosed dual-purpose turrets with internal hoists would have been better, this would have also required a major rebuild of the interior hull, including a new aft magazine above the waterline, and by 1941 the Imperial Menghean Navy was working on borrowed time.
On paper, the 130mm Type 32 Mod N was an excellent anti-aircraft weapon. Its 55-caliber barrel gave it a high muzzle velocity, resulting in a long range, good accuracy, and shorter lead times, and its 130mm projectile had good explosive power, especially when using thin-walled flak shells. With single-piece ammunition, ready-shell holders which automatically rammed the next round, and platforms for two loaders to stand near the breeches carrying subsequent rounds, it could fire the first three salvoes in relatively quick succession. In actual practice, however, this gun had serious drawbacks. The single-piece 130mm shells were cumbersome and heavy, and especially in mounts with many manual loading stages, like the Type 36 DP mount, rate of fire quickly dropped off in prolonged engagements. To accommodate the long gun and its long shell at high elevations, the trunnions were high above the deck, and at low elevations, so were the breeches. Apparently copying the Dayashinese 12.7cm/40 Type 89, the Type 36 DP mount had platforms for loaders to stand on, and these platforms elevated and lowered along with the breeches, but passing shells to the loaders at low elevations remained a problem. Finally, while the mounts were powered, their traverse rate (8 degrees/second) and elevation rate (12 degrees/second) were too slow to track passing targets at close ranges, and this problem worsened as the Allies introduced newer, faster models of aircraft. Eighty years later, historians and armchair engineers still debate just how serious these compromises were; IMN 130mm AA doctrine accommodated them by emphasizing focused barrages on specific incoming squadrons rather than sustained flak fire, but Menghean ship designers increasingly favored the 100mm L/40 Type 29 Mod D DP gun late in the war. Accounts by surviving gun crews are very rare, and also reach conflicting assessments.
For close-range AA fire, the rebuilt Uljin relied on 12 twin 37.5mm medium AA mounts and 13 single 20mm light AA mounts. Both of these weapons had a feared reputation among Eastern and Western powers alike, especially as the Uljin's Type 41 37.5mm mounts were water-cooled for sustained firing, powered for faster target tracking, and could be controlled by separate directors.
To accommodate these changes, naval engineers made some modifications to the hull. Torpedo bulges not only protected the large, poorly armored boiler and machinery compartments against air-dropped 18" torpedoes, but also increased stability, compensating for the added topweight. The increased beam reduced top speed from 34 knots to 32.6, but the latter figure was still enough to keep up with Menghean aircraft carriers and battleships then in service. The forward torpedo mounts were removed and their cutout area enclosed to add more crew accommodations. One anti-surface director, two high-angle directors, and one torpedo director were added to the superstructure, and the bridge section was entirely rebuilt, retaining only the small conning tower. Interestingly, by adding aft AA mounts and depth charge racks on the stern and requiring a wide open space around the "Y" AA mount, the designers greatly reduced these ships' minelaying capability in favor of escort capability. This reflects a judgment, confirmed in later documents, that by 1941 the IMN was sufficiently hard-pressed to put surface combatants on the front lines that it could no longer divert cruisers and destroyers to minelaying, a major element of prewar doctrine.
Given wartime exigencies, the refit was still much less thorough than it could have been. As discussed above, while fully enclosed and semi-recessed dual-purpose mounts on barbettes would have been better than semi-open mounts with separate ammunition hoists, this would have required much more extensive internal rebuilding than the IMN could afford. The ship's 1922-vintage powerplant, with coal-fired boilers for cruising and oil-fired boilers to boost steam output in sprints, was retained, partly to speed up the refit process and partly because the IMN was already concerned about its future oil supplies. The aft mast's upper section was cut down to leave an open platform, but no radar system was fitted: Menghe lagged far behind in independent radar research, and Dayashina, already feuding with Menghe over the two powers' poor cooperation in the Themiclesian campaign, refused to share its own radar equipment. Rather than wait until an independent radar system could be developed, Menghean naval engineers sent the Uljin back to sea with a radio support mast refitted forward of the aft mast platform and no radar equipment. Even the torpedo bulges were a matter of some contention, only fitted after engineers complained that 18" air-dropped torpedo hits to the unprotected boiler spaces could easily sink the ship. All in all, the refits reflected the increasing atmosphere of urgency in the midwar IMN, which could spare neither the time nor the resources to build an "ideal" anti-aircraft cruiser. Design sketches for a more thorough anti-aircraft Uljin conversion--with eight new oil-fired boilers, trunked funnels, enclosed dual-purpose mounts, 610mm long range torpedoes, and a larger superstructure--can be found tucked away on arcane forums, shared by Menghean nationalists and embellished by armchair admirals, but such designs would not have met the IMN's strategic needs even if they had been funded.