I’m gonna try to answer to every one on those two first design.
First of all i’ve design those ships quite a long time ago (december 2013). I’m always delaying to post my designs cause i’m waiting to draw everything. For this particular case, i wanted to design all the ships in the list and post them all. This quite a silly attitude, which conduct me to post very few of my drawings ; you can’t imagine how many png are rusting in my hard disc (some with design much « weirder » than those two).
All this to say that some time it’s a bit hard for me to remember the reason i draw a part in a way and not an other.
Second, it seems that i need to precise that this topic is about an imaginary iranian strong navy, not about which was the best light cruiser design in late 30’s/early 40’s…………………….
In this AU Rezā Shāh Pahlavi (maybe a bit megalomaniac) want’s to build a strong navy and find himself with enought funds to do so.
The iranian choose to order two light cruiser and three oilers/auxiliary cruiser from japan.
For the oiler the only problem seems to be the weapons on sponsons.
Or maybe the cruiser catched most of the attention…………………:-)
On the cruiser then.
A bit of history of it’s design :
I started it as reduced version of the Oyodo. To be precise, in the au, the Oyodo is an enlarged version of the first design the japanese proposed for the iranian ship. The iranians finaly asked to have a more classic arangement with a turret in front and the other in the back.
here is a fast "3D sketch" of the initial design done from a Oyodo view.
SO many of my design decision were influenced by this ship.
Let’s check the catapult :
Yes the Kawanishi (4,100 kg full loaded) is significantly heavier than the walrus (3,265 kg full loaded). But i admit that the shape of those aircraft may be confusing.Maybe that’s why the japanese plane require a so huge catapult. If you check at the two drawings of the Oyodo in the bucket (1943 and 1944) you can see that the catapult was changed when the ship stopped using the initial floatplane.
The armor was also inspired by the Oyodo ; on the japanese ship it stops just in front of the forward turret and go’s far at the rear.
i guessed it was to protect airplane fuel tank or anything else required by the aircraft.
For the sponsons, i suspected since the begining that there was a misunderstanding…..
On the oiler it’s really full one, but on the cruiser only a small portion of the turrets is leanning on it.
here is a sketch of the final version done from a oyodo plan, with a japanese 127mm mount which is just a bit wider than mine.
But maybe the the way i draw it is confusing, and make them seems more massive than they should.
For the rigging, i think i don’t understand exactly the problem.
When i check different design of several size in the bucket (japanese CA- furutaka, DD samidare, french savona de brazza for exemple) it’s look to me that mine is just more curved. But i think i had noticed the problem with the crane, and j should fix it.
As a conclusion for in my AU i don't look for the best but for something realistic (almost.....
.
So if a ship is not more silly than something that existed, it's ok.