Naginata Destroyer/profile

## Overview

Naginata Destroyer（Naginata class Destroyer/Japanese:"薙刀"[なぎなた]/Chinese:“薙刀”[Tì Dāo]）

Designation:Naval supremacy/anti-sub vessel

National Origin: Empire of the Rising Sun (EoRS)

Designer: Shirada Shipworks/ Tenzai Robotics

Manufacturer: Nagasaki shipyard/ Yokosuka Machinery Manufacturing Institute/ Maizuru Shipbuilding Office/ Kure Navy Factory

Mass-Produced at: Imperial Docks

Key Features:

>>Quadruple "Shinya" Type16 61 cmThermal Power Self-guiding Torpedo Launcher

>>Quintuple Type-S 75cm Unguided Oxygen Torpedo Launcher at the bow

>>"Yoritomo" Type18 8.8 cm Semi-autoi AP Cannon

>>Medium nano-reinforced armor belt

>>Ship body painting that focus on propaganda of torpedo warfare

## Background

Before the beginning of the "Millennium war" which redivided the world, the special geographical form of Empire of the Rising Sun determined that its navy had only one strategic opponent in principle - the navy of the Edenia and other allies in the Pacific and near Oceania. Of course, as early as the great navigation period, the EoRS, who grew up with Celestial Empire, was the loyal cooperator of the former, and most of the enemies they faced came from these two directions. However, at that time, the navy of edenia had not been able to sail to the other side of the ocean, and the forces of European civilization who had also sailed to South and Southeast Asia had not figured out how to get along with the Celestial.

Then, the world entered modern times: the Renaissance and the industrial revolution were proceeding in the same pace but with different contents in the East and the West; the European war came and went in a hurry, leading the pace of industrialization and globalization; The Russia became Soviet Russia and embarked on a new road; Western civilization has formed the alliance and figured out how to divide the world like dividing a cake. As time goes into the modern era of globalization, Celestial deep influence on the Rising Sun shows an irresistible trend under the capital flow. However, in the era of the protagonists in this article, the Navy of the Rising Sun is more concerned about the security of their territory in Australia and the stability of Celestial Pacific island chain.

With the emergence of the new generation of edenian light destroyers in the war with other factions, this amphibious destroyer with unknown code name makes the Imperial Navy even more dwarfed in the arms race in the Pacific Ocean and the sea conflict in Oceania, especially the combat efficiency of the torpedo squadron equipped with the previous generation of destroyers is obviously lagging behind. In response, the ship administration headquarters of the Imperial Navy immediately launched a new round of Destroyer design plan in advance, and the product of this plan is the Naginata class destroyer.

As the inheritor of the concept of torpedo strike operation of the Imperial Navy, the Naginata class destroyer continues the design idea of heavy torpedo equipment of Minekaze class destroyer. In the planned projects, they are required to have higher torpedo strike ability than the Minekaze class. But, the ship administration headquarter only vaguely stipulated the "efficiency" rather than the specific requirements of torpedo armament configuration. As a result, The designer from Shirada Shipyard chose to carry a new quadruple Shinya type-X 61 cm torpedo launcher for the Naginata. The design performance of the new launcher is much better than that of the Three Double 61 cm torpedo launcher used in the Minekaze class. Even two launch tubes cutted down, its principle is more in line with the great progress of Imperial Navy's Torpedo strike tactics, that is, from "single round, large sector" strike to "multi round, multi step" strike.

Different from the Minekaze Class that can only use the simple reload system to reload torpedoes after firing six torpedoes in a single round of attack, the Shinya type X has a special rapid reload system, which can reload torpedoes by itself with high efficiency, which effectively improves the attacking efficiency and survivability of the Naginata class destroyer in actual combat. In order to protect the exposed quadruple torpedo launcher on the deck, the Naginata also has an independent armor plate, which greatly reduces the damage probability of the torpedo launcher in fierce combat.

In addition, the bow of Naginata class is also equipped with a five unit S-type oxygen torpedo launcher, which is used to further strengthen the already unimaginable torpedo armament. Due to the limitation of bow space, these torpedo launchers are not equipped with fast reloading equipment; once launched, their reloading speed is extremely slow - even with hydraulic auxiliary equipment, it is still a nightmare for the crew to continuously load five super heavy torpedoes with a weight of 3.3 tons in turbulence.

According to the plan of Imperial Navy, once the decisive battle of the fleet begins, the Yari mini submarine cruising on the front line will launch all its light torpedoes at the enemy's screen warship, and then immediately launch a "Kaiten" assault on the enemy's high-value targets. Therefore, the destroyers on the second line will have a wide range of fire, so they don't have to worry about mistaking friendly forces, or they don't have to worry that friendly forces will block the torpedoes launched by them and lead to insufficient torpedo strike density. At this time, the destroyer with forward bow can launch S-type oxygen torpedoes at the same time to destroy the opponent's formation, and then turn the rudder obliquely for 30-45 degrees. On the premise of giving full play to the combat power of its own 61cm quadruple torpedoes, the destroyer can also ensure the wide firing range of naval guns and the minimum exposure area to the enemy. Such a wave of attacks is enough to completely destroy these screen ships beyond the range of enemy destroyers and cruisers, creating favorable conditions for the incoming final decisive battle between the main fleets.

Even though missiles have occupied most of the armaments, the Imperial designers are still infatuated with the theory of torpedo strike operations, but this does not mean that they are simple, rude and wishful fanatics. The main designer, major shipbuilding general Fujimoto , completely abandoned the 12 cm destroyer gun that had been improved and used by Imperial Navy for more than ten years, and the depth charge projector was replaced by the torpedoes with anti submarine function The surplus weight was replaced by solid nano reinforced armor plate, which was arranged in the core areas such as boiler cabin, bridge, combat intelligence office, ammunition depot, etc. These special armor plates with superior impact resistance and penetration resistance ensure that the Naginata class destroyer ranks the first in water surface protection among the newest destroyers of various countries.

However, accordingly, the naginata destroyer symbolically installed a "Yoritomo" 8.8 cm AP naval gun as the main gun to supplement the sea fire and support the shore fire. This degenerative choice is not only to make way for torpedo armed and armored protection, but also contains a painful reflection on the "Chidori incident". In the theoretical calculation, even if the 10 cm gun is installed, the center of gravity of the naginata class destroyer will be far higher than the acceptable range, and the designers even suspect that this destroyer will capsize on the way to install the equipment. In order to make the naginata come out smoothly, Shirada shipwork, which is responsible for the design, has to turn to Tenzai robotics again, hoping to design a lighter turret and ammunition feeding mechanism through them.

Different from the cooperation in armor structure design, the main gun design was not within the coordination scope of the Imperial Navy. Tenzai offered a high price that Shirada could not accept. However, with the approaching of the deadline set by the Navy, Shirada Shipwork finally had to retreat humiliatingly and buy the production permission of "yoritomo" 8.8 cm AP cannon at a high price. The most puzzling thing is that in order to reduce the weight of the upper layer as much as possible, the turret of the 8.8 cm main gun even abandoned the automatic loading system. However, this lazy move "deserved" the acquiescence of the high-level of the Imperial Navy. After all, in the eyes the navy, there is no difference between the main gun and the auxiliary gun of the destroyer; the target that the naginata class destroyer can achieve really exceeds the requirements of the Navy Department, thus covering up a series of defects, including the high cost.

Doubtlessly, apart from Tenzai, the cooperation with other companies is quite pleasant: in order to make the advanced naginata class destroyer have the matching mobility, Shirada Shipwork chose four gas turbine engines with a total output power of 72000 shaft horsepower from Kawasaki Heavy Industry to drive the two five blade variable pitch screws on the two shafts Propeller, which allows this destroyer to have a high speed of at least 34 knots.

As one of the core equipment, the "Shinya" Type16 self-guiding torpedo is also a masterpiece of Imperial Navy in torpedo. In addition to a maximum speed of more than 60 knots and a range of 40 km, its compound guidance mode is also advanced. The combination of active / passive acoustic homing mode and wake guidance can minimize the possibility of the target ship escaping from them. The warhead of more than 550 kg also ensures its terrible damage ability. If the edenian Navy used 533 mm torpedoes which blowed up the retired destroyer into two sections in the anti sinking test is shocking enough, then this Type16 torpedoes with nearly three times more charges are invincible. Some retired crew members claim to have witnessed it "lifted" a cruiser as a target ship out of the sea , which was then broken into two sections, sank completely within a few seconds.

After the Naginata class destroyer was put into service, it quickly won the praise of the Imperial Navy by virtue of its excellent seaworthiness and fierce torpedo armament. They keep the highest speed record of large and medium-sized ships - the destroyer "Shimakaze" with improved propeller ran an amazing speed of 37.4 knots in the sea trial, even if it was not fully loaded at that time. Because they repeatedly won by surprise with long-range torpedoes in the exercises, and "sank" warships that were far more powerful than themselves, many officers and soldiers even thought that they could replace the extremely low practicability 8.8 cm gun with anti-air firepower, and all the anti-ship tasks were handed over to the powerful torpedo system.

However, at least in the eyes of the Imperial Navy, the Naginata class destroyer is already a "perfect destroyer" that reflects their own characteristics, and is enough to complete most combat tasks.

## Notes from the Field

Battlefield reconnaissance has revealed at least these facts about the Naginata Destroyer:

**Nine Blades Polearm** - Naginata class destroyers are equipped with nine torpedo tubes and a terrible number of torpedo reserves. These long-range and powerful torpedoes can severely damage most warships, and a considerable number of torpedoes have quite flexible guidance capabilities.

**Multi-Purpose Torpedoes** - Although not equipped with special anti-sub weapons, the naginata class destroyer can still find underwater targets and attack them with torpedoes by relying on its own universal sonar system. The 61cm and 75cm heavy torpedoes with huge explosion power can pose a very serious threat to the enhanced double hull of the Akula class attack submarine of the Red Navy.

**Heavy Assault** - The engineer equipped the naginata with nano reinforced armor plate which had never been used on the destroyer. With its high-power engine, the razor can launch a fierce charge at the risk of incoming fire and seize the most favorable torpedo firing position while disrupting the opponent's formation.

**Weak Cannon** - Although as a warship, the naginata class destroyer is still equipped with surface weapons, even the simplified 8.8 cm naval gun without air search equipment and automatic loader is not a practical weapon in any sense.

## Trivia

This profile refers to the Chidori incident, which corresponds to the Tomozuru incident in the real world on 12 March 1934. Tomozuru is the third Chidori class torpedo boat. In this incident, she capsized and inverted by bad sea conditions and design errors.

The predecessor of Naginata Class Destroyer is Minekaze Class. In reality, there are warships of the same name.

Shimakaze, the destroyer in this article keeps the speed record, keep this record in reality too.

"Shinya" torpedo and "Yoritomo" cannon appear in vanilla RA3, but they doesn't called type16 and type18 at that time. Maybe we can get some information about the year through these two numbers. Suppose 16 and 18 here refer to Jimmu 2616 and 2618, corresponding to 1956 and 1958 AD.

## See Also

Tomozuru Incident

Minekaze Class Destroyer (Reality)

Shimakaze the Destroyer (Reality)

## Notes

This article is an unofficial translated article.