Materials of IJN (Explanation Notes - Vessels)

Explanation Notes Vessels

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Who is on the list ? Specification Career Drawing Index

Who is on the list ?

The list contains:

all of Imperial Japanese Warships from 1868 to 1945.
some of important merchant ships hired by Navy.
except harbour service craft.

Regarding to motor torpedo boats (and motor gunboats), I couldn't assemble their complete list.

Specification

When there's no special note, it represents specification of her completion. If the specification was drastically modified, only the modified part is shown with the date.

Displacement: tons followed by light / standard / normal / trial / full load. If no designation follows, it means unknown status. In case of submarine, surface / submerged follows instead.

Length: metres followed by pp (between perpendicular) / wl (waterline) / oa (overall).

Width: metres at widest point of hull.

Draught: metres in mean draught.

Machinery: number of shafts, which kind of machinery, and number of boilers if applicable, and horse power followed by shp (shaft HP) / bhp (brake HP) / ihp (indicated HP).

Fuel: kind and amount of fuels in full load.

Speed: max speed at plan in knots.

Range: duration in nautical miles followed by slash (/) and speed.

Armour: thickness in millimetres at each part. "min-max" means maximum and minimum.

Armament: represents the kind of armament and amount of it. Type was omitted usually. (2x3) means she has 3 turrets, twin mount each.

Complement: it can be increased in the wartime.

Name: translated to latin character from original kanji name using the Hepburn system. It cannot be completely accurate. If she was not named with specific name (ie. numbered), it was represented as abbreviation.

Builder: Naval yard or shipbuilding company and yard name. In case of foreign company, country abbreviation (see table) is placed before company name.

Laid down / Launched: date in form of "year.month.date".
"?" means date unknown although Laid down / Launch was made.
"-" means Laid down / Launch was not made.

Complete: form like as previous item. It means the date she become in service.

Fate: "Sunk" means lost in battle action.
"Lost" means lost by other reason for example accident, collision etc.
Reclassification was represented with abbreviation (see table).
"disc" means 'discarded from pennant list'.
"BU" indicates 'broken up'.
In some cases, reason and point of loss follows. Lattitude and longitude in barckets. About the reason, 'action' means lost by engagement with surface ships, or coastal batteries etc.

Former name: If she was acquired from foreign country (as in prize, or bought), former name was shown in latin character (kyril character would be translated). Country abbreviation (see table) is placed before name.

Drawing: The sideview-drawings are almost by courtesy of Mr.Tensho. Basically, 1pixel means 1 metre (in some small vessels, 2pixel = 1m).

Index: Listed as her name, type, launched year, and class, in sequence of name. If same name, she was launched earlier, listed earlier.

Copyright © Hiroshi Nishida (Misohito), 2001.