Number 13-class battleship
Right elevation line drawing of the design for the Number 13 class
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| Class overview | |
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| Operators: |
 Imperial Japanese Navy
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| Preceded by: | Kii class |
| Succeeded by: | Yamato class |
| Planned: | 4 |
| Cancelled: | 4 |
| General characteristics | |
| Type: | Fast battleship |
| Displacement: | 47,500 tonnes (46,700 long tons) (normal) |
| Length: | 274.4 m (900 ft 3 in) |
| Beam: | 30.8 m (101 ft 1 in) |
| Draft: | 9.8 m (32 ft 2 in) |
| Installed power: |
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| Propulsion: |
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| Speed: | 30 knots (56 km/h; 35 mph) |
| Armament: |
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| Armor: |
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The Number 13-class battleship was a planned class of four fast battleships to be built for the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) during the 1920s. The ships never received any names, being known only as Numbers 13–16. They were intended to reinforce Japan's "eight-eight fleet" of eight battleships and eight battlecruisers after the United States announced a major naval construction program in 1919. The Number 13 class was designed to be superior to all other existing battleships, planned or building. After the signing of the Washington Naval Treaty in 1922, they were cancelled in November 1923 before construction could begin.
By 1918, the Navy had gained approval for an "eight-six" fleet, all ships under eight years old. However, having four large battleships and four battlecruisers on order put an enormous financial strain on Japan, which was spending about a third of its national budget on the Navy. Despite this, the IJN gained approval of the "eight-eight-eight" plan in 1920 after American President Woodrow Wilson announced plans in 1919 to re-initiate the 1916 plan for ten additional battleships and six battlecruisers. The Japanese response required the construction of eight additional fast battleships in the Kii and the Number 13 classes.
When designing the latter class, the Japanese followed the doctrine that they had used since the First Sino-Japanese War of 1894–95 of compensating for quantitative inferiority with qualitative superiority. In the words of naval historian Siegfried Breyer, "had [the ships] been completed, they would have been the world's largest and most powerful battleships. Their gun calibre alone would have caused a new and more intensive naval arms race. From an engineering aspect they were more than ten years ahead of their time because they anticipated the characteristics of the fully developed, fast battleship."Naval architects William Garzke and Robert Dulin concur saying, "These ships would have completely outclassed any European battleship".
The Number 13 class was designed by Captain Yuzuru Hiraga, the naval architect responsible for most of the previous Japanese capital ships. The ships were based on his previous Kii-class battleship and Amagi-class battlecruiser designs, enlarged to take 457-millimeter (18.0 in) guns.
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Wikipedia