Editing Imperial Japanese Equipment (section)

=== Destroyers ===

Japanese destroyer construction after the Washington Naval Treaty emphasized fleet destroyers as a way to bulk out their navy while appearing to conform to the treaty.  A series of classes were developed in the 20's and 30's but all were produced in small batches of no more than a couple dozen each.  The IJN never settled on a common design for mass production like the USN did with the Fletcher. Throughout the 30's they had the A design, which was for general fleet support, the B design which was for carrier escort and AA, and the C class which would support battlefleets with torpedoes and cannons.

* '''Fubuki''': A class of Destroyers were developed as a direct response to the Washington Naval treaty. They earned the Fubuki nickname long after they had been built. In short, they were designed to bring heavy dakka to the furthest possible distance as quickly as possible, with the heaviest armor they could get away with. They carried a whopping nine 24" torpedoes as well as some 5" cannons and some mgs, with the 5" cannons acting as AA guns as well as anti-ship weapons. 24 were built throughout the class, with only two surviving the war.
** The Type II subclass were generally considered decent for their armament, but the Type III subclass had better power efficiency. The first ten ships were the Type I class and were particularly bad, though later ships improved on these flaws. Overall the Type III was preferred and many of the improvements found on them were given to the Type II class of ships.
** The Fubukis suffered from being too light in weight and AA armament: the entire class had to have rebuilds to make them better at sea performance, and later in the war those lack of AA weapons bit them in the ass hard: it became so desperate that the rear primary turret was replaced with 25mm aa guns. However, they still served well in spite of these flaws, and was the class of ship responsible for stranding JFK at sea.
* '''Shimakaze''': A planned class of destroyers that roughly fills the "C-class" of destroyers starting and ending with the namesake Shimakaze. The Shimakaze needed to be as fast as greased lightning and were armed with three 5" dual purpose cannons and three quintuple torpedo launchers using the infamous Type 93 long range torpedoes. Anti-aircraft guns...well, they were there, just not in quantity. The class was considered too expensive for general production, and Shimakaze herself saw very limited service in the war until being sunk while escorting some troop transports.