The Kongô Class Battleship of the Imperial Japanese Navy: Volume 3 - Kongô Technical and Historical Development 1913 to 1944, Full color Edition Paperback – December 15, 2022

If you have ever looked at a Japanese battleship and wondered which one this is – this is your book. If you looked at a Japanese battleship and could not figure out why it looked so different than other photo of the same ship, how it got there, and what year the photo was taken – this is your book. If you looked at a Japanese battleship and wondered what all the different equipment on her pagoda mast is and what are their functions – this is your book.This book is a detailed illustrated construction history of the battlecruiser/battleship Kongô. Included in the book are the detailed modifications she went through in her twenty-eight years of service: when she was first completed as a battlecruiser in 1913, when she was reconstructed and reclassified as a battleship in 1931, a fast battleship in 1936, and before she was finally sunk in 1944.Although the general modification/reconstruction of this ship has been covered in other publications, this is the first book that attempts to cover all seventeen major and minor modifications in detail, many of which have never been documented. Each modification is illustrated with a detailed line drawing which is notated, and the rationale for the overall changes during each period is summarized. The drawings are accompanied by the best period photographs available of the ship, and drawings that show the documented features added and/or changed during that period.With this book, the reader will obtain a clear detailed view of how her superstructure such as her pagoda bridge evolved. How her masts, armament, control instruments such as rangefinders, directors, searchlights, communications equipment, aircraft, and engine/funnel arrangements were upgraded throughout her life, and the rationale for these changes.This was only possible due to details obtained from research using extensive English and Japanese published data, and careful examination of approximately 1,800 images/drawings of this ship collected through a period of fifty years. This information will be very useful for ship identification, photograph date determination, model building, and for historians to understand changes made to the ship and the rationale for these changes.Also covered are the anti-torpedo boat guns and anti-aircraft guns that the ship was equipped with during her career, as the importance of protection against torpedo boats and attacking aircraft became evident. The renderings, from highly detailed models and perspective technical drawings were produced with information accumulated from 30 years of painstaking research and reproduced using Autodesk’s commercial software 3DS Max. Read more