Navistory Asama, Tokiwa (1898) IJN Asama and Tokiwa (常盤) was the second and last Asama-class armored cruiser built abroad for the IJN in the late 1890s. At that stage the achipelago reached enough industrial capacity to build its own from now on. Tokiwa was involved in the Boxer Rebellion and in the heavy action of the … Read more
United Kingdom (1914-22) 7 sub-classes, 28 cruisers The veteran light cruisers The ‘C’ class were called artificially that way by most authors for simplification; This comprised the Caroline class on one hand, and the Calliope, Cambrian, Centaur, Caledon, Ceres, and Carlisle, relatively similar in design, concept, and specifications. They were a wartime “mass-production” class to … Read more
Japanese Navy vs German Navy Introduction: The first air-land-sea battle The battle of Tsingtao was one of these twists of history which seems odd to us today: Both Axis members of WW2, Germany and Japan, were indeed at each other’s throat at Tsingtao, a German-held colony in China twenty years prior. Officially, the attack of … Read more
Petropavlovsk class battleships (1894) Russia (1894) Battleships – Petropavlovsk, Poltava, Sevastopol Victims of the Russo-Japanese war: The Petropavlovsk class also known as the Poltava class, and consisted in three pre-dreadnought battleships ordered for the Imperial Russian Navy. They followed the Imperator Aleksandr II class, 9000 tons ships built in 1885–1891 for the Baltic and armed … Read more
WW2 US destroyers USA (1917-45) 1,224 destroyers, 18 classes The US Navy Destroyers represented the formidable industrial effort consented by the United States to win the war on two oceans. They were versatile and highly standardized, to the point as producing only four wartime classes of 50+ up to 180 ships, the Bensons, Fletcher, Sumner … Read more
Chinese PLAN (1973) 23 ships The Ming class: Last Chinese SSG Type 035B, NATO Ming class, returning from a mission – src histamar.com.ar source The 035B was the last version, an hybridation with the next 039 Song class conventional attack submarines. It could be summarized as the “Chinese Foxtrot”, a late, large mass-production serie of … Read more
WW1 French Escorts France (1893) French ASW warfare during the great war Because of the considerable maritime traffic amount between the British Empire and its colonies, as with the USA, we often forget that many other belligerent nations had a sizeable trade fleet at the start of the war, and that German submarine warfare impacted … Read more
Soviet Navy Stalin’s mighty battleships: In 1938, the final five-year plan, under the express direction of Stalin, included a fleet of 19 ships of the line. Among these were fast battleships to succeed the old dreadnoughts of the Gangut and Imperatritza Maria class. The Sovetsky Soyuz were defined from the authorization of January 21, 1938 … Read more
Bundesmarine (1958-70), 6 ships: Z1 – Z6 The Bundesmarine’s first destroyers: Although the Bundeswehr was integrated into NATO in 1955 and regained sovereignty over its territory, it would take some more years to organize the Bundesmarine in order to operate major units. Until then, the existing ships in service were merely minesweepers. However the drive … Read more
Naniwa, Takachiho White’s first Japanese cruiser: The Naniwa and Takachiho (浪速型防護巡洋艦 Naniwa-gata bōgojun’yōka) were the first Japanese protected cruisers. They were also considered at their completion, the most advanced and powerful cruisers in the world. Since naval industry in Japan was in its infancy, there was no skills available to design, let alone to built … Read more
