The Japanese needed AA escorts for the big carriers and battleships. The larger Agano CLA were fine but the Japanese needed something smaller that could be mass produced with the facilities at hand.
The original drawing, shown above, shows a long, lean destroyer with good AA armament but poor torpedo armament. One set of four 24" torpedoes with four reloads were fine, but the length of time taken to reload the tubes in the midst of a battle really made that option unreliable at best. The action would be over before that evolution could be completed. My thoughts, to be implemented below, is that two sets of torpedoes without reloads would be more beneficial. The rest of the armament would be kept standard. Moved the boats around, raised the funnel, joined the B turret mounting to the bridge which allowed for a pair of twin 25mm mountings to be fitted there.
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A small aside: while I have done all the cruisers, battleships, battlecruisers and started on the destroyers, the one thing I have noticed is the small number of searchlights on these ships. The Japanese were supposed to have been very good at night fighting, which as far as I know means to sneak up on your enemy, highlight him with searchlights then shoot the shit out of him, and torpedo the remains. Or with the Japanese, torpedo them, then finish them off with gunfire. Either way I would have expected more searchlights on the cruisers and destroyers. I have added extras to the various classes when and if I have redrawn them.
