[Danelov]

Quote by anthrax:

"Jap battleships, excluding the the Yamato class all faired pretty poorly. Lots of them sank with very few torpedo hits. (Fuso?, Kongo). Kongo class ships were pretty much battle cruisers.

Jap cruisers significatly went over the washington naval treaty limits and couldn't really be compared apples to apples to US cruisers. The japanese tactics put emphasis on night time torp attacks. Japanese cruiser were equiped with up to 16 24" long lance torpedo tubes. However, these torp had their draw backs. With 16 large explosive tubes stored high in the hull. Quite a few japanese cruisers' torpedos cooked off when hit in combat causing large amounts of damage to the midship superstructure.

Japanese ships also tended to emphasis firepower and torpeado load. The Fubiki class DD and the Mogami CL/CAs all had strutural issues becuase of the desire to put the most guns and torps on the lightest hull.

Japanese Fire control fallen behind techonlogical improvements quickly. The US and british made significant advances in fire control over the war. With Radar directed main battery , radar directed AA. In the late war ship to ship fights, it was pretty lopsided."

This IJN BBs were older ships, with the exception of the Yamato class all other classes were builded between 1915(Kongo class),1917 (Fuso class),1918(Ise class),1921(Nagato class).
The battleships or battlecruisers of the Kongo class, inspired by the British proyects, were the more olders ships in the battleline and Hiei was desmilitarized in 1929 following the treatry of Washington.Was latter reactivated , the Kongos were utilised mainly for the escorts of the Carriers divisions ,taking full advantage of his high speed.But despite his age the class performed quite well in WWII:

Admiral Kondo's Kirishima at Guadalcanal in the night of the 14-11-42 and without radar , had gived a hard punishment to the brand new South Dakota, and this one was saved "in extremis" by the BB Washington; the radar of South Dakota had gived little help to avoid the 27 hits of different calibers and the heavy damaged sustained.The South Dakota was send latter to New York for repairs and was 62 days out of service. Not so bad this combat results for a so old battlecruiser like Kirishima fighting two battleships in the same night and without radar.The IJN loss this day the DD Ayanami and the Kirishima,damaged and unable to go out of the combat area before sunrise was finally scuttled at 03.30 hours.The USN loss the DD Walke,DD Preston and the DD Benham.
The Hiei was engaged, damaged and loss the 13-11-42 at the first Battle of Guadalcanal and this old battlecruiser was also finally scuttled by his crew near Savo Island after several air attacks of the planes based at Henderson Field; the IJN loss this night also the DD Yudachi , the USN the CL Atlanta, the DDs Cushing,Monssen ,Aaron Ward and also loss this day by a IJN submarine the CL Juneau.
The Kongo was sunk by the USN submarine Sealion near Formosa(one of the three BBs loss by submarines in WWII)and the last, the Haruna was sunk near Kure in July 1945 after the attack of carrier planes.

Fuso and Yamashiro of Admiral Nishimura were engaged in the Surigao straits battle of the 25-10-44 by very superior forces , Admirals Oldendorff and Kinkaid had six battleships,3 heavy cruisers,,2 light cruisers, 15 destroyers and several squadrons of PT boats.Nishimura had the Fuso,Yamashiro,the heavy cruiser Mogami and 4 destroyers.The desproportion of forces is evident and the work was really easy for the USN, nothing of glorious here.Despite the superiority ,the CA Mogami and the destroyer Shigure survived the battle.Yamashiro had taked in the battle 4 torpedos and hundert of hits of the Battleships, Cruisers of the USN and sank with ViceAdmiral Nishimura and Counteradmiral Shinoda at the 04.19.Fuso was hit by two torpedos and also several artillery hits and sunk at 03.38.In this battle the USN force launch 122 torpedos and more of 4500 shells of 406,356,203 and 152mm.This one was the last battle between battleships in the history.

Washington and London Naval Treaty were violated many times and not only by the IJN , the Kriegsmarine with the Pocket battleships for example, the Bismarck class, and also for the USN , the ships were near of the estipulated weight as new , but after sometime in service,and with the reinforcement of AAA and others were out of the fixed numbers.

Yes, there were structural problems ,specially in early designs and wartime emergency transformations, but the IJN was forced to assume this risk under the pressure of the war situation.This situation was also finded in other beligerants ; German ships for example ,had chronical problem of lost the stern after damage by torpedos or hits( Prinz Eugen,Lutzow, Bismarck had lost the stern near the surface in the sinking process, Graf Spee sunk in one piece, minus stern,etc.