[The 5th ship, which had a Yamato-type hull structure and was commissioned at the final stage when it seemed hopeless that the war situation would turn around, was single-handedly knocking down enemy aircraft that were attacking like a cloud, approaching to a position where it could see the enemy fleet, and making a huge attack. It is built as an air defense battleship that can destroy enemy fleets and enemy transport convoys by firing high-caliber main cannon rounds. She named the ship ``Nyu,'' a place in Okuhida, which was said to be the center of ancient Japan.]
With this in mind, I modified the 1/700 Imperial Japanese Navy "Yamato 1945" and created it to resemble the air defense battleship "Nyu" that appeared in the hypothetical novel "越乃国戦記／Koshi no Kuni Senki."
The main gun, which destroys enemy ships and enemy aircraft formations, is the same 45-caliber 46cm gun as the Yamato class, and is equipped with a total of 12 guns in a quadruple turret, two in the front and one in the rear.
She is not equipped with the triple 60 caliber 15.5cm gun turret that was used as secondary armament until the 4th ship, but in that position, deck defense has been strengthened and two 40 caliber 12.7cm twin high angle guns are installed. It is equipped with 18 turrets of twin 12.7cm high-angle guns, with a total of 36 guns firing flak at enemy aircraft approaching from high altitude.
The anti-aircraft gun did not use the unpopular Vickers 40mm machine gun, but instead used a Type 5 40mm anti-aircraft gun manufactured by the Navy's Toyokawa Arsenal, which was a copy of the Bofors 60 caliber 40mm machine gun captured in the southern battlefields. It has twin turrets, and a total of 36 guns are mounted in 18 turrets. The 40mm cannon fires a barrage at enemy aircraft attacking from an altitude of around 5000m.
The anti-aircraft machine gun is installed as a triple turret with 60 caliber Type 96 25mm machine guns, and with 48 guns and 144 guns, it can spread a barrage on enemy aircraft approaching within 3000m.
It is not equipped with a 13mm machine gun, which has little power against aircraft, and a rocket launcher, which takes up a lot of space and is difficult to reload during combat.
The war ended with His Majesty the Emperor's divine decision on August 15, 1945, but it was canceled due to a coup d'état (Miyagi Incident) by young Imperial Army officers, and the Greater East Asia War continued. All the Japanese in the Japanese Empire become a ball of fire, and they are determined to fight through until the last one dies into a ball of fire.
A decisive battle on the mainland was now inevitable.
The front lines in mainland China completely collapsed, and the Manchurian Empire and the Korean Peninsula, which had been part of Japan, were overrun by Soviet troops.
The southern half of Sakhalin Island and the Kuril Islands, which had been ceded from Russia, were also occupied by the Soviet Union.
Taiwan had already become a strategically worthless territory, and in occupied territories in Southeast Asia where occupation policies were still in place, British Commonwealth forces were accelerating their offensives, and battles to eliminate Japanese were occurring frequently throughout the occupied territories.
The Allied Forces landed in Kagoshima and took control of all of Kyushu, and although they were prevented from invading near the Kanmon Strait by the Homeland Defense Force's bold hand-to-hand attacks, the Defense Force's weapons and ammunition had run out.
It was also impossible to replenish personnel.
Defensive battles only served to intimidate the enemy and give the Japanese people a vain ascension.
The American forces that landed in the Kanto region quickly crushed the resistance of the Homeland Defense Forces in the entire Kanto region, and are now rapidly approaching the new Imperial Headquarters in Matsushiro, Nagano Prefecture, where His Majesty the Emperor has moved to his seat.
The British army, which had landed at Sadogashima and Naoetsu in Niigata Prefecture, was also advancing towards the Imperial Headquarters in Matsushiro.
The Soviet army, which had only occupied the northern part of Hokkaido and was prevented from moving south by the American army, ``forcibly seized Sado Island, which had been occupied by the British army, and made it into a forward base, and then forcibly landed in the northern part of Niigata Prefecture. Aiming to "occupy the Tohoku region on the Sea of Japan side," a convoy of transports and an escort fleet for the amphibious invasion force departed from the ports of Vladivostok and Nakhodka.
"Nyu'' completed construction of the hull, installation of the main turret, and installation of the base of the high-angle turret and anti-aircraft turret at a shipyard in Sasebo City, and was immediately launched.
Work was being hurried to equip the ship with armament and carrier-based equipment in Sasebo Port, but after the Sasebo Air Raid, the ship was moved to Port Arthur to avoid bombing, where it was equipped with anti-aircraft weapons and seaplanes.
She was then moved to Dalian Port to load the accumulated ammunition and carry out detailed work.
Next, she was transferred to the Sea of Japan side of the Korean peninsula, where she loaded the missing ammunition at the wharf in Wonsan and checked the watertight compartment. After boarding the combat personnel, she departed under the cover of dense fog.
After leaving the shore, she entered the route of the British fleet that had landed in Niigata and headed off the coast of Hegura Island, where she held short-term combat training and waited for the order to sortie.
Shortly after 5 p.m. on October 30th, Imperial Headquarters ordered the destruction of a new British fleet approaching the coast of Niigata.
At 9 p.m. on the 30th, ``Nyu'' will be dispatched under the cover of sea fog.
"Nyu'' carefully moves forward at convoy speed while detecting the enemy's radar.
In the evening of the same day, she entered the enemy's convoy route and approached the west coast of Sadogashima, where she spotted a large convoy of about 50 ships off the coast of Washizaki, the northern tip of Sadogashima, on the radio search display, but there were no signals or shots fired. approach.
At 3 a.m. on the following day, November 1st, she burst into the convoy and opened her gun ports.
When they rushed in, they realized that the convoy was not British, but Soviets, but they attacked as enemies to be destroyed.
It was a one-sided artillery battle, and the Soviet convoy was the first battle of "Nyu''.
At dawn on 1 November, with almost no counterattacks hit, only a dozen or so lines of smoke from ships heading off the horizon could be seen, and the surrounding sea surface, visible from the bridge of the "Nyu'', was filled with a large number of destroyed or sinking enemy ships.
After the first battle, "Nyu'' hid its light gray hull in the gray-green bubbling surface of the Japan Sea in late autumn to adjust for distortions and malfunctions in battle, in the Nanatsu Islands, a seven-reef that looks like a group of ghosts off the coast of Wajima City on the Noto Peninsula.
The area between Funakura Island and Nanatsu Island, and in and around Nanatsu Island, was a good hiding place for electronic warfare because of the severe diffuse reflection of radar waves and the appearance of a large number of ghosts on the scope.
However, because of the fast current, it was necessary to constantly adjust the position by steering and moving forward and backward at a slight speed.
If you don't do that, you could be swept away and hit a reef or run aground on a ledge on the seabed.
At midnight on November 5, receiving a warning that an "Enemy fleet appears off the coast of Kaga", "Nyu'' slowly moved southward off the coast of Ishikawa Prefecture at a gradually increasing speed.
Shortly after 2 a.m. on November 5, while she was moving southward at maximum combat speed, she sighted a search plane that was believed to have flown from an enemy aircraft carrier in the moonlight of the half-moon.
In addition to the crests of the waves illuminated by the moonlight, the surface of the sea was faintly shining with luminescent microorganisms as far as the eye could see.
Even though the temperature of the seawater surface was low, the rise and drift of luminescent microorganisms was a strange phenomenon, but it was not just a microorganism, but a sea firefly or a small water mother, and everyone on board on the port side of the "Nyu'' looked at this strange sea surface, thinking that it might be a sea firefly.
It is inevitable that cold-current fish that feed on microscopic organisms that emit light will gather, and it is a good fishing ground where a large catch can be expected, but under the war situation, when air and sea supremacy is being taken away by the enemy, unarmed fishing boats were not allowed to go fishing.
The wake of the " Nyu ", which rushes at full speed, draws a dark gray streak in a straight line, as if cutting through the glowing sea surface, but after about 500 meters, it is returned to the faintly glowing sea as if to close the darkness that has peeked out.
In the night sky, the half-moon and stars are shining, and you can see the sparse shredded clouds that glow white flowing by.
If the weather is heavy and rainy, enemy planes will not attack, but tonight, when the cloud cover is low, they will surely attack in large formations.
Nyu's crew knew that enemy carrier-based aircraft would launch a dangerous night attack that would make it easy for them to lose track of their aircraft and their comrades' positions.
This is because before dawn, the Tanyu will surely catch the enemy convoy off the coast of Kaga within the effective range of its main guns and charge, destroying the enemy task force.
As expected, an hour later, even though it was just before dawn, when the eastern sky was not yet white, the " Nyu " detected a large formation of enemy carrier-based aircraft approaching, relying on enemy radar guidance and moonlight.
The location is off the coast of Akazumi in Shikaura Village.
The distance is 40,000 m, the direction is south-southwest, and the altitude is about 6,000 m.
The three main turrets of the Nyu swirled and exploded, and instead of scattering iron fragments from the shell hulls that shattered when they exploded, the guns of the main guns loaded with Type 3 shells, which scattered burning incendiary shells, were pointed in the direction of the oncoming enemy carrier-based aircraft.
Suddenly, red, blue, green, and yellow lights like fireworks appeared in the sky above Nyu, were swept away by the wind, and then reappeared, repeating the process, making it look like a rainbow at night.
This is the glow of the flares that the enemy search plane, which had come directly above me before I knew it, dropped a series of flares to know the location of " Nyu ".
The nine seaplanes mounted on the rear of the hull, the Zero-type reconnaissance aircraft, the Zero-type observation aircraft, and the Type 2 seaplane, are all ejected from two catapults to intercept the enemy formation.
The task of interception was not to shoot down enemy aircraft, but to disrupt the formation and attack " Nyu " with a single aircraft.
With a distance of 20,000 meters, the quadruple 46 cm gun fires three turrets at the same time with a time difference of 0.5 seconds each.
The seaplane squadron, informed of the firing of the " Nyu ", moves away from the large enemy formation at once.
Thirty seconds after the main gun fired, a total of 12 large fireworks bloomed in the distant sky in front of, above and inside the formation.
In the glow, a swarm of enemy planes can be seen floating up, and several are engulfed in flames.
The main gun fires a salvo at 1-minute intervals, and a large firework envelops the formation at 1-minute intervals.
At the moment when the main gun finished firing three salvos, the 12.7 cm twin high-angle guns on the port side fired a salvo with a breath of " Baroom!"
"Bang, bang, bang! " is fired violently, and the roar of the main gun fire is superimposed on the "thump!".
When the large formation was about to split into small formations and start throwing bullets, the 40mm twin cannons fired a barrage of " Bam, bam, bam, bam!" and a few seconds later, the " Pow pow pow! " and the entire turret of the triple 25mm machine gun burst out like thick Chinese firecrackers, and the " Nyu " was in full combat.
Twin high-angle guns, twin machine guns, and triple machine guns are all placed in turrets covered with 7mm thick steel shields to protect personnel, ammunition, and gun engines from the impact of the main gun's firing, fragments of falling high-angle shells, medium-altitude and long-range gunfire and explosive bombs, and the pressure of a tall column of water collapsing, as well as the impact of horizontal fire from the main gun, which prevents enemy torpedo bombers from entering. And it fires up an anti-aircraft barrage without interruption.
The 46 cm shells of the main gun, such as the armor-piercing shells that had only one salvo left when they were loaded, and the armor-piercing grenades that exploded after penetration, had already been exhausted by the annihilation of the Soviet fleet, and the only shells for an artillery battle with the American battleships were Type 3 shells that did not have penetrating power.
The precious Type 3 ammunition was also rapidly decreasing as it was fired into the large formations of the enemy that appeared one after another.
The same goes for ammunition for high-angle guns, machine guns, and machine guns, and once you've run out of them, there's no way to replenish them.
The same was true for the fuel used for navigation, and even if the current bombing and torpedo attacks were to be carried out, and the ammunition was fired at the rudder and evasion at full speed, and the immediate reversal and evacuation were to be limited to the east coast of Noto Island in Nanao Bay or the western end of Toyama Bay.
If we continued to advance, it would be difficult to destroy enemy battleships and heavy cruisers, but we thought that we would be able to inflict heavy damage on aircraft carriers and convoys.
The " Nyu ", which was advancing while pouring seawater into the empty part of the bunker separated by a pressure-resistant bulkhead, was hit by a large number of torpedoes and bombs, and was moving south to the coast of Senrihama Beach in Hakui District.
It is about 30 km off the coast of Kanazawa City, where the enemy convoy is located.
If you can maintain your speed with only one gun ready to fight, you'll be able to reach the area where the enemy is massing in support of the landings in 30 minutes, and you'll be in a mess with enemy convoys and escort enemy warships.
However, at this point, the Type 3 shell is shot out, and the main shell is completely gone.
...
Ammunition for the high-angle guns was also very low, and even with the number of turrets that could be fired reduced to half, the number of ammunition remaining was enough for an hour of anti-aircraft combat.
Suddenly, the Tanyu stops anti-aircraft combat, turns off all the lights on the ship, eliminates the leakage of light from the ship, and hides the ship's shadow in the moonlit sea.
Then it made a wide arc and retreated to the north.
Just then, the attack by a large formation of enemy carrier-based aircraft was interrupted, and several enemy search planes that were dropping flares were shot down by the aircraft carrying the " Nyu ", and there were no enemy aircraft to monitor the movements of the "Tanyu", and the " Nyu " was lost as if it were melting into the faintly glowing surface of the sea at night.
Damage marks and torpedo holes from the destruction of numerous bombs and torpedoes left the superstructure of the " Nyu " in an abject shape, and the draft came close to the deck.
Nevertheless, Nyu's ability to adjust the damage stopped the increase in flooding by putting out fires, and the pressure of the agency, which was barely maintained by many dedicated efforts, stopped " Nyu " from becoming unnavigable or sinking.
At 7:00 AM on November 5, the ship was cruising around Rokkosaki at the tip of the Noto Peninsula, aiming at the east shore of Noto Island in Nanao Bay or the quay of Nanao Port, which is shallow enough to drop anchor in the sea of Uchiura where the dazzling morning sunrise has calmed down, at the maximum speed of 18 knots.
Already, the increase in flooding from thunderbolt holes was stopped by the closure of many bulkheads, but it was clear that if the sump pump was disabled due to the engine shutdown, it would eventually run aground or sink due to the increased flooding.
Therefore, drifting due to engine shutdown at a deep place should be avoided at all costs, and from the offshore of Suzu city, it is necessary to reach Nanao Port at the slightest speed to obtain new power as soon as possible, or to replenish fuel at the slightest amount to operate the engine and continue drainage to avoid sinking in Nanao Port.
Four hours ago, during a late-night anti-aircraft battle, half of Nyu's anti-aircraft turrets were tilted off their pedestals or destroyed along with their shields, leaving the entire body riddled with bomb and torpedo holes.
However, it barely survived the sinking, and the bridge, chimney, mast, and rear tower were not severely damaged or tilted.
And I was convinced that we were never done with air superiority.
Many a time I saw the formation engulfed in flames by the bursts of Type 3 shells of the main gun, and the thunderbolt, which was trying to get into the torpedo position by the horizontal fire, vanish.
There were 10 bombers that were shattered by anti-aircraft barrages, and enemy aircraft that crashed into the sea and caught on fire while being broken down by machine shells and machine gun shells.
There were not five or six thunderbolts that flew over the bridge and chimney and disappeared into the darkness on the opposite side, with flames blowing from the engines and wings.
I don't know how many of the hordes of incoming enemy aircraft will be able to return to the mothership unscathed and assist in landing and chasing the Nyu in the daytime today, but their damage was presumed to be monumental.
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At 9:30 AM on November 5, the " Nyu " reached Nanao Port and slowly turned its bow toward Toyama Bay and docked at the quay.
When the injured were immediately disembarked and transported to the hospital, the sump pumps, anti-aircraft turrets, and electrical tests continued to operate, replenishing the small amount of fuel collected from the stockpiled oil tanks and fuel tanks of the abandoned ships that had already been exhausted and deemed empty.
Ammunition from anti-aircraft guns, machine guns, and machineguns was replenished into usable turrets, enabling anti-aircraft combat and surface fire on small vessels.
All three of the turrets of the 4 barrage 46 cm artillery were still in good condition, as they were able to eke out a direct hit, but the 46 cm artillery shells were impossible to obtain.
However, the enemy hesitated to enter Toyama Bay because they did not know that the main gun was out of bullets, and they thought that they would not invade Toyama Bay until they completely silenced "Nyu," which still looked combative from a distance.
...... This was supposed to be the case, but on Thursday, November 8, 1945, 1945, at 8:00 AM, the Emperor's message was broadcast on the radio, and the Empire of Japan surrendered unconditionally to the Allied Powers, and the disastrous war came to an end.
