Design
The design of Naniwa and Takachiho was based on a steel hull with high freeboard to increase seaworthiness. Compared with Izumi, the armor was stronger and the coal bunkers formed an additional shield around critical areas. The hull was split into multiple watertight compartments, with a double bottom. Both ships were equipped with naval rams as was standard for the time.
Propulsion was by two horizontal two-cylinder double expansion steam engines, with six cylindrical boilers, which provided for a design speed of 18 knots.
As built, her main armament initially consisted of two 260 mm (10 in) L/35 Krupp cannons mounted individually on rotating platforms in the bow and stern, with a supply of 200 rounds per gun. Secondary armament was initially six 150 mm (5.9 in) L/35 Krupp cannons mounted in semi-circular sponsons on the main deck, with 450 rounds per gun. Light armament included six QF 6 pounder Hotchkiss guns, ten 1-inch Nordenfelt guns and four 11-mm, 10-barrel Nordenfelt guns. In addition, there were four 356 mm (14.0 in) Whitehead torpedo tubes mounted on the main deck. After the First Sino-Japanese War, both Naniwa and Takachiho were re-armed with eight Elswick QF 6 inch /40 naval guns in order to increase stability and standardize on ammunition for the fleet.
Read more about this topic: Japanese Cruiser Naniwa
Famous quotes containing the word design:
“Humility is often only the putting on of a submissiveness by which men hope to bring other people to submit to them; it is a more calculated sort of pride, which debases itself with a design of being exalted; and though this vice transform itself into a thousand several shapes, yet the disguise is never more effectual nor more capable of deceiving the world than when concealed under a form of humility.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)
“The reason American cars don’t sell anymore is that they have forgotten how to design the American Dream. What does it matter if you buy a car today or six months from now, because cars are not beautiful. That’s why the American auto industry is in trouble: no design, no desire.”
—Karl Lagerfeld (b. 1938)
“If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life ... for fear that I should get some of his good done to me,—some of its virus mingled with my blood.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)