Eight-eight Fleet - Second "Eight-Eight Fleet"

Second "Eight-Eight Fleet"

So great was the difference in capability between this generation of ships and those of five years previously that the "Eight-Eight Fleet" plan was restarted: Nagato was now regarded as Ship No.1 in the new project, and planners now began to write off the older battleships and battlecruisers. On this revised basis the Navy was back down to a "Four-Four Fleet".

A further impetus to achieve the Eight-Eight Fleet ideal came from an additional expansion of the U.S. Navy under American President Woodrow Wilson's 1919 plan to build another set of 16 capital ships (on top of the 16 already authorized in 1916). In 1920, under Prime Minister Hara Takashi, a reluctant Diet was persuaded to accept a plan to bring the "Four-Four" set of modern ships up to "Eight-Eight" strength by 1927. This would have involved augmenting the Amagi battlecruisers with an additional four fast battleships of the new Kii class, which were marginally slower and more powerful. A further four battleships No. 13-16 would have been built, with 18-inch guns. If completed, this would have been an "Eight-Eight Fleet" in full; if one included the oldest ships of the navy, the Fuso and Kongō classes, then the even higher goal of an "Eight-Eight-Eight Fleet" with not two but three eight-ship battle squadrons could be realized.