Criticism
This class is seen by naval architects as trying to fit a quart into a pint pot. The IJN's Naval staff insisted that each new class be superior to anything else in its category, this placed an enormous burden on Japanese naval constructors and the difficulties with these ships have to be seen in this light.
The initial construction was extremely light in order to comply with the naval treaties and had to be remedied. When the Royal Navy's Director of Naval Construction (DNC) was told about these ships, by British Naval Intelligence quoting the public displacement figure, he replied that the capabilities quoted could not be achieved on this displacement and that "they must be building their ships out of cardboard or lying".
Though the placement of Turret #3 improved its firing arc, and though the class had the stability problems fixed (the preceding Takao-class cruisers were considered too top-heavy), the Mogamis are generally not considered an improvement over the Takaos. Nonetheless, the follow-up Tone-class retained many aspects of the Mogami-class design. However, the Tones were intended for a different purpose with all of their main armament forward, so their stern could accommodate extra floatplanes.
Read more about this topic: Mogami Class Cruiser
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“The aim of all commentary on art now should be to make works of art—and, by analogy, our own experience—more, rather than less, real to us. The function of criticism should be to show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to show what it means.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“As far as criticism is concerned, we don’t resent that unless it is absolutely biased, as it is in most cases.”
—John Vorster (1915–1983)
“I am opposed to writing about the private lives of living authors and psychoanalyzing them while they are alive. Criticism is getting all mixed up with a combination of the Junior F.B.I.- men, discards from Freud and Jung and a sort of Columnist peep- hole and missing laundry list school.... Every young English professor sees gold in them dirty sheets now. Imagine what they can do with the soiled sheets of four legal beds by the same writer and you can see why their tongues are slavering.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)