IJN Ise Battleship - Carrier hybrid.
Added 2024-04-01 20:18:52 +0000 UTCFirstly yes this is real not a fictional ship.
Someone was crazy enough to actually build this!
IJN Ise was built as a conventional battleship boasting 12x 14 inch guns and 16x 5.5 inch secondaries. Situated in 3 groups of two turrets located two at the bow, two mid-ship and two at the stern of the ship.
After the battle of midway and the loss of most of the Japaneese navel carrier fleet, japan was desperate to replace that loss of navel airpower and began to refit existing ships with catapult aircraft. Some like the Mogami and Tone could launch a hand fullof aircraft at a time.
However the largest of the conversions was made to Ise. The 5th and 6th turrets were removed and the entire stern section of the ship rebuilt with a twin catapult launch system on either side of the rear mast tower. Behind that a huge hangar to house up to 22 aircraft with 9 of those situated on top the hangar on a makeshift flight deck. All aircraft were launched by the catapults and retrieved floating on the water rather than taking off and landing on the deck as it was far to short for conventional landing.
The ship also had it's secondary armaments removed in favour of housing additional anti air defences. The four remaining 14 inch guns were left operational to perform long range artillery battles while the aircraft could provide additional annoyance from above.
Having a ship the size of an actual aircraft carrier while only amounting to a quarter of it's aircraft capacity at a time when carriers were becoming the dominant navel force made this a costly gamble.
I love ship as it is so unique and unusual. Something straight out of a sci-fi story only this actually made it past lines on a piece of paper.
I acquired this 3D model from online and proceeded to make it animation ready. Rigging all the usual moving parts from the main guns to the propeller, rudder and all the aircraft.
Rendered in Blender 3.6.4
This ship may appear in future projects.
