Talk:Torpedo cruiser

Title with "Heavy" is dubious

I don't speak or read Japanese so I can't review the primary sources on this, but the title of "Heavy torpedo cruiser" and therefore the name of this page is dubious. In fact, this page is the only place I've come across it so far. Unless this was an official Japanese designation used in primary documents the title of the page should be changed.

The most obvious problem is that these aren't "heavy" cruisers. These were light cruisers in every sense of the term, converted from a single type of IJN cruiser. It was an experiment that was abandoned within a year. Heavy cruisers were a result of the Washinton and London naval treaties and had general characteristics of ~8" main armament and something approaching 10,000 tons displacement. Light cruisers by definition in the London Treaty had guns of 6.1" or less. (Japan converted its Mogami class cruisers into heavy cruisers by swapping out the 6" turrets with 8" turrets.) Other general characteristics are thickness of the armor belt. Each nation's heavy cruisers typically had thicker armor than the light cruisers as they were intended to be protected from light caliber shells. The subject of this page, IJN's torpedo cruisers of the Kuma class, fail to satisfy any of these categorizations as heavy.

The proper term appears to be "Torpedo cruisers." Adding "Heavy" seems redundant and confusing. A large portion of this sub classes light cruiser armament was removed to allow the retrofit to primarily torpedo armed cruiser. They were to form a torpedo cruiser squadron whose primary role was a barrage of torpedoes rather than gunfire. Red Harvest (talk) 19:33, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

The "heavy" adjective should refer to the torpedoes, which were called "重雷" (jūrai, heavy torpedo) in Japanese, and not the actual cruiser. The Japanese name 重雷装巡洋艦 literally means "cruiser which has been fitted with heavy torpedoes", or in the original word ordering, "heavy torpedo (重雷) fitted (装) cruiser (巡洋艦)". That said, I've moved the page to "torpedo cruiser" for the time being. --benlisquare_T•C•E 21:59, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for the explanation and the page name change. I suspected that this would prove to be as you have explained. There is no disagreement about this being a heavy torpedo fitted cruiser. The "fitted" term is the piece that was missing. Since torpedo cruisers were a Japanese innovation peculiar to these vessels and a particular point in time, it would make sense to explain this translation in the introduction paragraph of the page, much as you have explained it to me here. (Also, I've seen mention that four of the old light cruisers were originally proposed for conversion to torpedo cruisers, perhaps as early as 1934, but that agreement could only be obtained to convert two.) If you like, it might also make sense to create redirects to this page for "heavy torpedo cruiser" and "heavy torpedo fitted cruiser." Red Harvest (talk) 10:40, 6 February 2014 (UTC)