R/C Naval Combat

AOBA is a single rudder. She had a very narrow stern. We knew the larger cruisers may have used dual rudders such as Mogami due to the broader stern beam. Stern is only large enough to acomodate a single rudder. If you put dual rudders on that cruiser your going to roll it over pretty hard in a turn.

I'll research to try and get further info Jay.

By the looks of this I say it's a single rudder ship.

Here are other images. Keep an eye on this guys build Jay. He will have the rudder location render soon.



Uploaded with ImageShack.us

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

Thanks Curt,
nice looking model.
This definately looks like a single, but I think the build depends on the plans used, Crzyhawk has seen a book that says one but Rob C here in town has plans that show 2.
Where did you find the 3D renderings? Those are awesome!
J

The Japanese plans from Japan show 2 rudders. The MWC list has it with 2, but from what the history is, it can be built either way, it started with 1, and was later rebuilt with 2. Some of the MWC people researched it, had drawings and pictures from what I understand. Lou, who is on here at times was one of the fellows who researched it, he was doing a Cleveland build last year may still have some of the info on it.

I have not seen any of the documentation myself. The Aoba and Kinugasa had different steering gear than all the rest of the Jap cruisers. All the rest used hydraulic rams turing the rudders, kind of like our linkage steering. The Aoba used electro-hydraulically driven gears spaced to each side of the rudder shaft. I have seen a picture years ago, but have not been able to find it again. The gear shafts went from the deck, to the bottom of the hull supporting the steering gears. I wonder if what they see as dual rudders from above, are really just the steering gear vertical shafts?

I know the Mogami's went through 3 different shape of rudders during trials, but they were the only dual rudder Jap heavy cruisers that I could find information on.

The Last 2 ships in the class were built with (2) Rudders.

So AOBA was built with 1 RUDDER and the last 2 were built with duals?

Aoba was to be the 3rd of the Furataka/Kako class of Heavy cruiser. But they made so many improvements before they made the 3 unit of the Furutaka class, it was built as a new class of 2 cruisers, Aoba/Kinugasa.

The Book Japanese cruisers of the Pacific war, states that they were built with just 1 rudder, but they did use the electro-gear drive for the rudder, instead of a hydraulic ram system that all the other Jap cruisers used.

Aoba and her sister ship Kinugasa were the only ships in the class. They were supposed to be the 3rd and 4th ships of the Furutaka-class. So the way I take what Rob said is that Aoba and Kinugasa had 2. Rob???
J

Dave, it's a big thick book; I can't even find the page where it says that any of that class had 2 rudders, can you point me in the right direction? On page 73 towards the bottom it looks like all 4 had a single rudder.

It talks about the electro-hy-draulically driven gears a little bit on page 73, under Aux machinery for the Aoba class. No where have I found anywhere that says 2 rudders.

So it looks like the class was built with one rudder which again makes sense looking at the amount of space for machinery available on such a very narrow hull at the stern.