(August 7, 2016 at 12:23 pm)Thumpalumpacus Wrote:(August 7, 2016 at 7:38 am)Anomalocaris Wrote: The exact analogue all applies to Japan.
(August 7, 2016 at 7:55 am)Anomalocaris Wrote: So don't give me the crap about the second not being additional evidence for the legitimacy of the concerns raised by the first, or was not likely done specifically to reinforce the domestic political impact of the first.
The Japanese have been reusing the names of WWII-era ships since 1956, with the Yukikaze. Haruna and Hiei were DDHs commissioned in the 70s, Kongo-class DDs came in service in the 90s.
Given the 50-year policy of reusing these names, I'm highly skeptical that the change in their submarine-naming convention is evidence of anything other than, well, a change in their naming convention.
Destroyer and cruiser names are much more mundane and less evocative then names of capital ships. So Japanese destroyer names were never controversial. The case with Kongo, Haruna and Hiei is a little murky. These were names of ships that were built as battlecruisers before WWI, and only reclassified as battleships before WWII. When they were first named, ships like these were still considered by major navies as successors to armored cruisers, and were not really regarded as full fledged capitalships. Their names were thus cruiser names. Only later in service were they upgraded to a still considerably sub-battleship standard, and were called fast battleships out of courtesy.
