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The O class was a planned class of three battlecruisers for the ''Kriegsmarine'' (German navy) before the Second World War. Prompted by a perceived lack in ship numbers when compared with the British Royal Navy, the O class' design was born with the suggestion of modifying the design with guns instead of . The ships were incorporated into the 1939 Plan Z; while an aircraft carrier, H-class battleships and smaller ships engaged convoy escorts, one or more O-class ships would attack the merchant ships. The O class' design reflected their intended role; a heavy main armament—six 380 mm guns in three dual turrets—for possible encounters with escorting -armed heavy cruisers, enough armor to defend against the same and nothing more, and a high top speed so that they could get away from slower but much better armored capital ships. == Genesis: P-class cruisers == (詳細はpanzer — German: "armor"). Under the original plan, twelve P-class ships were to be built. The ships were designed as cruiser killers that would have heavy enough armament and armor to take on light and heavy cruisers but enough speed to outrun battleships and battlecruisers. Many problems were encountered with designing the ships, the most prevalent being armor. The required maximum speed of meant that the minimum length had to grow from the original to . It also meant that the beam could be a minimum of —unless diesel engines, like those used in the ''Deutschland''s, were desired; they would increase the beam by . Unfortunately for the designers, the widened beam meant that an even longer hull was needed to maintain hydrodynamic efficiency. All of this complicated the armor arrangements, as more armor was needed to cover the longer length and widened beam. Eventually it was deemed that it was impossible to include diesel power on a displacement. The switch to battlecruisers was the result of a proposal to up the main armament from /55 caliber guns to /47 caliber guns. Various reasons were behind this. Among other reasons, experiments showed that the smaller gun was "far less effective" than the larger gun, a class of twelve ships would have overtaxed the shipyards already heavily burdened with other ships, and the smallest guns on any foreign ship in service or under construction were more than larger than the 283 mm guns. The most persuasive argument for increasing the armament came in 1939, when Adolf Hitler denounced the 1935 Anglo-German Naval Agreement. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「O-class battlecruiser」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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