Suzuya's difficult birthSuzuya, the third ship of Mogami class cruisers, is launched on November 20th.
During the launching process, defect in the supporting blocks caused difficult in the blocks removal and as result, the launching ceremony finally takes place 27 minutes after the ship's naming ceremony.
Because everyone have to stand still until the launching ceremony is finished, the sweating workers are all pale and nervous.
By the way, her younger sister Kumano is completed on October 31st 1937, the same day as Suzuya.
To fix the hull structural integrity problem that has been plaguing Mogami class cruisers, the design has been revised. Because of her different shape from Mogami and Mikuma, she's also classified as Suzuya-class. According to the London Naval Treaty, Japan can maintain up to 50,000 tonnes of cruisers. Because of this reason Mogami class are built as light cruisers.
In 1939, the main triple 15.5 cm guns are replaced with twin 20.3 cm guns and they're reclassified as heavy cruisers.
Later, Mogami is upgraded into aviation cruiser, but the rest of the Mogami class are not equipped with flight equipments. So the aviation cruisers are only in Kantai Collection.
Like the other ships, Suzuya also seen many battles.
But the Battle of Midway is the only battle Suzuya fought with all her sisters. In that battle, Mikuma is sunk.
Although there's no historical record of it, there's story that during retreat, Suzuya sent signal to Kumano, her flagship, that she has an engine trouble. After that she returned to Mikuma to save the survivors and scuttle Mikuma.
She also participated in the Battle Off Samar on October 25th 1944. In this battle she chased the enemy's escort carriers, but later got hit by bombs from carrier airplanes that caused her torpedo to explode and split her hull in half.
She's erased from naval list on December 20th the same year.
