 The progress of <unk> 's construction , while the <unk> waited for the funding to be released and foreign developments , caused the <unk> to <unk> the <unk> @-@ class design . The distribution of the <unk> gun turrets was the most obvious flaw as they complicated the protection of the <unk> magazine and exposed more of the ship to the blast effects of the guns when they fired . Another issue was that Japanese sailors had problems maintaining a high rate of fire with the 45 @.@ 36 @-@ kilogram ( 100 @.@ 0 lb ) shells used in the manually loaded 152 @-@ millimetre ( 6 in ) secondary guns used in the <unk> class and earlier designs . To resolve this issue , the <unk> designed a smaller 140 @-@ millimetre ( 5 @.@ 5 in ) gun that offset its lighter shell weight with a higher rate of fire . It also decided that the barbette armour of the earlier ships was too thin and wanted a modest increase in speed to partially counter the higher speeds of the latest foreign ships like the British Queen Elizabeth @-@ class battleships and Russian <unk> @-@ class battlecruisers . For financial reasons more powerful engines could not be ordered so the new design was lengthened slightly and the boiler rooms enlarged to increase speed by 0 @.@ 5 knots ( 0 @.@ 93 km / h ; 0 @.@ 58 mph ) to 23 knots ( 43 km / h ; 26 mph ) . To save weight the forecastle deck was shortened so that the lower <unk> gun turret was lower than in the <unk> class . This reduced the crew 's accommodations despite a significant increase in the crew 's numbers and naval historian <unk> <unk> believed that these ships had the worst <unk> of any Japanese capital ship . The final design was designated A @-@ 92 by the <unk> and differed enough from the A @-@ 64 design of the <unk> class that it was considered a separate class . 
