Sōryū was an aircraft carrier built for the Imperial Japanese Navy during the mid-1930s. She took part in the attack on Pearl Harbor and supported the conquest of the Dutch East Indies. In June 1942, she and three other carriers of the 1st Air Fleet participated in the Battle of Midway. She was sunk with the loss of 711 officers and enlisted men and 1,103 aboard.
About Japanese aircraft carrier Sōryū in brief
Sōryū was an aircraft carrier built for the Imperial Japanese Navy during the mid-1930s. She took part in the attack on Pearl Harbor and supported the conquest of the Dutch East Indies. In June 1942, she and three other carriers of the 1st Air Fleet participated in the Battle of Midway. She was sunk with the loss of 711 officers and enlisted men and 1,103 aboard. A sister ship, Hiryū, was intended to follow Sōryu, but Hiryu’s design was heavily modified and she is often considered to be a separate class. The ship’s power and slim, cruiser-type hull, with a length-to-beam ratio of 10: 1, gave her a speed of 34. 5 knots and made her the fastest carrier in the world at the time of her commissioning. The carrier’s 216. 9-meter flight deck was 26 meters wide and overhung her superstructure at both ends, supported by pairs of pillars. Nine transverse arrestor wires were installed on the flight deck and could stop a 6,000 kg aircraft. In contrast to some earlier Japanese carriers, such as Akagi and Kaga, which were conversions of battlecruiser and battleship hulls respectively, SōRYū was designed from the keel up as an aircraft carriers. The aircraft were transported between the island on the starboard-side extension that protruded beyond the side of the hull so that it did not encroach on the width of the flightdeck. SōRyū carried 3,710 metric tons of fuel oil, giving her a range of 7,750 nautical miles at 18 knots.
The boiler uptakes were trunked together to the ship’s starboard side amidships and exhausted just below flight deck level through two funnels curved downwards. They were capable of transferring aircraft weighing up to 5,000 kilograms. Together they had an approximate total area of 4,736 square metres. This caused problems because the wings of a Nakajima B5N bomber could neither be neither folded in the upper hangar nor spread in the lower hangar. They had an average speed of 18 knots and could carry up to 3,700 tonnes of fuel on a single engine. The carriers were fitted with four geared steam turbine sets with a total of 152,000 shaft horsepower, each driving one propeller shaft, using steam provided by eight Kampon water-tube boilers. In February 1942, her aircraft bombed Darwin, Australia, and she continued on to assist in theDutch East Indies campaign. In April, Sôryū’s aircraft helped sink two British heavy cruisers and several merchant ships during the Indian Ocean raid. The loss of Sō Ryū was a crucial strategic defeat for Japan and contributed significantly to the Allies’ ultimate victory in the Pacific. The survivors were rescued but the ship could not be salvaged and was ordered to be scuttled so as to allow her attendant destroyers to be released for further operations.
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This page is based on the article Japanese aircraft carrier Sōryū published in Wikipedia (as of Oct. 31, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
