Japanese aircraft carrier Akagi
Akagi was an aircraft carrier built for the Imperial Japanese Navy. She was the second Japanese aircraft carrier to enter service. She took part in the Attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 and the invasion of Rabaul in January 1942. She helped sink a British heavy cruiser and an Australian destroyer in the Indian Ocean Raid in March and April 1942. Akagi and three other fleet carriers of the Kido Butai participated in the Battle of Midway in June 1942. Her wreck was found on the bottom of the Pacific in October 2019.
About Japanese aircraft carrier Akagi in brief
Akagi was an aircraft carrier built for the Imperial Japanese Navy. She was the second Japanese aircraft carrier to enter service, and the first large or “fleet” carrier. She took part in the Attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 and the invasion of Rabaul in January 1942. She helped sink a British heavy cruiser and an Australian destroyer in the Indian Ocean Raid in March and April 1942. Akagi and three other fleet carriers of the Kido Butai participated in the Battle of Midway in June 1942. Her wreck was found on the bottom of the Pacific in October 2019 by the Research Vessel Petrel. Her guns were turned over to the Imperial Japan Army for use as coastal artillery; one of her main-gun turrets was installed on Iki Island in the Strait of Tsushima in 1932. The rest of her guns were placed in reserve and scrapped in 1943. She is the only remaining member of her class, and her name was changed to Akagi Sōryū in honor of Mount Akagi, a dormant volcano in the Gunma Prefecture region. The ship was built as an Amagi-class battlecruiser at Kure, Japan, on 6 December 1920. Construction was halted when Japan signed the Washington Naval Treaty on 6 February 1922. The treaty placed restrictions on the construction of battleships and battlecruisers although it authorized conversion of two battleship or battlecruizer hulls under construction into aircraft carriers of up to 33,000 long tons displacement. Amagi’s hull was damaged beyond economically feasible repair in the Great Kantō earthquake of 1 September 1923 and was broken up and scrapped.
Akagi was completed at a cost of ¥24. 7 million and commissioned as a carrier on 22 April 1925 and commissioned on 25 March 1927, although trials continued through November 1927. She was initially named after a mountain, but the prevailing ship naming conventions dictated that she would be initially be called Akagi. After the Second Sino-Japanese War in the late 1930s, she was redesignated as an aircraft carrier. Her name remained in contrast to ships originally built as aircraft carriers, which were named after flying creatures, like the Maya-class gunboat Akagi. She was scuttled by Japanese destroyers to prevent her from falling into enemy hands in October 1943. The loss of Akagi at Midway was a crucial strategic defeat for Japan and contributed significantly to the Allies’ ultimate victory in the Pacific. She had a beam of 31 meters and a draft of 8 meters, at deep load of 08 meters, and displaced 26,900 tons at a load of 26 tons, at a full load of 8.900 tons, like a battleship like Amagi. The only other member of the Amagi class to be completed was the battleship Amagi, which was completed in 1924 and commissioned in 1925 and was also named after MountAkagi. Amagi and Akagi were selected for completion as the two large carriers under the 1924 fleet construction program.
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This page is based on the article Japanese aircraft carrier Akagi published in Wikipedia (as of Oct. 31, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
