Ryūjô was a light aircraft carrier built for the Imperial Japanese Navy during the early 1930s. She was built to exploit a loophole in the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922. She proved to be top-heavy and only marginally stable and was back in the shipyard for modifications to address those issues within a year of completion. She returned to service and was employed in operations during the Second Sino-Japanese War. During World War II, she provided air support for operations in the Philippines, Malaya, and the Dutch East Indies. In August 1942, she was sunk by American carrier aircraft at the battle of the Eastern Solomons.
About Japanese aircraft carrier Ryūjō in brief
Ryūjō was a light aircraft carrier built for the Imperial Japanese Navy during the early 1930s. She was built to exploit a loophole in the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922. She proved to be top-heavy and only marginally stable and was back in the shipyard for modifications to address those issues within a year of completion. She returned to service and was employed in operations during the Second Sino-Japanese War. During World War II, she provided air support for operations in the Philippines, Malaya, and the Dutch East Indies, where her aircraft participated in the Second Battle of the Java Sea. In August 1942, she was sunk by American carrier aircraft at the battle of the Eastern Solomons. Ryūjô had a designed speed of 29 knots, but reached 5,270 shp during her sea trials. The ship carried 2,490 long tons of fuel oil, which gave her a range of 10,000 nautical miles at 14 knots. The hull was lightly built with no armor; some protective plating was added abreast the machinery spaces and magazines. She had a flush-decked carrier without an island superstructure; the navigating control was located just under the lip of the flight deck in a long glass-in-a-greenhouse set back 23 meters from the ship’s stem, giving the ship a distinctive distinctive star-like shape. She also had two geared steam turbine sets with a total of 65,000 horsepower, each driving one propeller shaft, using steam-tube boilers provided by six Kampononon boilers on the water-tube tubers.
The carrier was also designed with only a single hangar, which would have left an extremely low profile of freeboard amidships and 3.0 meters aft). She was sunk in August 1942 by the U.S. Navy at the Battle of the Eastern Solomons, where she was one of many Japanese warships caught in a typhoon on 25 September 1935 while on maneuvers during the “Fourth Fleet Incident. After these modifications, the beam and draft increased to 20. 78 meters and 7. 08 meters respectively. The displacement also increased to 10,600 metric tons at standard load and 12,732 metrictons at normal load. The crew also grew to 924 officers and enlisted men. She was laid down in 1929 and launched in 1931, with the Navy doubling her aircraft stowage requirement to 48 in order to give her a more capable air group. In 1934, the IJN had to investigate the stability of all their ships, resulting in design changes to improve stability and increase hull strength. The forecastle was raised one deck and the bow was remodelled with more flare to improve the sea handling. During the Indian Ocean raid in April 1942, the carrier attacked British merchant shipping with her guns and aircraft. Ryū jō was sunk during the Battle of the Aleutian Islands in June.
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