Japanese aircraft carrier Shinano
Shinano was an aircraft carrier built by the Imperial Japanese Navy during World War II. Laid down in May 1940 as the third of the Yamato-class battleships, Shinano’s partially complete hull was ordered to be converted to aircraft carrier. She was sunk en route, 10 days after commissioning, by four torpedoes from the U.S. Navy submarine Archerfish on 29 November 1944.
About Japanese aircraft carrier Shinano in brief
Shinano was an aircraft carrier built by the Imperial Japanese Navy during World War II. Laid down in May 1940 as the third of the Yamato-class battleships, Shinano’s partially complete hull was ordered to be converted to aircraft carrier. She was sunk en route, 10 days after commissioning, by four torpedoes from the U.S. Navy submarine Archerfish on 29 November 1944. She remains the largest warship ever sunk by a submarine. The ship is only known to have been photographed twice: on 1 November 1944, by a Boeing B-29 Superfortress reconnaissance aircraft from an altitude of 9,800 meters, and ten days later, by civilian photographer aboard a harbor tug during Shinano’s initial sea trials in Tokyo Bay. Her hull was only 45 percent complete by that time, with structural work complete up to the lower deck and most of her machinery installed. Her heavy anti-aircraft guns would be the new 65-caliber 10 cm Type 98 dual-purpose gun, as it had superior ballistic characteristics and a higher rate of fire than the 40-caliber 12. 7-cm Type 89 guns used by her half-sisters. Shinano was the heaviest aircraft carrier yet, a record she held until the 81,000-metric-ton USS restal was launched in 1954. The navy decided that Shinano would become a heavily armored support carrier—carrying reserve aircraft, fuel and ordnance in support of other carriersrather than a fleet carrier.
As completed she displaced 65,800 metric tons at standard load, 69,151 metric tons and 73,000 tons at full load at normal load. The ships were fitted with four turbine sets with a total of 150,000 horsepower, each driving one propeller using one shaft, using one driving propeller. She had a length of 265.3 meters, a beam of 36 meters, and a draft of 10. 3 meters of 10.800 meters overall. Her crew of 2,400 enlisted men and enlisted officers and enlisted women was designed for a crew of 1,400 officers and 2,000 enlisted men. She is the only major warship built in the 20th century to have avoided being officially photographed during its construction. The new ship’s existence was kept a closely guarded secret. A tall fence was erected on three sides of the graving dock, and those working on the conversion were confined to the yard compound. In December 1941, construction onShinano’s hull was temporarily suspended to allow the IJN time to decide what to do with the ship. She was not expected to be completed until 1945, and the navy also wanted to make the large drydock in which the ship was being built available, which required either scrapping the portion already completed or finishing it enough to launch it and clear thedrydock. The IJn decided on the latter, albeit with a reduced work force which was expected to launch the ship in one year.
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This page is based on the article Japanese aircraft carrier Shinano published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 07, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
