Nagato was a Japanese battleship laid under the keel in 1917, launched in November 1919, and commissioned in the Imperial Japanese Navy in November 1920. The ship was 221 meters long, 34 meters wide, and had a full displacement of 42,800 tons. The maximum speed of battleship Nagato was around 25-26 knots. The main armament at the time of the launch was 8 410 mm guns in four turrets, two guns each, and the additional armament was mainly 20 140 mm guns.
Nagato was the first battleship of the type with the same name - ie Nagato. Ty Nagato was the first series of battleships whose main artillery exceeded the caliber of 400 mm. Modernization of the battleship took place only in 1936, when it was extended, the entire engine room was modified, catapults for seaplanes were added, and anti-aircraft artillery was significantly expanded. At the outbreak of World War II, Nagato was the flagship of the entire Japanese fleet (Japanese: Ippon Kaigun) - it was from it that the order was sent to attack Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. In June 1942 he took part in the Battle of Midway but survived it. In 1944, he fought in the Battle of Leyte, where he sank the USS Gambler Bay aircraft carrier and three destroyers. She was the only Japanese battleship to survive the war in the Pacific in good condition, and in 1946 the Americans used it to test nuclear weapons in Bikini Atoll. Nagato sank on July 25, 1946.
Hiyo (Japanese: Flying Hawk) was a Japanese light aircraft carrier, the keel of which was laid in 1939, launched in June 1941, and commissioned in the Imperial Japanese Navy in July 1942. The ship was 219.3 meters long, 26.7 meters wide, and had a full displacement of 26,950 tons. The maximum speed of the aircraft carrier Hiyo was around 25 knots, and its main armament was 53 on-board planes.
Originally, Hiyo was built as a luxury ocean liner named Izumo Maru for one of the Japanese shipping lines. However, with the impending outbreak of the war in the Pacific and the desire of the navy command to expand its own air force, the as yet unfinished Izumo Maru was bought by the fleet and rebuilt into an aircraft carrier. Similarly to the twin Junyo. A characteristic feature of Hiyo was the relatively large and high superstructure on the starboard side and the funnel tilted away from the main axis of the ship in order to improve the conditions of the air force. During World War II, Hiyo took part in the battles for the Gudalcanal - especially in the Battle of Santa Cruz - and in June 1943 it was severely damaged by the American submarine USS Trigger, which necessitated many repairs on Hiyo, which excluded him from the fight for many weeks . In June 1944, he took part in the Battle of the Philippine Sea, where he was sunk by American on-board planes.
Ryuho was a Japanese light aircraft carrier, the keel of which was laid in April 1933, launched in November of the same year, and commissioned in the Imperial Japanese Navy in March 1934. The ship was 216 meters long, 19.5 meters wide, and had a full displacement of 16,700 tons. The maximum speed of the aircraft carrier Ryuho was 26 knots, and its main armament was 31-36 airplanes.
Ryuho originally entered service with the Japanese Navy as a submarine base ship called Taigei, but was designed to be quickly converted to an aircraft carrier if necessary. Actions in this direction were undertaken in December 1941, and from November 1942 Ryuho entered service as an aircraft carrier. She was baptized in combat, still as a submarine base ship, during the fighting in China in 1938. A more important battle during World War II in which Ryuho took part was the Battle of the Philippine Sea in June 1944, which, however, survived with only slight damage. Severely damaged in March 1945, it was not renovated until the end of the war, and by 1947 it was completely scrapped.
Very often, the date of birth of naval aviation in the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN for short, Japanese Nippon Kaigun) is March 16, 1923, when Lieutenant Sunishi Kira landed in his plane on board the Hosho aircraft carrier, which, moreover, entered service a year earlier (1922). It should be added, however, that in the course of the 1920s, many Japanese naval officers saw aircraft carriers as supporters of battleships and battleships, bearing in mind the great success of Admiral Heihachiro Togo at Tsushima in 1905. The technical level of the then Japanese on-board aircraft was also not the highest. However, this state of affairs began to change in the 30s of the 20th century, among others, due to the later Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, who perceived the main weapon in the naval war in aircraft carriers. He was a strong supporter of the development of Japanese on-board aviation, which translated into the construction or modernization of such ships as Kaga, Akagi, Hiryu, Soryu and Zuikaku. Also, Japanese aviation structures not only reached the world leaders, but began to set standards in them, including the famous Mitsubishi A6M Zeke fighter or the Nakajima B5N Kate torpedo plane. This intense development led to the fact that when the war in the Pacific broke out, the IJN had 10 aircraft carriers, on which over 500 on-board machines were based, with well-trained crews. The first months of struggle in the Pacific showed how dangerous this weapon was. It should be remembered, however, that already during that war, the IJN had considerable problems, for example, to replace the A6M Zeke plane on a mass scale or to introduce a successful B5N successor to the line, i.e. the B6N Tenzen torpedo plane. Also, the process of training sea pilots turned out to be flawed and was distanced by the solutions used in the US Navy.