was an aircraft carrier built for the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) during the mid-1930s. A sister ship,ōryū , was intended to follow Sōryū, but Hiryūs design was heavily modified and she is often considered to be a separate class. Sōryūs aircraft were employed in operations during the Second Sino-Japanese War in the late 1930s and supported the Japanese invasion of French Indochina in mid-1940. During the first months of the Pacific War, she took part in the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Battle of Wake Island, and supported the conquest of the Dutch East Indies. In February 1942, her aircraft bombed Darwin, Australia, and she continued on to assist in the Dutch East Indies campaign. In April, Sōryū aircraft helped sink two British heavy cruisers and several merchant ships during the Indian Ocean raid.
After a brief refit, Sōryū and three other carriers of the 1st Air Fleet (Kidō Butai) participated in the Battle of Midway in June 1942. After bombarding American forces on Midway Atoll, the carriers were attacked by aircraft from the island and the carriers , , and . Dive bombers from Yorktown crippled Sōryū and set her afire. Japanese destroyers rescued the survivors 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. She sank with the loss of 711 officers and enlisted men of the 1,103 aboard. The loss of Sōryū and three other IJN carriers at Midway was a crucial strategic defeat for Japan and contributed significantly to the Allies' ultimate victory in the Pacific.
Design and description
Sōryū was one of two large carriers approved for construction under the Imperial Japanese Navy's 1931–32 Supplementary Program (the other being her near-sister Hiryū). In contrast to some earlier Japanese carriers, such as and , which were conversions of battlecruiser and battleship hulls respectively, Sōryū was designed from the keel up as an aircraft carrier and incorporated lessons learned from the light carrier .
The ship had a length of overall, a beam of and a draught of . She displaced at standard load and at normal load. Her crew consisted of 1,100 officers and ratings.
Machinery
Sōryū was fitted with four geared steam turbine sets with a total of , each driving one propeller shaft, using steam provided by eight Kampon water-tube boilers. The turbines and boilers were the same as those used in the s. The ship's power and slim, cruiser-type hull, with a length-to-beam ratio of 10:1, gave her a speed of and made her the fastest carrier in the world at the time of her commissioning. Sōryū carried of fuel oil, which gave her a range of at . 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.
Flight deck and hangars
The carrier's flight deck was wide and overhung her superstructure at both ends, supported by pairs of pillars. Sōryūs island was built on a starboard-side extension that protruded beyond the side of the hull so that it did not encroach on the width of the flight deck. Nine transverse arrestor wires were installed on the flight deck and could stop a aircraft. The flight deck was only above the waterline and the ship's designers kept this distance low by reducing the height of the hangars. The upper hangar was and had an approximate height of ; the lower was and had an approximate height of . Together they had an approximate total area of . This caused problems in handling aircraft because the wings of a Nakajima B5N "Kate" torpedo bomber could neither be spread nor folded in the upper hangar.
Aircraft were transported between the hangars and the flight deck by three elevators, the forward one abreast the island on the centerline and the other two offset to starboard. The forward platform measured , the middle one , and the rear . They were capable of transferring aircraft weighing up to . Sōryū had an aviation gasoline capacity of for her planned aircraft capacity of sixty-three plus nine spares.
Armament
Sōryūs primary anti-aircraft (AA) armament consisted of six twin-gun mounts equipped with 50-caliber 12.7-centimeter Type 89 dual-purpose guns mounted on projecting sponsons, three on either side of the carrier's hull. The guns had a range of , and a ceiling of at an elevation of +90 degrees. Their maximum rate of fire was fourteen rounds a minute, but their sustained rate of fire was around eight rounds per minute. The ship was equipped with two Type 94 fire-control directors to control the guns, one for each side of the ship, although the starboard director on the island could control all of the Type 89 guns.