The world's worst aircraft carrier

Nine hours of service for multi-billion-dollar super-carrier

Yamato and Musashi are well known as the largest and most powerful battleships ever constructed and if Space Battleship Yamato is to be believed the only to achieve faster than light travel. Less well known is their half-sister the Shinano, possibly because only two known photos of her exist and halfway through construction she was converted into a 66,000-ton support carrier. To put that into context the Essex-class attack carriers that formed the backbone of the US Fleet by the end of the war displaced only two-thirds as much and carried a striking force of 90 aircraft.

Laid down in May 1940 under great secrecy construction was paused in December 1941, presumably because the IJN had a lot going on that month. By June of 1942 the Battle of Midway led the IJN to be unexpectedly short of four fleet carriers and the decision was made to complete the Shinano as a carrier able to provide replacement aircraft to the rest of the fleet. In this role she was planned to carry 120 reserve aircraft while operating her own small air group of 18 Mitsubishi A7M fighters, 18 Aichi B7A torpedo bombers, and 6 Nakajima C6N reconnaissance aircraft. Or at least that was a plan. With events increasingly turning against the Japanese Empire the construction of the Shinano was accelerated with the dockyard working with the kind of ‘hardcore’ practices favoured by Elon Musk. Finished some 7 months ahead of schedule she was launched in October 1944 with a build quality even British Leyland might consider suspect.

Shinano’s first, and only, mission was to take suicide boats and flying bombs for distribution around the Philippines and Okinawa. On the 29th of November some nine hours after sailing, four torpedoes from the USS Archerfish hit her port side where thanks to bad damage control practices and the aforementioned build quality, they caused widespread flooding which took her to the bottom seven hours later. Thanks to the secrecy with which Shinano had been built the USN initially refused to believe the Archerfish’s Captain’s claim as it didn’t match with the location of any known carrier.

The biggest carrier ever built until the USS Forrestal was launched in 1954 the effort expended probably wasn’t worth it for a minor intelligence victory over the USN.

-Bing Chandler

The crowdfunded Hush-Kit Book of Warplanes is on general release from 8 December 2022 (artwork from the book below by The Teasel Studio)

The Hush-Kit Book of Warplanes Vol 2 is now at the funding stage, if it hits 100% it will happen. It is currently at 48%.