![]() ![]() (picture 1 above, and 2, 3 below) It had no armour nor heavy 8” guns, and its single hangar could accommodate 24 aircraft. It was laid down in 1929 as a flush-deck carrier with a starboard trunked exhaust. The result of this thinking was IJN Ryujo (4) officially designated as displacing 8,000 tons standard. A clause in the Treaty defined an aircraft carrier as a ship of “at least 10,000 tons”: if the Japanese could build a useful ship of less displacement, it would not count against Treaty tonnage and might be repeated to provide numerous flight decks. Mindful of the idea, current in the USN, that the number of decks was more important than size of the ship (thus the design in 1929 of USS Ranger, CV-4), the Japanese in 1929 tried to squeeze a useful load of aircraft onto a small hull. ![]() But Japan did not design and build the 23,000 ton carrier the Treaty allowed. IJN Akagi and IJN Kaga took up 58,000 (officially) of the 81,000 tons for carriers allowed by Treaty for the Japanese navy. A new naval race was on (3), to be detailed in the next and last article in this series. The British and American delegates refused, and on December 29, 1934, Japan gave formal notice that after December 31, 1936, she would no longer be bound by the terms of the Washington and London Naval Treaties. At the preliminary conference in 1934 in London, set to prepare for another five-year renewal of the London Treaty, the Japanese delegates demanded an end to the 5:5:3 ratios of British, American, and Japanese fleets, claiming only full equality was acceptable. By the end of 1933 the militarists were in the ascendant and Japan took itself out of the League of Nations. ![]() A number of political assassinations occurred and most often the perpetrator was a junior officer. ![]() Japanese nationalists and many military officers disparaged this signing as “the May 15th Affair” (1) and as the 1930’s began, pressures on the liberal administrations in Japan from the Depression, the Americans raising their tariffs (2), and the Army seeming to be out of control and creating incidents that lead to the seizure of Manchuria (1931-1933) – all these the administrations could not handle. The London Naval Conference of 1930 led to a Treaty which fundamentally extended the provisions of the Washington Naval Treaty another five years into the future. Part 13: IJN Ryujo and the ‘Shadow Program’ ![]()
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