And now, a carrier...but
what a carrier!
In 1951, a sixth
Shichido-class battleship hull was laid down, but construction was halted when the huge ship was completed up to the waterline. With no battleship components as yet installed, the Naval General Staff ordered her converted into a carrier. The result was a flattop so massive that
twin-engine bombers, Japanese versions of Germany's Ar234 jet bomber, could be based on board. She was named
Jinryu, or "King Dragon", which fit her perfectly. Her fighter pilots, who operated her Nakajima J9Y
Kikka jet fighters (based off Germany's Messerschmitt Me262), were regarded as the elite of the IJN's fighter pilots.
Upon her commissioning in 1955, she was the largest warship in the world at a mind-boggling 1,290.5 feet (a record she holds to this day; not even the upcoming
U.S.S. Gerald R. Ford-class super carriers will even come close to her length), eleven feet longer than her battleship half-sisters, and Vice Admiral Mitsuo Fuchida, Commander-in-Chief, 1st Air Fleet, naturally transferred his flag to her, hosting retired Fleet Admiral Jisaburo Ozawa aboard the same day. Her Japanese crew affectionately referred to her as
idaina maruchitasuku "the great multi-tasker", due to her uniqueness at being the only straight-decked aircraft carrier in the world that could launch and recover aircraft at the same time.
Her visit to the United States in 1956 - she made the newly-commissioned
U.S.S. Saratoga (CV-60) seem small by comparison - earned her another nickname from the Americans: "Rodan", or "Winged Monster from the Sea".
Jinryu served the Imperial Japanese Navy for an unprecedented fifty years, finally being decommissioned in 2005. Her final active-duty service was the Tsushima Centennial Parade, in which the entire Combined Fleet - this also included any museum ship that was still seaworthy - steamed through Tsushima Strait, any surface ships firing full broadsides in salute. Emperor Akihito reviewed the fleet from the bridge of museum ship
Yamato. Of course, there was no question that the world's largest aircraft carrier would be preserved as a museum ship, and she serves in that role to this day.
![[ img ]](http://i905.photobucket.com/albums/ac253/ijnfleetadmiral/Jinryu-2.png)
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