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History meets High Tech - The IJN Akagi

Sep 19, 2023, 1:51 PM

Happy birthday to the IJN Akagi! Smile, you’re on camera. Yesterday, a drone did the first extended survey of the Akagi, downed at the Battle of Midway.

The Akagi’s namesake, Mount Akagi

The Akagi was born this year in 1923, but only lived to be 19 years old, getting sunk in 1942 in her teenage prime.

Akagi goes down

She was actually born as a battlecruiser in 1920, and would have looked something like this, except for the hand of fate.

In the 1920’s Japan still used tripod masts (just like the British)

But by the 1930’s they switched to the massive “pagoda” tower masts. Very distinctive.

TEN 16” guns. That’s pretty whopper, considering the Iowa class battleships only carried 9 16” guns.

Battle Cruiser Akagi, with tripod mast and 10 16” guns

USS Missouri with 9 16” guns

But the Akagi’s life as a battle cruiser came to an end in 1922, while she was still under construction, when the Washington Treaty curtailed new battleships and battlecruisers.

Battlecruiser no more

So she became this instead, a three deck aircraft carrier.

The NEW Akagi, and a friend

We like our exhaust funnels up, the Japanese liked their funnels down. They reckoned it kept the flight deck free of smoke obstruction.

They also tinkered with the control tower since it was a potential obstruction for pilots. The Akagi was almost unique in that hers ended up on the port side. Only one other Japanese carrier was configured that way.

The same battleship limitation treaty gave us the carriers Lexington and Saratoga, from the ex-battleships Lexington and Saratoga.

The Lady Lex, CV-3

The USS Saratoga, CV-2, beginning her life as a battleship

A bad concept

The Japanese had about 30 carriers in all of WW2, though no more than half that at any one time. And about 10 were good, about 10 so-so, and 10 total crap built in absolute desperation towards the end of the war. Like Carriers made from converted passenger liners and oil tankers.

Another bad idea

IJN Unyo (ex-Passenger ship Yawata Maru.) A fleet carrier that can only carry 30 planes isn’t even worth building. It might be good as a convoy escort, but not as a front-line combat ship.

But the Akagi (and her sister, the Kaga) were 2 of the 4 very best out of those 30. She could carry over 65 aircraft at 35 knots. Most Japanese carriers carried 50ish.

Akagi flight deck

Akagi at far left, Kaga beside.

By the 1930s, with new aircraft development, the triple flight deck idea got dumped, because the newer monoplanes needed longer landing and landing strips.

It’s just too da mn crowded up here!

So her middle deck was enclosed into an aircraft hangar, and her upper flight deck was extended and propped up by massive struts fore and aft.

Yesterday was big news because although she was located a couple years ago, an extended survey was conducted of the wreckage site by remote drone for the first time.

IJN Akagi, 18,000 feet underwater. Sonar images.

So happy birthday girl! Let’s hope that James Cameron is inspired by her sunken wreck and makes a movie about two star-crossed Japanese aviator lovers caught in the tragedy of Midway!

First Visual Survey of IJN Akagi
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