what is a super carrier it's a simple question right and so you be right to assume that it had an equally simple answer but in fact no that's actually pretty far from the truth because rather than the answer to this question being a simple tonnage figure IE a carrier must displace over X tons to be considered super there is in fact no commonly accepted figure with the exact hurdle to jump changing with basically every person you ask it gets more complicated too because it turns out that no Navy on Earth even uses the moniker at least an official classification and so it Remains The Preserve of the commentar since the occasional testosterone pumping recruitment piece despite this at least everyone agrees that whatever a super carrier is this the 60,000 ton USS Forest St from 1955 it was the first one right but alas no even that isn't the case or at least it might not be because may we present to you this the Japanese carrier shinano she rolled out onto the way in 1944 and give or take displaced 65,000 tons which of course was more than the forest all so what gives why have we all forgotten about the shano why does the forestal get all of the glory when another even bigger carrier existed that was 11 years her senior well worry not folks because in the 20 minutes of this video we're going to answer those questions as we pull apart the nitty-gritty of the shinano and her ill- fated service life [Music] [Music] as was quite common at the time see everything you need to know video on aircraft carriers for more details shinano was not a carrier from the key up but instead was converted from a hull intended for another purpose and what would make a better donor Hull for the biggest carrier ever built up until that point than that of the biggest class of battleship ever built not up until that point do not so no no we mean the biggest battleship class ever made ever the Amato class the Amato were simply monstrous things the absolute Pinnacle of contemporary Maritime technology they clocked in and give or take 70,000 tons in displacement and to give that number some context the famed USS Texas of World War I World War II and now museum ship Fame weighs in at a mere displacement of about 30,000 tons the reason for the Amato's absurd size was simple they were to overcome the numerical superiority of the US Navy by being absolute monsters one's able to deliver a firm shoe to multiple battleships at the same time and come out the other side Alive and Kicking naturally to see this done the Amato packed quite a formidable array of arms and armor their teeth came from a dizzying array of nine 460 mm guns the broadest b guns ever fitted to a warship which was split into three turrets of three guns they were also the heaviest ever with each turret weighing in at 2,730 tons which for comparison was more than an entire KERO class destroyer as for the rounds these guns fired they weighed up to 1,460 kg each that's about the weight of a hatchback car and they could reach out to a range of 25 mil as for armor the Amato had what historian Mark still described as an unparalleled degree of protection in surface combat their belt armor the bit that sits immediately above and below the water line is up to 40.6 CM thick and their turret thickness peaked at 66 cm at its thickest point to put this into perspective let us look at the Texas once again whose belt armor Peaks at 30.5 cm and turret armor Peaks at 35.6 CM there simply was nothing else afloat that could hold a candle to the Yamato the decision to not complete the shinano as the third ship of this indomitable class after Masashi in the lead ship Yamato came in July 1942 a month after the disastrous Battle of Midway in which the Imperial Japanese Navy had lost four carriers akagi hiru kaga and sawu these losses were absolutely catastrophic carriers were the lynchpin of Japan's Naval strategy and without them they found their capabilities severely neutered further to this elements of the Imperial Japanese Navy were waning on the idea of battleships anyway and starting to favor aircraft after as the preeminent offensive element of a fleet instead which they evidenced by pointing to the sinking of the British Battleship HMS Prince of Whales and battle cruiser HMS repulse both of which are sent to the seabed by aircraft in 1941 these two motivations Together made chano's completion as an aircraft carrier a no-brainer naturally this involved a lot of modifications to her design the three turrets were emitted altogether and a 256 M long and 40 m wide flight dag that ran the full length of the hull was installed in their place the super structure was also radically altered the large domineering design of a normal yato class instead being replaced with a much shrunken down Island star super structure pushed off to the starboard side on a sponson that overhung the hall ever so inside of this was also fitted a command center for flight operations that naturally normal Yamato didn't have the funnel was also fed up through this new super structure in response to lessons learned from earlier Japanese carriers which had side Hall Ed funnels and thus could suffer from rather inconvenient visibility issues below all of that the space normally taken up by the lower sections of the turrets and vast magazines for storing 900 car-sized shells was given over to hangers and the aviation facilities needed to operate a large aerial complement but note we have no idea how big this capacity actually was partly this is because we actually know very little about the shinano period for reasons we'll get to later on but also this is because when the decision was made to convert her into a carrier much of her interior had already been constructed and since the Japanese Navy needed a carrier now the decision was made to leave much of this in place and simply build around it therefore because we know so little about her generally trying to even eyeball an estimate from her size becomes difficult as we simply don't know what her insides really look like mostly historians however when pushed to give an answer will usually guess in the region of a 100 or so aircraft well we don't know much about the exact layout of her hangers we do know the kind of stuff that was fitted to them for example we know that they were fitted with enormous armored doors to protect valuable aircraft inside as well as the whole roof of the hanger being made of 7.6 cm of armored steel and 2 cm of regular steel enough to fend off the force of a 1,100 bomb crammed inside of it somewhere was also the maintenance shops in addition to ammunition elevators and fueling stations and since we brought up the matter of shinano being a bit of a botch job let's now discuss her intended role despite her imposing size she was not intended to be a true Fleet carrier I.E one that gets stuck into the chunky action and takes a kick in with the rest of the fleet instead she was intended to be a support carrier one that would hang back and resupply the losses of other carriers from her potentially vast hangers that was not what the IGN wanted they wanted her to be the single greatest Fleet carrier ever put to Sea a simply terrifying prospect that would turn every Alli Sailors under pents a healthy shade of brown at the mere Prospect of having to face a Mighty air arm but alas with with Japan's War situation going from bad to worse by the day Naval planners were forced to compromise and plan her for whatever role would quickly get her to see and doing something for the Japanese war efforts and thus she became the support carrier it should also come as no surprise to learn that shano's Russian nature also led to her having quite a few design flaws and defects when she was eventually put to Sea the most dire of which was the incomplete state of her water typ compartments these being subdivided sections of the hull that can be completely sealed in the event of a whole breach to limit the Ingress of water maintain buoyancy and thus ultimately stop a ship from sinking they had been pretty much standard on any big ship since the late 19th century and shinano naturally had them too just as her half sisters Yamato and Masashi had before her but the rush to get shano out of sea was so frantic that many of them had either been found to be inadequately sealed during testing or simply had not been tested at all remember that detail it'll be important in the next chapter oh and to make matters even worse bulkheads were also full of holes from unsealed wiring unfinished ventilation tubes and yet to be installed water pipes and that was just the bulkhead issues because she also had basically none of her water bailing pumps operable in addition to just having bulkheads as watertight as a sponge and basically no way of bailing water however shano's rush to construction also led to having a highly compromised center of gravity and stability her whole had been designed specifically with those monstrous turrets in mind and that gigantic superstructure and without them her center of gravity radically changed which drastically affected her buoyancy and stability a ship isn't like a car in which you can strip out weight and invariably make it better through gains and acceleration they are very carefully and specifically designed and stripping out weight doesn't necessarily make things automatically better and given that specific foreshadowing and the general discussion of shano's flaws it will probably come as no surprise for you to learn that she didn't exactly have a great time of it when she was eventually put to Sea so so let's bring this chapter to a close and move on to look at just how badly things [Music] went after a little over two years of conversion work shinano was formerly commissioned at Yokosuka Naval port on the 19th of November 1944 having been given a mere two weeks for fitting out and sea trials beforehand the problems began before she had ever even been commissioned as a little over a month earlier likely on the 8th of October although we can't be sure the mistakable silhouette of a single American b29 bomber was spotted overhead the lonely formation implying very strongly that it was conducting a reconnaissance mission this meant that the Allies now almost certainly knew not only of shano's existence but also exactly where she was and such a big carrier would no doubt be a hell of a tempting prize naturally then her first order upon her commissioning was to get the hell out of there ASAP with the Japanese Navy's general staff ordering that she depart for curea by the 28th of November at the latest where she would be fitted out free from the risk of being randomly reduced to scrap at a moment's notice her Captain one toshio AR was furious at this call and asked for that date to be pushed back to him the risk posed to his unfinished Ship by the many Allied submarines which by that point in the war infested the Seas of Japan like a pack of ravenous piranhas was far greater than the threat the Allies might organize an entire Mass Aid just to knock out a single dry do ship no matter how tantalizing a prize she might and AR was nothing if not prophetic his request however was denied and after meeting up with his three escorting destroyers the isak Yuki Kaz and hamak Kazi he got underway at 600 p.m. on the 28th of November the very last day that he could get away with and made off for Kur on board with 2515 Souls made up of 2,175 officers and sailors 300 Shipyard workers tasked with continuing finishing work as she steamed along and 40 civilians also on board was her airwing 50 yoka Shuka mxy7 Oka kamakazi planes terrifying Contraptions which consisted of a rocket motor a 1,180 kg bomb a cockpit some wings and not much else she had been tasked with delivering these to the Philippines and okanawa after her fitting out had been completed as she was still undergoing fitting work while at Sea most of her watertight doors and hatches were left open in order to afford the workers easier access and speed up their work and even more worryingly still many of the manholes in our several layered holes were left open for the same reason it should have only taken 16 hours for shinano to cover the 300 Mar c but as we hinted at rather strongly she was never going to make it the submarine USS Archer fish first detected shano at exactly 8:48 p.m. but for now all remained well and ARB remained confident as shinano had detected the submarine over an hour and a half prior and so was on high alert for her making an appearance things continue to get better too at least for now because when detecting shinano Archer fish had to reveal herself and so shano's Destroyer Escort broke away and scared off the wouldbe attacker AR then found himself at a tactical Crossroads did he a keep his ship dead straight dump the engine order to Telegraph and gun it knowing full well that he could outrun a submerged submarine or did he B move in a defensive zigzag pattern lest his eagerness to get away inadvertently make him easy pickings for any other Allied submarines in the area and he chose option b as a result of this Choice it was only a matter of time until Archer fish caught up which she did no later than A4 to 10: p.m. when shano's Lookout spotted the submarine returning to the surface in order to recharge the batteries it used for underwater running history could have been changed right then and there the artif fish had been caught with its pants down and was a sitting dark but alas no despite the most tempting opportunity before him ARB ordered his escort to not engage and maintain their formation fearing that the almost too good opportunity before him was a trap intended to lure away one of his escorts and leave a nice big opening into which another yet to be detected Allied submarine could duly send some Torpedoes into the isaz was having none of it however and broke off to destroy the Archer fish which would have been but a trifle of a task while it's out vulnerable on the surface but it wasn't meant to be because after some heated discussions over the radio in which arbe told the Destroyer about the importance of respecting Rank and obeying orders it returned to formation he did change his approach however as he ordered his motly flotilla to put the submarine behind them aim dead ahead and punch it finally having twigged that the submarine he could actually see was a far more pressing concern than any potential other danger this worked great for a while anyway as at 11:22 p.m. shano's Rush construction came back to B AR on the rear a bearing had overheated and he was forced to reduce his speed to 80 knots give will take exactly the same speed of Archer fish lest he lose a propeller outright he also couldn't keep going straight forever sooner or later he would have to turn to make course to Kur and when he did it would only be a matter of time until archerfish was back on top of him at the perfect side for an attack that time came at 2:56 a.m. when ARB turned shano Southwest a mere 8 minutes after that at 3:04 a.m. archerfish had more or less closed the Gap and submerged to begin making its attack run her Captain Commander Joseph Enright ordered a full volley of torpedoes prepared and then he slowly closed the Gap even more and waited for the perfect moment to strike which happened a few minutes later when shano turned due south and point Ed her entire exposed side straight at Archer fish en Rice gave the order to fire at 3:15 a.m. and sent six Torpedoes right at the perfect Target before him then he immediately dived 400 ft because between the reload time of his Torpedoes and the inevitable depth charge reprisal from shano's escort he knew he wasn't getting another chance to take that shot four of those Torpedoes found their target the first struck towards shano's Stern destroying and subsequently flooding an empty aircraft fuel storage tank and killing many of the engineers who were sleeping in their quarters above it the second also struck the stern right at the very back in fact in an engine room immediately costing shinano the use of her propeller and half of her engines as water poured in the third torpedo hit further up the ship striking dead on a boiler room immediately putting it out of action flooding it and killing every man on duty there the final one is an anti-aircraft gun magazine causing an enormous explosion that took out an adjacent compressor room damaged a control station as well as an oil tank had shano been built properly this wouldn't have been her end make no mistake it certainly wouldn't have been ideal and getting home no doubt would have been quite the arduous task but things touch would would have been fine in the end but shinano wasn't built properly and so the freezing water of the Pacific Ocean just kept pouring in and in and in through all the many holes in her internal bulkheads and of the precious few efforts that could be made to save shinano or at least delay her sinking all but none of them were actuated her office RB included were convinced that the four torpedo impacts represented no ultimate danger to them they were in a carrierizer after all this led to shinano maintaining Full Speed Ahead which only served to Ram yet more water into her ever filling up Hull it took only minutes for her to begin listing at 10° starboard and this soon increased to 15° come 3:30 a.m. at this point AR began to grasp the true reality of the situation and began ordering for frantic efforts to save the ship but nothing he tried worked from having hamaz and isak a tower to counter flooding compartments it all came to na shinano ultimately slipped beneath the waves at 10:57 a.m. taking 1,435 Souls with her are they included in that moment she also became the largest ship ever sunk by a submarine even until this very day this Goliath of a ship very possibly history's first ever super carrier had barely survived 10 days in commission and not even 24 hours at Sea and so that ends the tale of the shinano As for the matter of whether or not she as a super carrier we'll leave that up to you to make your own mind up it's such a subjective question that there's little point of trying to authoritatively answer it today what we will do however is take the time to clear up a few things about her that don't really fit into the main body of the video remember when we said that we know surprisingly little about her that wasn't us overhyping the situation to be dramatic it really is shocking how little we know this cap on knowledge is the result of the fact that the shinano was constructed in near total secrecy was barely in commission for 10 days and and the fact that as the war was looming towards its end the Japanese Navy burnt basically every bit of paper about her so scanned is information on shano in fact that there are three known photos of her literally just three there's this one which comes from the area reconnaissance flight we mentioned in the last chapter this one which is her on the bottom of the sea today and this one which was taken by pure fluke as she by a random Japanese civilian who just happened to have his camera on him it's a weird thing to say when discussing something so modern but we really do know bugger all about her in the grand scheme of things with that in mind let's also explain where we got the bulk of our information from today because the lack of information out there about shinano can lead to secondary sources varying shall we say and so it's worth being transparent just in case what we have said today doesn't line up with your own reading and this is what we used the Imperial Japanese Navy by Anthony wats and Brian Gordon of all the books we considered using this one was the most open about what we didn't know and thus we deemed it the most likely to be reliable
