IJN Aircraft Carrier Kaga

Designed for the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) as a Tosa-class battleship, Kaga was built as an aircraft carrier and commissioned in 1928.  At that time, it was equipped with three flight decks to increase the number of airplanes it could launch and recover, a feature copied by the Gamilas "aircraft carrier" starships in Leiji Matsumoto's anime Space Battleship Yamato.  In this configuration, Kaga was one of the Japanese warships to attack China in January 1932, and its fighter pilot Toshio Kurowa became the first Japanese pilot to shoot down an enemy airplane, destroying an American volunteer's Boeing P-12 with his Nakajima A1N biplane. 

To improve its speed and first-strike capabilities, Kaga was rebuilt in 1935 with a single 816-foot flight deck and large (albeit poorly-ventilated) below-decks hangars, and was sent back to China for the second Sino-Japanese War.  By the time Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941 and forced America into World War II, Kaga carried the Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighter, Aichi D3A Val dive bomber, and Nakajima B5N Kate torpedo bomber.  Its aircraft hit six American battleships (Nevada, Oklahoma, Arizona, California, West Virginia, and Maryland) and destroyed dozens of American airplanes.

By the summer of 1942, the Americans were pushing west across the Pacific, and Admiral Yamamoto ordered four carriers to attack the American base on Midway Island.  The U.S. Navy met the IJN at the Battle of Midway, the first naval battle to be conducted purely by air raid.  Dive bombers from USS Enterprise (CV-6) attacked Kaga, starting large fires on the flight deck and hangar deck.  As the airplanes were being refuelled and armed on the flight deck, their weapons exploded, setting the whole ship on fire.  Kaga was scuttled by the destroyer Hagikaze and sank within minutes.  Its shipwreck has yet to be found.  This model of Kaga is on display aboard the museum battleshup HIJMS Mikasa in Yokosuka, Japan.

This is my 800th military-themed picture, which is rather a lot considering that I am personally a pacifist.