Design and description
The concept of the class was similar to British merchant aircraft carrier. The class consisted of two oil tankers of 10,002 gross register tons (GRT) that were modified by the Navy to provide minimal anti-submarine air cover for convoys going from Southeast Asia to the Japanese homeland. The conversion consisted of fitting a full-length flight deck, a small hangar, and a single elevator. An island and catapults were not installed. The only other change was the rerouting of the boiler uptakes to the aft starboard side where they discharged in a typical downward-facing funnel.
The ships had a length of 160.5 meters (526 ft 7 in) overall and 150 meters (492 ft 2 in) between perpendiculars. They had a beam of 20 meters (65 ft 7 in) at the waterline and a mean draft of 9.1 meters (29 ft 10 in). They displaced 11,989 metric tons (11,800 long tons) at standard load. [1]
The Shimane Maru-class ships were fitted with a single geared steam turbine set with a total of 8,600 shaft horsepower (6,400 kW). It drove one propeller shaft using steam provided by two boilers. The ships had a designed speed of 18.5 knots (34.3 km/h; 21.3 mph) and a range of 10,000 nautical miles (19,000 km; 12,000 mi) at 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph). [2]
The flight deck was 154.99 meters (508 ft 6 in) long and had a maximum width of 23.01 meters (75 ft 6 in). [2] The hangar, built on top of the well deck, was served by a single elevator from the flight deck. It had a capacity of a dozen aircraft. [1]
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