Soryu aircraft carrier had a cruiser-type machinery that gave it an excellent speed of more than 34 knots. The ship had limited protection, the machinery receiving 45mm armour along the belt and 25mm on the deck above them. The magazines were also protected with 56mm horizontal armour.Soryu‘s defensive armament was composed by six twin 127/40mm AA guns and fourteen twin 25mm AA gun mountings. The starboard side armament abaft the two funnels were enclosed to protect the servers from the boiler gases. It had two hangars in double-deck arrangement, the upper was 158.5 meters long and the lower 128 meters long.The composition of her embarked wing varied during the course of the War, and in the last operations carried 57 operational aircraft and 15 in reserve. At the Battle of Midway, it shot down 12 aircrafts from the USS Yorktown aircraft carrier, but in turn was attacked by Yorktown‘s dive bombers and was sunk after a huge explosion caused by two bombs that penetrated into the upper hangar and generated a serious fire.
