Talk:Chitose/@comment-111.110.112.113-20131230062513/@comment-1637496-20140115023352

>poor RJ was built on a transport hull

Ryujo was purpose-built actually, she was supposed to displace under 8000 tons (standard load) to exploit a loophole in the Washington Treaty which didn't consider "carriers" those that were under that tonnage. The Japanese discovered the hard waythat it's impossible to make a decent carrier displacing so little and before that the London Treaty closed that loophole.

>She was so badly-designed they had to remove her island.

That's also a signature of all the "fast" ship conversions (, there's no island), only the slow Junyo and Hiyo had islands.

Actually all those ships were built with conversion in mind as part of a "ghost" carrier fleet and it's said that their design was heavily influenced by Ryujo; Zuhio class were almost as good as Chitose class (Chitose class was one knot faster and she could carry three more aicrafts), the failure between those conversions was Ryuho, who hasn't been implemented in-game yet, she emerged with less speed than planned, her hull was structurally weak and her underwater subdivision was less than optimal, as result she was used almost exclusively as training carrier.