Between the time the carrier was laid down in 1929 and launched in 1931, however, the Navy doubled her aircraft stowage requirement to 48 in order to give her a more capable air group. She was also designed with only a single hangar, which would have left her with an extremely low profile (there being just 4.6 meters (15 ft 1 in) of freeboard amidships and 3.0 meters (9 ft 10 in) aft). To keep Ryūjō 's weight to 8,000 metric tons, her hull was lightly built and no armor could be provided, although some protective plating was added abreast the machinery spaces and magazines. Her crew consisted of 600 officers and enlisted men. She displaced 8,000 metric tons (7,900 long tons) at standard load and 10,150 metric tons (9,990 long tons) at normal load. She had a beam of 20.32 meters (66 ft 8 in) and a draft of 5.56 meters (18 ft 3 in). Ryūjō had a length of 179.9 meters (590 ft 3 in) overall. While Ryūjō was under construction, Article Three of the London Naval Treaty of 1930 closed the above-mentioned loophole consequently, Ryūjō was the only light aircraft carrier of her type to be completed by Japan. Ryūjō was planned as a light carrier of around 8,000 metric tons (7,900 long tons) standard displacement to exploit a loophole in the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 that carriers under 10,000 long tons (10,000 t) standard displacement were not regarded as "aircraft carriers". She was sunk by American carrier aircraft at the Battle of the Eastern Solomons on 24 August 1942. Ryūjō next participated in the Battle of the Aleutian Islands in June. During the Indian Ocean raid in April 1942, the carrier attacked British merchant shipping with both her guns and her aircraft. During World War II, she provided air support for operations in the Philippines, Malaya, and the Dutch East Indies, where her aircraft participated in the Second Battle of the Java Sea. With her stability improved, Ryūjō returned to service and was employed in operations during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Small and lightly built in an attempt to exploit a loophole in the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922, she proved to be top-heavy and only marginally stable and was back in the shipyard for modifications to address those issues within a year of completion. Ryūjō (Japanese: 龍驤 "Prancing Dragon") was a light aircraft carrier built for the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) during the early 1930s.
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