Japanese aircraft carrier Chūyō

	Chūyō at anchor, Truk, 18 May 1943
History
Japan
Name	Nitta Maru
Operator	Nippon Yusen Kaisha
Builder	Mitsubishi Shipbuilding & Engineering Co., Nagasaki, Japan
Yard number	750
Laid down	9 May 1938
Launched	20 May 1939
Maiden voyage	23 March 1940
Fate	Transferred to the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1942
Empire of Japan
Commissioned	25 November 1942
Renamed	Chūyō, 31 August 1942
Stricken	5 February 1944
Fate	Sunk by the submarine USS Sailfish, 4 December 1943
General characteristics (as converted)
Class and type	Taiyō-class escort carrier
Displacement	18,116 t (17,830 long tons) (standard); 20,321 t (20,000 long tons) (normal);
Length	180.2 m (591 ft 4 in) (o/a)
Beam	22.5 m (73 ft 10 in)
Draft	7.7 m (25 ft 5 in)
Installed power	25,200 shp (18,800 kW); 4 × water-tube boilers;
Propulsion	2 × shafts; 2 × Kampon geared steam turbines;
Speed	21 knots (39 km/h; 24 mph)
Range	6,500 or 8,500 nmi (12,000 or 15,700 km; 7,500 or 9,800 mi) at 18 knots (33 km/h; 21 mph)
Complement	850
Armament	4 × twin 12.7 cm (5 in) dual-purpose guns; 4 × twin 25 mm (1.0 in) AA guns;
Aircraft carried	30

Chūyō (冲鷹, "hawk which soars") was a Taiyō-class escort carrier originally built as Nitta Maru (新田丸), the first of her class of three passenger-cargo liners built in Japan during the late 1930s. She was requisitioned by the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) in late 1941 and was converted into an escort carrier in 1942. She spent most of her service ferrying aircraft, cargo and passengers to Truk until she was torpedoed and sunk by an American submarine in late 1943 with heavy loss of life.

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