Hiryuu (Kantai Collection)

"I'm aircraft carrier Hiryuu. Leave the carrier battles to me, I can fight on against any and all adversity."

- Hiryuu Hiryū (飛龍?, "Flying Dragon") was an aircraft carrier built for the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) during the 1930s. The only ship of her class, she was built to a modified Sōryū design. Her aircraft supported the Japanese invasion of French Indochina in mid-1940. During the first month of the Pacific War, she took part in the attack on Pearl Harbor and the Battle of Wake Island. The ship supported the conquest of the Dutch East Indies in January 1942. The following month, her aircraft bombed Darwin, Australia, and continued to assist in the Dutch East Indies campaign. In April, Hiryū's aircraft helped sink two British heavy cruisers and several merchant ships during the Indian Ocean raid.

After a brief refit, Hiryū and three other fleet carriers of the First Air Fleet (Kido Butai) participated in the Battle of Midway in June 1942. After bombarding American forces on the atoll, the carriers were attacked by aircraft from Midway and the carriers USS Enterprise, Hornet, and Yorktown. Dive bombers from Yorktown and Enterprise crippled Hiryū and set her afire. She was scuttled the following day after it became clear that she could not be salvaged. The loss of Hiryū and three other IJN carriers at Midway was a crucial strategic defeat for Japan and contributed significantly to the Allies' ultimate victory in the Pacific.

Appearance
Souryuu and Hiryuu, being originally designed as sister ships, share many similarities. Namely, they wear color-differentiated versions of the same clothes.

Hiryuu wears a yellow kimono top, with the bottom of the sleeves fading to gray with red stripes. Her bottom is a green pleated skirt. She also wears a flight deck apron like Akagi and Kaga (The kana "ヒ" is inscribed on it). Her full flight deck is attached to her left arm. Unlike most other archer carriers, she doesn't wear muneate.

She has short brown hair.

Trivia

 * Exceptionally high luck as she was the only survivor in Midway while Akagi, Kaga and Souryuu all sank by US air raid and her planes raided and indirectly sank US Carrier Yorktown (Hiryuu herself was later sank, too. Yorktown was damaged by Hiryuu's attack and later sank together with DD Hammann by I-168's torpedoes).
 * Scuttled after the Battle of Midway, 5 June 1942