The Wreck of IJN Kaga - Burnt And Broken On the Seabed
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- Опубліковано 29 чер 2024
- Few ships suffered quite as much damage before sinking as the aircraft carrier Kaga. This ship was burnt and blasted to the waterline, and barely recognizable as an aircraft carrier after being bombed at The Battle of Midway. One of the most famous sinkings of any ship.
Her wreck, however, would prove elusive. While debris was located in 1999, the main wreck would take another twenty years to find. Kaga was only found in 2019, by RV Petrel. Who gave a fairly detailed survey, followed up on by EV Nautilus in 2023.
As could be expected, considering the recorded damage, Kaga is a mess. Most of the ship is burnt down to the waterline, and even this is often filled with damage craters. Only a few parts are truly recognizable, such as the secondary battery.
Kaga is, for all intents and purposes, ruined. One of the worst condition wrecks that is, technically, in (mostly) one piece. That doesn't, however, mean she isn't worth looking at. She remains a very interesting wreck to examine.
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I mean, the fact that the multiple bombs and that fire did not sink her outright shows she was a tough ship.
It's not enough that a ship resists sinking. If it's fire controls, engines and weapons are knocked out, then the ship is no longer a warship. And of course Kaga's crew was basically killed! The same happened with the Bismark, it was basically disarmed in 25min then it became a floating wreck.
She was a formidable ship and the destruction was massive. Nice work Wade McCluskey but to those who sailed her, rest in peace.
Dusty kliess made the shot on the big red dot on her flight deck. wades bomb missed but he did lead them into the fray
@@user-cn6gk1ip8j True, but Dusty was assigned to McCluskey's group and he was the one who found the main body. Nice work by all to turn the tide of the battle, and the war.
Pay back is a bitch ! They started it at Pearl Harbor . They had it coming
Dispite her awful state, like many other "destroyed" wrecks. I still find them very beautiful in a tranquil sort of way.
Does anyone know where the love of God goes,when the waves turn the minutes to hours? - G. Lightfoot
That illustration of Kaga's damage in Shattered Sword made Petrel's images even more somber. Especially the shots of parts like the anchor chain that somehow survived the violence that ruptured the ship's rear.
IIRC a former Kaga crew was asked to describe Kaga's condition prior to her sinking by drawing over a Kaga's sketch. He instead just erased everything after the island and that became the basis of the illustration
Part of me believes that if she'd not have been originally built as a battleship with the battleship belt she maintained somewhat, the explosion probably would've split the carrier in half
Battlecrusier
I always hang out to watch these videos every Sunday night.
6:24 This is the barbette for one of Kaga's secondary battery of 7.9 inch guns casemate guns, specifically those on the starboard side, and you can see the roller bearing track the gun would have rotated on. These were original to her battleship design, and were retained for the possibility of surface engagements, probably before anyone realized that sailing a massive target loaded with high explosives and aviation gasoline in range of even a destroyer was a remarkably bad idea. Funnily enough, pictures of Kaga fitting out show three on each side, while her major reconstruction added two more per side, possibly reused guns from the former twin mounts on her bow, possibly to counteract the weight of the double-stacked hangar deck above. There would have been a roof over these guns integrated into the side plating that would have held them in place, but with that missing the gun emplacement likely fell out when Kaga sank. To the right you can see the decking that was installed to surround the base and help the area shed water in heavy seas, since this was fairly low down on the ship. The angle brackets are still, somehow, holding on, and the curve of where the plating joined the barbette is still visible at the bottom right.
12:58 That is most definitely her degaussing cabling. You don't see it in the vicinity of her casemates because the degaussing cable actually went up and over this area. Which is probably one reason why the degaussing cables are sagging in places, as they were snapped in multiple places and now just dangle from their mounts.
13:47 Kaga's entire bow is buried deeply into the mud, so deep in fact that her bow crest is deep under the silt. Here you can see the bend in her hull caused by impact with the bottom, and sprung plates along the deck edge (aka the sheer strake) that shows just how hard she hit. Seeing as Akagi's bow crest and some of her stem are still visible, I'd wager that most of Kaga's structure above her armored deck was torn off by hydraulic forces early in the sinking and she planed down into the bottom fairly hard.
14:28 This is probably Kaga's port bow, in the vicinity of the base of one of the 127mm AA gun sponsons. A great deal of Petrel's imagery is from her port side. The hull isn't blown out here, but rather curved to fit the 127mm sponson. I would not have wanted to be a member of her crew that had to walk that catwalk though, as this position isn't terribly far above the waterline.
14:47 This would be roughly amidships on Kaga's starboard side, where Hagikaze's torpedoes delivered the scuttling blow.
14:52 The barbette for Kaga's number 2 casemate gun.
15:28 The circular feature is the capstan for Kaga's stern anchor, though the capstan, chain, and everything else is gone. Kaga's boats were handled by cranes attached to the flight deck supports, and there was a 'boat deck' over this space for her boats to be stored on. This is probably the most interesting area of Kaga's wreck (to me) because it gives some great insights into the dynamics of Kaga's sinking. This part of the ship often gets overlooked, when I think it's the most interesting part.
I blame my brother for this..... he got me hooked on this channel. These videos are interesting as all get out! Well done. Love the work you put into this look at a very violent history of the 1940's. We need to never forget this. Thanks!
Thanks for the upload, Skynea. Take care.
It is sad to see the ship in such a destroyed state kaga has always been one of my favorite aircraft carriers
The U.S.Navy learned some terrible lessons from Pearl Harbour. All those layers of paint on decks, walls and bulk heads will burn.
I Imagine some of them must have been glowing red. Terrible.
Great video on assessing the damage. Drach & Parshall did the same soon after Nautilus made a bunch of videos.
I hope someone finds Hiryu & Soryu so you can do areview.
Not suprising, seeing as she burned and suffered internal exposions for hours after the initial attack. She took the most hits out of any ship at Midway and damage control teams were wiped out very early on. Shattered Sword's image of her prior to being scuttle is pretty accurate it seems. I'd day when Soryu is found, she won't be any prettier.
Skynea, you think you can do a depiction of the wreck of IJN Nachi, the first Myoko class heavy cruiser to sink.
Those carriers were tinder boxes and the decks and ladders glowed orange. Fire mains cut early on. Just a complete conflageration that was unstoppable.
I've often wondered why the IJN admiralty chose to retain those sponson-mounted secondaries. They were obsolescent when Kaga was sent to be converted to a carrier, and they were useless antiques by 1942. The men assigned to working them would have been far better employed as full-time damage control parties, and the magazine spaces relegated to miscellaneous storage or, better yet, refrigerated storage for food or fresh water bunkerage.
Perhaps kept them for ballast. I read somewhere long ago, they weren't used - as in weren't manned.
Because doctrine. Carriers were seen as scouts for the main battle line and they may get into a gunfight with enemy scouts. Lexington class carriers also had 8" guns too for this purpose
@@aslamnurfikri7640 True. But Lexington's 8" battery was in turrets with much greater firing arcs than Kaga's sponsons. They were the same mounts used on Pensacola-class cruisers and were included in the original carrier conversion plans drafted in 1921-22. However, soon after her commissioning the utility of the 8" battery came into question. Engaging an enemy to port risked putting the flight deck out of commission due to blast damage. These complaints were duly noted and mounts for some form of dual-propose guns were tentatively slated for sometime in the Thirties, budget allowing. Furthermore, the space taken up by their barbettes was desired for extra hangar space. As it happened, the useless 8" turrets were removed in March 1942 while the Lex was in Pearl Harbor, which were then re-purposed as part of the harbor defenses. However, due to the urgent need for more escorts, the dual 5"/38 mounts planned for Lexington weren't immediately available. Consequently, several 1.1" quad-mount "Chicago pianos" were installed instead. Lexington was lost in the Coral Sea before the correct AA suite could be fitted, and the lack of adequate high-angle heavy AA likely contributed to her sinking. This history shows that in the USN, the gunnery doctrine for carriers was amended years before WWII to greatly emphasize air defense. Large caliber guns had to be dual-purpose, whereas the IJN failed to appreciate the significance of their own carriers and left two of their most powerful fleet units wasting displacement on guns fit only for WWI battles against torpedo boats.
While most of this is correct, Japan relying on full-time DamCon parties was why their DamCon was so bad…
I suspect the reason the guns are in so much better shape than anything else is that the steel there is *so* much thicker than anything else on the ship
The fact that the Kaga was laid down as a battleship and in converting to a carrier left her side armor in place contributes to being intact below the armor belt. To keep the ship's weight down the upper decks including the flight deck was quite light. If the Japanese had eliminated the 7.9in guns they could have saved a lot more weight, space and personnel, but like the USS Saratoga the thinking was they could fight as a cruiser. The US deleted the 8in guns on the Saratoga and used the magazines for bomb storage. Other magazines stored AA ammo. Without the damage control of US ships the fires destroyed all four carriers.
Her whole wreck site looks like Titanic’s stern.
You sir, are officially that guy, congrats !, on a warship channel, years of warships with no mention of that word, you had to go ahead and mention titanic on the sinking of a Japanese carrier, 👌
I know I know, bringing up Titanic is a bit cliché, I wasn’t trying to be cringe by bringing up that lovely old ‘four stacker’, her wreck’s current condition just happened to be the perfect comparison for my statement.
@@BradyT-gg5 fine since you where a sport about it lol
Great video
When this beautiful ship was afloat in the last hours, everything above the former battleship hull (for2/3 of her lenght) literally disappeared😶 hard to think that a ship can be massacred so much
Always very interesting and well presented content Skynea History and always a thumbs up from me. 👍
From what I read, one of the SBD bombs hit either directly in front of the island or on it. With no real reinforcing armor, it was crushed or collapsed in the explosion that followed.
She hit bottom damn hard, which caused a lot of damage to the wreck. Look at the crater around the hull!
I guess if standing next to the bow, someone would be taller than it.
When she was badly damaged some of the crew already in the water saw her hit by a US Submarine Torpedo which didn't Explode.. { no surprise there }.. the warhead broke off.. and the crew used the body as a life float until rescued. I think the Sub was called the USS Nautilus .... Spooky.
I'd dare say the debris field is whats left of the flight deck.
She is marvelous.
I don’t think the gun at 9:55 is a 5 inch. Those had a simple monobloc construction, whereas this gun has a distinctly separate liner and jacket and a hoop that extends about 1/3 of the length from the base.
Excellent video though, with so much damage I really can’t tell what I’m looking at in most of the pictures.
Its not really surprising for me that Kaga survived for so long even though she had been blown up from the inside, because if you go to 1:35 you can see that Kaga's hull is still very intact because she had been converted from a Tosa-Class battleship meaning that she had very tough hull armor even if it was reduced to some extent from the conversion. Honestly if the Japanese had actually properly inspected the ship, they probably could have came to the conclusion that they could attempt o tow her back to Japan or the Philippians and get her atleast able to make steam for Japan for further repairs, but that probably would have resulted in either the ship being scrapped, or repaired as a functional fleet carrier in maybe late 1943.
To be fair Kaga's repair would consume money, time, material, and man hour that could be better spent elsewhere. It's just not economically feasible to rebuild Kaga
When Kaga- along with Akagi, Soryu, and Hiryu- went down to the bottle, along with Japan's dream of Empire- at least military empire, as the years after 1945 were to show.
Another warrior.
Very interesting ship n plus if repairs were to happen I wonder what happened if she been involved in other famous battles.
Likely the fire and explosions compromised the integrity of the keel making repair not possible. It is interesting to ponder, though.
Considering the state of Japanese naval construction, even if they had through some miracle towed the burnt out hulk back to Japan, I don’t see them as being able to get her reconstructed into something useful in any kind of timeframe to be involved in other famous battles. They were stretched to the limit just to get Taiho and some of the Unryus into the water and with the latter, it was so late they couldn’t equip their air groups.
Proves the old American addage, " F.A.A.F.O. "- those Dauntlesses, they werent kidding around.
If you know me.......... you know, I am weeping like a fucking baby.
Cant recommend "Shattered Sword" enough. It is easily tge definitive work on the Battle of Midway and sheds lots of new light.
She is so shattered , I don't how they even identified her?
They identified her by the secondary guns and hull shape. While Akagi carried similar weaponry, the layout was different.
And Kaga, as a converted battleship, has a very distinctive hull form. And a different length than any of the other carriers at Midway.
This was Yammoto flag ship before he changes command to battleship Yamato😮
I notice Japanese wrecks rarely show evidence of their paint. USN vessels you can make out their paint schemes.
The Allies really blew the heck out of Kaga
US Navy.
Most of these historical navy events where simply between the USA and Japan. Not often where other nations there.
Can you blame? After what happened at Pearl harbour
@@BDK86 course not
Everyone of these has been well scripted and put together.
I will say the Japanese navy sure knew how to build a strong capital ships. And so did the Germans.
So dark...
Can do a video on ijn long dong battleship where she is
An Illustrious class carrier would have been able to take off and land aircraft again half a day after the bombing 👻
You're referring to their armored flight decks. Certainly helpful in bouncing Kamikaze's
why does the entire ship seem to be bow down in the water? how was this ship a good idea?
Thanks for the new nickname for my old lady
1st to view and comment haha
add the participation Trophy to your Collection, Kid.
I don't see a comment.
🇯🇵🇯🇵🇯🇵🧙🏻♂
She Basicly melted