Wrecks of WWII Carriers Kaga and Akagi Located


  • Battle of Midway: World War Two Japanese carrier wrecks found

    21 October 2019

    Deep sea explorers have found two Japanese aircraft carriers that were sunk in battle in World War Two.

    The carriers were among seven ships that went down in the Battle of Midway, a major air and sea battle fought between the US and Japan in 1942.

    One ship, the Kaga, was discovered last week, while wreckage from another carrier, Akagi, was found on Sunday.

    Until now only one other ship sunk in this battle had ever been found - the American vessel USS Yorktown, in 1998.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-50124313


  • Ya saw this on my cell phone this mornings news. Pretty cool.


  • Thank you, Marc. Always good to see news like this.


  • The discovery is well-timed: Roland Emmerich’s new Midway movie is set to be released on November 8, 2019. The trailer can be accessed here: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6924650/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1


  • @CWO-Marc yea that looks worth checking out even though I’m not a fan of woody.

    18,000 feet deep. Quite the accomplishment. When i read the article I had forgotten that the carriers and a light cruiser on the last day of the battle were the only Japanese ships sunk. Seems odd, even with only planes vs ships


  • @barnee said in Wrecks of WWII Carriers Kaga and Akagi Located:

    When i read the article I had forgotten that the carriers and a light cruiser on the last day of the battle were the only Japanese ships sunk. Seems odd, even with only planes vs ships

    Actually, the outcome reflects good tactical judgement by Admirals Spruance and Fletcher, who were the commanders on the spot. (Fletcher was technically in overall command, since he was senior, but in practice the two American groups – the Hornet/Enterprise group commanded by Raymond Spruance and the Yorktown group commanded by Jack Fletcher – operated fairly independently. Once Yorktown was sunk, and Fletcher had transferred his flag to a cruiser, Spruance was the only carrier commander left in the game.) The Americans were vastly outnumbered at Midway, and not just in carriers; Yamamoto committed about half the Imperial fleet to the operation, if you count all the groups of forces he deployed. The Americans, following Mahan’s principle of going all-out for the enemy’s capital ships (defined in Mahan’s time as his battleships, but by 1942 being redefined as his carriers), concentrated all their attention (and their limited bomber resources) on Kaga, Akagi, Hiryu and Soryu and sent them to the bottom. Also important, but less well-known, is the fact that Spruance, once evening came, steamed eastward (meaning away from the Japanese forces) in order to avoid risking his precious two remaining carriers in potential night-time surface combat (at which the IJN excelled) against the still impressively large Japanese armada. He and Fletcher had eliminated Yamamoto’s key pieces, the carriers, for the loss of just one US carrier (the patched-together Yorktown, which had taken a beating at the Coral Sea shortly beforehand), and that in itself was enough to make Midway a US victory of enormous strategic importance. Even the Japanese recognized this; they briefly considered taking another crack at capturing Midway by sending in their battleships (including Yamamoto’s flagship, the 18-inch gunned Yamato) to bombard the island prior to staging an amphibious landing, but soon gave up on the idea and turned west to head for home.


  • @CWO-Marc
    yea Spruance steaming away at night was a smart move. I wonder if Halsey was in the same situation if he would have. I kinda doubt it


  • @barnee said in Wrecks of WWII Carriers Kaga and Akagi Located:

    @CWO-Marc
    yea Spruance steaming away at night was a smart move. I wonder if Halsey was in the same situation if he would have. I kinda doubt it

    Agreed. Ray Spruance was an excellent combat officer – he and Halsey spent the last few years of WWII alternating command of the 5th Fleet / 3rd Fleet, which was actually the same force whose name got switched every time the two admirals rotated, much to the confusion of Japanese naval intelligence – but he was very different from Bill Halsey in terms of style and personality. Spruance was precise and analytical; he certainly didn’t lack aggressiveness (when he made a decision to attack, he sent in “everything that wasn’t bolted to the flight deck”), but before making his decision to attack he would carefully weigh all the factors of the situation, which sometimes translated into over-cautiousness. Halsey was a hell-for-leather type – sort of the naval counterpart of George Patton – whose fighting spirit greatly inspired his men (the enlisted sailors loved him, not least for the fact that he could drink and swear as well as any of them), but this sometimes translated into recklessness. After the war, someone – I think it was Spruance himself – said that it would have been better if Halsey has been in command at the Battle of the Philippine Sea (where the IJN lost hundred of planes and pilots, but managed to save the bulk of its fleet) and if Spruance had been in command at the Battle of Leyte Gulf (where Halsey fell for a Japanese decoy operation, and compounded his error by leaving no covering force to guard the San Bernardino Straight).

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