Aikoku Maru
 Aikoku Maru
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The Aikoku Maru ( Japanese 愛国 丸 , dt. "Land love , patriotism") was a Japanese cargo and passenger ship that was used for military purposes during the Second World War and was sunk during Operation Hailstone .
history
The ship was built for the shipping company Ōsaka Shōsen KK (today Shōsen Mitsui ), which was based in Ōsaka , and could carry up to 400 passengers in addition to the cargo, 48 of them in the first class, as many in a special third class department and 304 in the normal third class. The Aikoku Maru was actually supposed to operate between Africa and Japan together with its sister ships Gokoku Maru and Hōkoku Maru ; however, this plan could never be realized.
In the same year it was requisitioned and rebuilt by the Imperial Japanese Navy ; from September 5, 1941, the Aikoku Maru was registered for the Japanese Navy. The 38-year-old Okamura Masao became the commander. The ship was armed with eight guns, four torpedo tubes and machine guns; there were also two reconnaissance planes. The Aikoku Maru was a fast ship and was preferably used for reconnaissance trips. She was involved in the sinking of the St. Vincent in December 1941 and was then used several times against American freighters.
On July 16, 1943, she was hit by the Halibut submarine and badly damaged. After it was repaired, the Aikoku Maru was primarily used as a troop transport.
On February 16, 1944, the Aikoku Maru anchored in the Truk lagoon to hold ammunition and 400 men from the 1st Amphibious Brigade . While the ammunition was stored in the foredeck (hold 1), the soldiers were accommodated aft (hold 4). The loading was carried out in a hurry, as an American air raid had to be expected at any time.
On February 17, 1944, the Aikoku Maru wanted to make her way to Rabaul when she was attacked east of Dublon (today Tonoas) by bombers and torpedo planes of the aircraft carriers Intrepid and Essex . The ship had anchored that day near several other ships such as the San Francisco Maru and the Nippo Maru on the channel between the islands of Etten and Dublon des Chuuk Atoll. A photograph from the early hours of the day of the sinking shows it still undamaged, but at dawn it received the first bomb hit and a fire broke out on board. At around 8:15 a.m., the ship was hit by bombs three more times. At 8:30 a.m., a TBF Avenger torpedo bomber attacked the Aikoku Maru and landed a hit in the area of hold 1 that immediately detonated the ammunition stored there. In the course of the detonation, the TBF Avenger was also lost. Either pilot James Erwin Bridges and his crew Robert Ellis Bruton and James Albert Greem fell victim to the explosion or their aircraft was hit by anti-aircraft missiles from the Aikoku Maru . The exact fate of the aircraft's crew can no longer be ascertained, although the shelling of the Aikoku Maru is documented photographically. A huge explosion on board created a cloud that looked like a mushroom cloud . She rose within a few seconds and just as quickly the destroyed ship sank. At least 450 people, possibly up to 1400 people, were killed. On March 30, 1944, the ship was deleted from the ship register.
The remains of the ship, which is at a depth of 60 meters at the position 7 ° 22 ′ 22 ″ N , 151 ° 54 ′ 42.6 ″ E. lies on the ocean floor, was discovered and documented in 1969 by Jacques-Yves Cousteau and his crew. At that time the bodies of several hundred soldiers were still in the wreck. Numerous bones were recovered and partly buried in the 1980s, partly burned according to Shinto tradition, and other mortal remains of soldiers are still in the ship. A plaque commemorating the dead was placed on the deck of the wreck in 1994.
literature
- Alberto Vanzo, Aikoku Maru , in: Egidio Trainito (ed.), Adventure wreck diving. On the traces of sunken worlds , White Star Verlag, Wiesbaden 2009, ISBN 978-3-86726-120-3 , pp. 206-209
Web links
Footnotes
- ↑ a b c d Aikoku Maru. PacificWrecks.com, accessed May 21, 2015 .