San Francisco Maru
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The San Francisco Maru was a passenger cargo ship that served as a transport for the Japanese Navy during World War II .
history
The ship was built in March 1919 by the Kawasaki shipyard in Kobe , Japan as a freighter for the Yamashista Kisen Line.
The ship entered service on March 14, 1919. It was measured with 5,831 gross register tons, 117 meters long and 15.5 meters wide. The San Francisco Maru had two coal-fired boilers and was powered by a single steam engine built by Kawasaki . It had a crew of 40 men. On November 30, 1920, the San Francisco Maru was in Fremantle, Western Australia, the port of Perth . In 1922 she was converted into an oil powered ship.
During the Second World War , the ship was requisitioned by the Japanese Imperial Navy and used in the naval transport department for equipment and ammunition supplies. In May 1943, there was an air raid by the Allies to Wewak ( Guinea damaged).
It arrived in Chuuk on February 5, 1944 in a convoy. The convoy continued on February 12, 1944, but the San Francisco Maru remained on site because the cargo had not yet been unloaded. On February 16 and 17, she was attacked by bombers from Essex and Yorktown and subsequently hit by six 500 kg bombs. The ship immediately went up in flames and sank stern first.
The wreck lies upright on the seabed at a depth of 70 meters. The deck cargo included both trucks and battle tanks. The holds were fully loaded with mines, torpedoes , bombs, artillery, anti-tank and small arms ammunition, aircraft engines and parts, as well as oil and gasoline drums. On the port side of the wreck, which was discovered in 1969 by Jacques-Yves Cousteau in the Truk Lagoon and identified by the found ship's bell, is a type 95 Ha-Go tank . It weighs 7.4 tons and has a 37 millimeter cannon. In contrast to this very well-preserved vehicle, other tanks on the starboard side show clear traces of the fire. These tanks also apparently slipped over each other when the ship sank and were badly damaged in the process. On the wreck itself (position 7 ° 31 ′ 7 ″ N , 151 ° 39 ′ 56.3 ″ E ) the traces of the fire are mainly on the bridge.
swell
- Vincenzo Paolillo: San Francisco Maru. in: Egidio Trainito (Ed.): Adventure wreck diving. On the trail of sunken worlds. White Star Verlag, Wiesbaden 2009, ISBN 978-3-86726-120-3 , pp. 210-213.
- San Francisco Maru. from seawolfproductions.com, accessed August 29, 2010 .
- San Francisco Maru. on pacificwrecks.com, accessed August 29, 2010 .
Footnotes
- ↑ According to Vincenzo Paolillo, the attack took place on February 18.