Yasukuni Maru (1930)
 The Yasukuni Maru on her maiden voyage (1930)
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The Yasukuni Maru ( Japanese 靖 国 丸 ) was a combined ship of the Japanese shipping company NYK ( Nippon Yūsen Kabushiki Kaisha ) put into service at the beginning of the 1930s , which was requisitioned by the Imperial Japanese Navy shortly before the start of the war in the Pacific (1941) and closed was converted into a submarine support ship. The ship, named after the Yasukuni shrine of the same name , belonged to the two-unit Terukuni Maru class and was laid down as the second ship of this type on April 22, 1929 at the Mitsubishi shipyard in Nagasaki . After being launched on February 15, 1930, it was commissioned on August 31, 1930. In 1944 the Yasukuni Maru was lost in a submarine attack, with very high losses.
Technical details
The Yasukuni Maru was 160.47 m long (maximum) and 19.51 m wide. The average draft was 9.10 m, but could increase to 11.28 m when fully loaded. (This value is also used in the adjacent information block.) The machine system consisted of two 10-cylinder Krupp Germania diesel engines with a maximum output of 14,368 PSe (on two shafts). With a maximum of 114 revolutions per minute , the ship could reach a top speed of around 18 knots (approx. 33 km / h). With economical voyage (10,000 PSe, 15 knots) and with a full fuel supply, this amounted to around 3,200 tons of diesel oil , the arithmetical sea endurance was around 31,000 nautical miles . The ship had four cargo hatches and two large cargo booms to accommodate general cargo .
Up to 249 passengers could be accommodated on board (121 in first-class, 68 in second-class and 60 in third-class cabins). Since the ship was to operate primarily in tropical and subtropical climates, including the Indian Ocean , all interior areas had air conditioning . The cabins were of very high quality, had wood paneling made of ash wood and separate, adjustable ventilation. The crew of the Yasukuni Maru consisted of a total of 177 people, 56 of whom were responsible for command and operation of the ship and 121 for looking after the travelers. From the mid-1930s, for the first time on a ship on the route from Japan to Europe , there was also a radio telephone on board, which enabled passengers to call ashore from on board. However, this service was reserved for first-class travelers and was accordingly expensive - a three-minute call cost around 30 US dollars in 1937 (which would be around 530 US dollars today and adjusted for inflation).
The journey on board the Yasukuni Maru was generally considered to be comparatively expensive: For example, travel in first class from Japan to Shanghai was charged at 189 US dollars in 1935; For the trip to Europe, especially to London , Marseille and Hamburg , the price in the same year and in the same class was around 500 to 600 US dollars (according to today's value between 9,200 and around 11,000 US dollars).
Conversion to a submarine escort ship
On October 29, 1940, the Yasukuni Maru was requisitioned by the Imperial Japanese Navy and, from October 30, it was docked at the naval shipyard in Kure for the purpose of converting it into a submarine escort ship . This conversion lasted until the beginning of January 1941. Additional tanks for fresh water and fuel (for delivery to submarines) were installed, and storage rooms for spare parts, ammunition and up to 42 reserve torpedoes were set up on board. The ship, now completely in green-gray camouflage, received an armament consisting of six older 15.2 cm L / 50 type 41 guns - these were former naval cannons from 1912, which were used at times as medium artillery Kongō- class battleships used but had been in storage since the early 1930s - and composed of four 13.2mm Type 93 anti-aircraft machine guns. In addition, the ship received two searchlights. When fully equipped, the water displacement was now around 19,000 tons. The crew grew to 343 men (seafarers and technicians) as part of these renovations.
period of service
After commissioning in August 1930 and after completion of the test runs, the Yasukuni Maru ran under Captain Naoichi Segawa on her maiden voyage on September 22, 1930 , which took the ship from Yokohama and via Hong Kong , Singapore and Suez to London and Hamburg .
Pre-war period
After the maiden voyage had ended again in Yokohama in May 1931, the ship served this European route continuously in the following years. From 1932 onwards, the ports of Naples and Marseille were included in the route plan. These trips were largely calm and uneventful. In the summer of 1933, the Yasukuni Maru rescued five Chinese sailors whose junk was in distress about 30 nautical miles south of Shanghai in a storm. In addition, the ship's infirmary treated several sick sailors on the Japanese school cruiser Asama in April 1934 in Port Said , including a patient with appendicitis . In 1936 the Yasukuni Maru also brought the Japanese Olympic team to the Olympic Games in Berlin in Germany . During this time, the ship made a profit despite the high prices and was almost always fully booked. Until 1937 the ports of call and ports of call were added, so the European voyages started optionally from Kobe , Kitakyushu and Osaka . The ports of Penang , Colombo and Aden were also included in the route plans on these voyages . This successful passage was served until mid-1939.
After the international and had specifically however, exacerbated the situation in Europe from the late 1930s ( Sudeten crisis , German invasion of Czechoslovakia in March 1939, the beginning of the second Sino-Japanese War in 1937), the rides of were Yasukuni Maru to Europe gradually reduced. After the ship had brought the members of the Japanese embassy in Prague, which was dissolved after the German invasion, back to Japan via Hamburg in March 1939 , there was only one more voyage to Europe in late summer 1939. At the end of August 1939, a total of 240 Japanese citizens were evacuated from Hamburg because of the threat of war. After the outbreak of the Second World War on September 1, 1939, the Yasukuni Maru remained in Asia and from then on was only used for a short time on the Pacific route to the United States . This decision was also made against the background that the Yasukuni Maru's sister ship , the Terukuni Maru , ran into a German sea mine on November 21, 1939 off Harwich and sank. Although there were no victims to complain about, the incident had caused considerable diplomatic tensions between (the still neutral) Japan and the German Reich , although both countries had already come closer politically (see the Tripartite Pact of 1940). In order not to expose the Yasukuni Maru to similar risks, the ship only operated in the Pacific. Destinations here included San Francisco and Los Angeles as well as Hilo and Honolulu in Hawaii and Manzanillo in Mexico.
At the end of October 1940, also against the background of the emerging tensions in the Pacific, the combined ship was requisitioned by the Imperial Japanese Navy on October 29, 1940 and on the following day it was docked at the naval shipyard in Kure to be converted into a submarine support ship to become.
Use in World War II
After the completion of the conversion work, the Yasukuni Maru was put into service as a submarine escort ship under the command of Kaigun-Taisa Sekimoto Orinosuke on January 11, 1941 and the 1st submarine squadron ( Kaigun-Shōshō Sato Tsutomu) of the 6 . Fleet (submarine fleet) assigned. The ship's bases were initially Yokosuka and Okinawa . From December 1941 and immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor , the escort ship was stationed on Kwajalein and temporarily supplied the submarines of the 4th U-Boat Squadron. There the Yasukuni Maru was damaged on February 1, 1942 in a surprise attack by carrier aircraft of the US aircraft carrier Enterprise by bombs on the rear and had to be repaired in Kure by the end of April 1942. On May 1st, Kaigun-Taisa Mori Ryo, a new commander came on board.
Between May and autumn 1942, the ship served again in Kwajalein and Truk as a mostly stationary submarine depot ship. At the end of 1942, the Yasukuni Maru moved to Palau and was used from there for several supply and replenishment trips to the large Japanese base in Wewak ( Papua New Guinea ) in order to strengthen the garrison there (Operation HEI-GO). Among other things, the ship transported parts of the 20th Infantry Division from Fusan (in Japanese-occupied Korea ) to Wewak, with over 1,400 soldiers and eleven trucks on board. Further operations of this type took place in January and February 1943, with parts of the 41st Infantry Division being brought from China to Papua New Guinea, where the ship suffered slight damage when it hit the ground off Wewak in mid-January.
After a major overhaul in Kure in March 1943 and a supply trip to Balikpapan in May 1943 (during which time a new commander came on board with Kaigun-Taisa Seki Tei), the Yasukuni Maru remained as a stationary supply ship in Palau until October 1943. At the end of 1943 the ship finally moved back to Japan for an overhaul in Yokohama . As part of the worsening war situation for Japan, Yasukuni Maru , who was in Yokohama, was called in as early as January 1944 to be used in a troop transport and supply operation to Truk . This venture, the convoy also included the Yasukuni Maru , the two auxiliary cruisers Aikoku Maru and Akagi Maru and three destroyers , should result in the loss of the ship.
Downfall
The convoy left Tateyama on January 25, 1944 and headed for Truk, with more than 1,200 people on board the Yasukuni Maru , including over 500 submarine technicians and submarine drivers and 369 members of the 222nd Navy -Construction Battalions.
The voyage was initially uneventful, on the night of January 31st to February 1st, 1944, around 2:00 a.m., however, the US submarine Trigger (under the command of Lieutenant Commander Robert E. Dornin) discovered the convoy 250 nautical miles northwest of the Hall Islands . The submarine initially shaded the ships in the dark with its radar for around two hours and carried out two different attacks, whereby seven torpedoes were initially fired unsuccessfully (!). The three destroyers securing them (who had no radar) did not succeed in locating and fighting the submarine.
The trigger circled the convoy and at 3:58 a.m., standing on the port side of the convoy, fired one last torpedo fan at the ships. Only 90 seconds later, two torpedoes from this compartment hit the Yasukuni Maru on the port side of the forecastle. Only seconds later, a serious subsequent explosion, presumably because a storage room had been hit with reserve torpedoes, shook the motor ship, which then broke apart in front of the bridge and sank within five minutes. The destroyer Shiratsuyu then searched the place of the sinking, but was only able to save 43 survivors in the dark and in the floating debris field. 1,188 sailors, soldiers and technicians, including Kaigun-Taisa Seki, sank with the ship.
The attacking submarine escaped without damage, but was lost around 14 months later off the Japanese coast with the entire crew. The Yasukuni Maru was removed from the ship register on March 10, 1944. The location of the wreck is unknown.
literature
- Jones, Edward M. / Roderick, Shawn S .: Submarine Torpedo Tactics: An American History . McFarland & Company. Jefferson (NC) 2015.
- Maru Magazine: Japanese Naval Operations in WW II . (Maru Special No. 29), Maruzen, Tokyo 1984/1986.
- Watts, Anthony J .: Japanese Warships of World War II . Doubleday. New York City (NY) 1967.
- Williams, David: Wartime Passenger Ship Disasters . Haynes Publishing. Sparkford 1997.
Web links
- History of the ship at combinedfleet.com. (English)
- The Yasukuni Maru at the Wrecksite-Database. (English)
Footnotes
- ↑ Note: This value is an estimate. In some sources, the distances differ widely. NavSource Online and Combinedfleet, for example, report the attack on the convoy at 2:00 a.m. (around 300 nautical miles northwest of Truk), but at the same time state that the ship is said to have sunk around 4:00 a.m. - and this again only at 17 Nautical miles from Truk. The transporter cannot possibly have covered around 280 nautical miles in two hours (?). In this respect, the information must be viewed critically.
- ^ Jones, Edward M. / Roderick, Shawn S .: Submarine Torpedo Tactics: An American History . McFarland & Company. Jefferson (NC) 2015, p. 82.
- ↑ http://www.combinedfleet.com/Yasukuni%20Maru_t.htm