"Diving the Yamashiro wreck" _Russian_English

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• published: 06 Jan 2012
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Мировой океан хранит в себе сотни, если не тысячи, загадок. Некоторым из них века, некоторым годы или десятилетия. Одна из таких недавних загадок – место гибели японского линкора «Ямаширо», который затонул на юге Филиппин в последнем крупном столкновении между японским и американским флотами Текст: БОРИС КОЛЬЦОВ, ЕЛЕНА КОНСТАНТИНУ LOST IN THE DEPTH World Ocean is still a place concealing multitudes of secrets – some of them ancient as time itself, some of them relatively new – just centuries or even dozens of years old. One of the more recent mysteries is the sinking of Yamashiro, a Japanese WWII Battleship that was sent to the bottom of Surigao Straits, Southern Philippines, by US Forces in the last major naval battle of the Second World War. Ever since, historians have been arguing about the exact location of Yamashiro’s final rest, and the 60-year old argument is still continuing. John Bennett, the former champion in deep scuba diving, made it the purpose of his life to resolve that mystery, people say that even his 1000-foot record-braking dive was aimed more at attracting enough sponsors to find the elusive battleship than at record-breaking as such. Alas, John died tragically, before he could live the dream of his life – touch the Yamashiro with his own hand. NARRATOR: John Bennett went diving exactly because he was attracted by the mystery of sunken ships or “wrecks” as the divers call them. As you swim along a wreck claimed by one of the wars, he said once, you feel your link to human history, you see the ship and you feel it, you become one with it for that short duration of a deep dive… The depth, however, was not the only thing that attracted John to Yamashiro, although the battleship is supposed to be anywhere from a mind-boggling 350 to 500 feet. There was more to it than the sheer challenge of the depth: no one had seen the battleship since the night of its sinking, and John wanted to break through the shroud of mystery, to be the first to discover it in its watery grave. In the fall of 1997 the remains of once-mighty Imperial Navy of Japan set out on one of its last voyages. Their target was the Gulf of Leyte where the US forces were engaged in a major landing operation in order to secure an all-important strategic beachhead in the Philippines. The biggest Japanese force under the command of Vice Admiral Kurita was approaching Leyte from the North, spearheaded by the two super-battleships Yamato and Musashi, still considered by many the most powerful and beautiful warships ever made. Another force, somewhat less powerful, was closing in on Leyte from the south, going through the Surigao Straits. The southern force was based around two sister battleships, Yamashiro and Fuso. Both of them were about 600 feet long and 100 feet wide, with the tall superstructures that the Americans dubbed “Pagodas” amidships, slightly toward the bow. Kurita’s northern force of the IJN was experiencing setbacks from the very start. It was detected and identified by a US submarine when it was still quite some distance from Leyte and was attacked by US aircraft more than once. Suffering losses and slowing down, it was still steaming ahead. The southern force commanded by Rear Admiral Nishimura seemed to be much luckier at first. It reached as far as the Straits of Surigao practically undetected by the enemy, they were only attacked once, early in the morning of October 24, on the eve of their mortal combat. In the evening of the same day the IJN warships led by the battleship Yamashiro entered the narrow Straits, steaming full seed ahead, toward the American beachhead on Leyte. At the exit from the Straits, however, their luck seemed to have run out, for there, lying in wait for them, was deployed a huge assembly of American naval forces. Nishimura’s two old battleships, four destroyers and one heavy cruiser all of a sudden faced a grouping of six battleships in the classic battle line formation across the straits, reinforced by dozens of cruisers, destroyers and PT boats. Seven Japanese major ships against 43 American ones, not to mention the 39 PT boats. Did Nishimura know they were there? Yes he did, he had exact reconnaissance about the force waiting for him, but he still pressed on with his squadron, straight into the deadly trap. Why did he decide to proceed on what was looking more and more like a suicide mission? We will never know for sure now, but he probably decided to engage the superior American fleet mainly to distract the attention from Kurita’s force, approaching Leyte from the North. Kurita’s force, consisting of five battleships, 12 cruisers and 13 destroyers, 30 ships all in all, seemed