Japan's Secret Supercarrier Only Seen Twice in WW2

this video was sponsored by world of warships in 1944 the Imperial Japanese Navy was desperately searching for ways to keep US forces from encroaching on their home islands b-29s were already bombing Japan's cities he occupied Philippines were in conflict of u.s. troops trying to reclaim the area they needed to halt the Philippine liberation and repel any further attacks against the homeland in response Japan decided to build a single ship to roll them all it would be a secret super carrier that was to conquer the oceans as a floating invincible weapon its existence but a closely guarded secret not only to accrue a single American reconnaissance aircraft and a single American submarine after its launch the Shinano was a desperate attempt by the Japanese to take back initiative in the Pacific following the Battle of Midway in which the United States struck but military historian John Keegan called the most stunning and decisive blow in the history of naval warfare for the Japanese the 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credits premium ship USS Charleston and one port slaughter the invitation codes only available to new players who are registering on the wargaming portal for the first time the battle ship becomes a super carrier the Shinano was initially designed as an enormous battleship to go along with the smaller Musashi and Yamato battleships this project changed well in development due to the Krypton loss of Japanese carriers during the Battle of Midway soon Anna was altered so it could become the largest carrier at the time the ship was named according to Japanese tradition after a medieval town its existence and development were kept tightly under wraps concrete walls and a roof were built to hide the dry dock and workers were not allowed to leave their assigned positions during 16-hour shifts the dock was off-limits for those not involved in the construction the secret Dilys canipe 8 I supervised the security of the duck all employees working on the shenana were threatened with strict punishment from mentioning the new ship and it's been suggested that even execution was on the table for those who broke the code of silence it was essential for the Japanese to keep the supercarrier in their drydock number six at the Yokosuka Naval Shipyard an absolute secret if the United States got so much as a whiff of what they were up to the enemy nation would be compelled to send bombers to Tokyo Bay and stop the project before it was anywhere close to being completed the Japanese were also heavily counting on the element of surprise for intimidation they wanted the massive terrifying super carrier to show up in the Philippines almost out of nowhere and strike fear in the enemy's heart as a result of the strict policy the secret was kept the Shinano was one of the only major warship in the 20th century that was never professionally photographed during construction in fact only two valid photographs of the ship have ever been released the picture taken by reconnaissance craft from 9800 meters in altitude on November 1st 1944 and a picture taken by a civilian on a tugboat who captured one of the first sea trials of the ship the battleship had been scheduled to be finished in April of 1945 but after the instructed changes to make it a carrier and the massive losses suffered at American hands and the Battle of the Philippine Sea production was pushed to its limits Japan feared that the US would bomb the Japanese islands from their military bases at the Mariana Islands a deadline was set for October but no additional workers could be hired efficiently so the existing workers were pressed into around-the-clock work the monstrous carrier was completed and ready for trials on November 19th 1944 not the intended deadline but close to it the first launch had actually taken place on October 8th arguably meeting the deadline but the super carrier was not finished at that point with a length of 872 feet or 265 meters with a weight of sixty nine thousand 151 metric tons at normal load shenana was the heaviest carrier at the time and could carry 2,400 crew members and officers the carrier was well armed with sixteen 40-caliber dual-purpose guns which had a range of sixteen thousand one hundred yards or fourteen thousand seven hundred meters they could fire up to eight rounds per minute it also had fifteen triple gun mounts of light double a guns which could shoot around a hundred and ten rounds per minute intended to take down enemy aircraft but recognized as mildly inadequate to take down high speed moving targets due to poor movement blinding muzzle flashes in strong vibration it could also hold four dozen fighters for self defense but his main purpose was intended to be an unusual hybrid support carrier that could carry weapons fuel and repair facilities for Japan's remaining aircraft carrier fleet she was massive and well equipped to fend off almost any surface or air attack a bad omen shinato's giant sister battleships had been having tough luck Musashi had been taken down at the Battle of Leyte Gulf while Yamato had suffered significant damage by the time Sri Nana was commissioned but before that the new super carrier had an incident that made superstitious workers stay away with panic and fear on October 8th 1944 the ship was almost ready four months ahead of the original plan that day the caisson used as a dry dock which weighed five thousand tons gave in and cracked yielding to the vast amount of water which lifted the carrier and slammed it against the docks headwall has more than a hundred mooring lines tour the shenana was pushed back and forth by the motion of the water until the water levels inside and outside the dock matched thankfully there were no casualties there were only a few injured crew members the bow structure of the carrier was damaged and repairs lasted until October 26th pushing the whole operation back wounded soldiers and construction workers had to be replaced but no one wanted to take those jobs Japanese sailors were superstitious and - then the ships incident was a bad omen a promise of something worse yet to come the existing crew and the forced new members saw a blow to their morale confident the grand supercarrier would be lost [Music] Construction challenges when the Imperial Japanese Navy saw an urgent need for a heavy heavily armored carrier to transport reserve aircraft fuel and additional weaponry that made several questionable decisions the plan to turn the battleships unfinished hull into a carrier and the Russian of construction had a profound detrimental effect on construction and testing of the new ship assigned to the ship captain Toshio abate worried about the level of completion and the depth of testing for the aircraft carrier when his ship was commissioned to Yokosuka on November 19th 1944 it was ordered to depart by the 28th and requested an extension which was denied his executive officer brought up concerns about his carrier's watertight compartments High Command had not carried out standard air pressure tests to ensure they were in fact watertight particular concern was shared about an American submarine attack causing seawater to enter the ship if the compartments were not as watertight as intended additionally worries were shared that the unusual passages that went down the entire length of the carrier might limit their ability to quickly respond and carry out an evacuation the crew was not drilled on exit procedures for emergencies which at the moment was not a point of consideration for a bay the ship also had unsealed holes in electrical cable bulkheads ventilation ducts and some pipes aside from the exposed materials fire emergency materials were not present and the fire mains didn't even have pumps the crew although made of experienced men did not know how to use the portable pumps found on the ship the crew of the supporting destroyers the Esso caused a trauma caused a and Yukie caused a were also exhausted from only three days of repairs right after the Battle of Leyte Gulf before embarking on this new mission further signs of mistakes and insufficient checks came in the form of malfunctions all over the ship out of the 12 boilers and the carrier only eight were operational and out of those only six were turned on [Music] American Pursuit since the request for an extension had been denied Shinano left for curry where the ship would undergo a final fitting out before heading for the Philippines and Okinawa on November 28th at 6 p.m. captain tercio ah they would be promoted to Rear Admiral for completing the mission they had a crew of 2,175 in addition to 300 shipyard employees and 40 civilians the unfinished watertight doors were left open for ease of movement and access through the complicated passages shenana was expected to carry 20 fighters 20 bombers and seven Scout planes to the Philippines but to careí it would be transporting six Geneo boats and 50 oka rocket-powered kamikaze planes the journey to Korea was scheduled for 16 hours however the ship would only travel 400 three hours before it was detected by the Americans at 8:48 p.m. commander Joseph F Enright of the archer fish submarine Sasha nah no on the radar and decided to follow the ship on a parallel course after an hour and a half of this chase the crew of Shinano detected the enemy following them Shinano had the technology to outrun the submarine but was advancing in a zigzag to avoid other submarines slowing it down to the archer Fisher's pace at 15 minutes to 11 the ESO caused a broke formation to investigate the submarine captain hobby believed the submarine was trying to lure the destroyer away so a Wolfpack could overpower them he ordered the ESO caused a back so they could try and outrun the archer fish while they did speed away after just a few hours they had to slow down to avoid problems with overheating submarine versus supercarrier the archerfish had a sense of the stern a nose direction and relentlessly followed and took captain ah they made a grave mistake and turned Shinano Southwest at 3:00 in the morning direct the end of the submarines path Archer fish submerged advancing to the east and commander Enright prepared his torpedoes Shinano practically gave the archer fish the perfect shot at 15 minutes past 3:00 commander Enright had launched six of his torpedoes and dropped four hundred feet deep into the ocean to avoid retaliation four of the six torpedoes struck the carrier the stern took the first hit which flooded storage compartments and sleeping quarters the engine room flooded from the second hit the third boiler room flooded from the third hit as did the two contiguous boiler rooms in the starboard air compressor room took on the fourth hit rupturing an oil tank captain Ave is said to have dismissed the damage as controllable partially because he held American torpedoes and contempt for being weak and inaccurate he kept the ship at maximum speed which in turn only increased the flooding once the damage could no longer be ignored odd I changed course to nearby Schiano Point at around 4:20 in the morning the captain ordered the port outer board tanks to be flooded to come to the weight of the flooded areas and keep the ship stable this worked for very little time and by 5:00 a.m. the 40 civilians were being evacuated via the destroyers allegedly only doing it because they were in the way at the crew it was evident that the ship would go down when the engines shut down by 7:00 a.m. the captain tried having the Destroyers tow the carrier but they could not handle the massive weight and the cable snapped the carrier lost all electric power by 9:00 a.m. and soon after the captain ordered all the crew to abandon ship the ship sank 65 miles from Japanese land secret syncing enlighted the attack the carrier was erased from the naval register and those rescued were kept in isolation to avoid having the press hear about it the sinking was kept as good of a secret as the construction so much so did the US Office of Naval Intelligence at first did not believe commander and rights claimed to have sunk a carrier due to the insistence of n rights claim and to the commander submitting a drawing of the ship he attacked he received credit from the acting commander of the Pacific Fleet submarine force for sinking a high Ataka carrier the United States would only discover the truth and award commander and right with a Navy Cross once the war was over thanks for watching and thanks again to world of warships for sponsoring this video an offering duck docks viewers this exclusive offer click on the link in the description below and use the invitation code battle stations 2020 to receive free bonuses as first-time wargaming users [Music]

Channel: Dark Docs

Views: 3,103,853

Keywords: secret, ww2, aircraft carrier, super carrier, supercarrier, documentary, history documentary, japan, wwii, usa, world war 2, history, battle, america, education, history channel, Shinano, ship

Id: MGDcx1t8dyk

Length: 13min 7sec (787 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 09 2020

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[u/BoogerSmoke]

“Grand Opening, Grand Closing”