Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Jap ghost fleet in Truk Lagoon

Where a big piece of what was left of the Imperial fleet went to the bottom....this would be heck of a place to dive:

http://www.readability.com/read?url=http%3A//www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2335607/Worlds-biggest-ship-graveyard-Tropical-waters-South-Pacific-hide-haunting-wreckage-World-War-II-battle-left-60-Japanese-warships-rusting-lagoon-floor.html

Cool pics, thanks for the link.

A friend went there to dive for about 2 weeks.

He had a fantastic time. He basically lived on the big diveboat for most of this time, and his total costs were quite reasonable he thought.

Here is a neat picture of a Japanese car which was in one of the ships.



Yes, I know that you are all thinking "Northern Dave could fix that up good as new!"




My friend's pictures were great too, and made me want to take up diving so I could do the dives too!

John

Is that a Camry?

my dad was a Navy photo recon analyst on Espiritu Santo in 1943-4, looking at the daily P-38 photo recon and counting ships and planes at Rabaul and Truk and other bases, so they could plan bombing missions. Bet the "day after" BDA pictures didn't have much left to count at Truk.

Do they allow divers any souvenirs, or is that forbidden?

it is reconized as a cemetery, war memorial, and nothing is allowed to be removed.

Was a crushing blow to the Japs. Years ago I saw a documentary by Jacque Cousteau on Truk Lagoon very interesting to say the least.

[video:youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=KCaqEkRKiCo[/video]

The video clip is narrated by the guy who worked the "Twilight Zone" series. Rod Serling, (sp)?

i remember seeing that on Jacques Cousteau when I was a kid in maybe 1970! not much seems to have disintegrated, I remember that car!

Poole

Some Japanese swords from Truk , the land not the lagoon.








Mike

Truk was Japan's Pearl harbor. Seems they didn't learn the lesson they taught us.

A big blow to their supply chain they never recovered from.

What is the saying about amatures discussing strategy and professionals discussing logistics?

The whole Jap fleet should have been attacking the Southern Suez canal, not holding islands.

Diving in Truk is a worthy bucket list item.

We were supposed to stop at Guam on my first WestPack. A bunch of us got dive certified in the PI and were looking forwards to diving the wrecks off Guam.

Guam wrecks are deep, take your helium.

Really, we were told there were some at no more than 40 feet. That would have been a bummer. We did stop at Townsville Australia, nice dive on the Barrier Reef.

While living on Guam ('63-'65) I had occasion to pick up a lot of debris and ammo from the coastal waters and interior of the island. Generally the ammo recovered from water, though not serviceable in the sense it could be chambered and used, was still "dry" inside. Thus did I burn much gun powder and blow the bottom out of a charcoal grill with exploding .50 BMG primers. Friends of mine found grenades that still worked, much to their chagrin. Thankfully they were faithful to the old war movies and threw the grenades after pulling the pin.

A fellow I knew faintly had a predilection for bringing artillery shells home and removing the fuzes. For a short while he was getting away with burning the explosive out and when mating the shells with dummy fuses had a nice display in his room, mostly of Japanese arty and anti-aircraft shells.

About a month after I met him they scraped his remains off the carport ceiling. The quarters were made of steel reinforced concrete, to include the roofs.

Point of all that, just because it looks old and harmless and the war was a long time ago...that stuff can and will bite you if you give it a chance.

Don't take that to the bank. I dove all over the island and saw the residue of but a single small wreck that was less than 100' down and that was in Apra Harbor.