Merry Christmas everyone and thanks for watching this video and all our videos in 2022. There’s no sponsor for this one and things are looking a bit tougher on RUclips going into 2023, so if you enjoyed this video and want to see us keep making more (and hopefully not be so reliant on sponsorships in future) please consider supporting us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/historigraph - it really does make a difference. Other US Pacific Submarine Videos: The Submarine that Invaded Japan - The Incredible USS Barb: ruclips.net/video/kviX-W-rjBI/видео.html How Allied Submarines Crippled Japan in WW2 ruclips.net/video/m5e0Tor2kMg/видео.html When Five Ships were Sunk in 30 minutes - Ramage's Rampage ruclips.net/video/ZnB82cT1LQI/видео.html
The reason the sister carrier took so many hits is because they were torpedoed from both port and starboard which allowed and caused counter flooding. The US Navy figured it out and applied the lessons learned to the sinking of the Yamamoto. In other words Capt. Enright got lucky.
Actually directly under the escort was a safe place to be. They probably did it on purpose because it hid their own engine noises. And if they dropped depth charges the escort risked blowing themselves up. They would sooner circle back and do an attack from a better vector, but by that time Archerfish would’ve finished the attack and gone deep. It was night so it would be very difficult to hit her with shells.
What intrigues me is that the supercarrier was sunk near it's own coast. They didn't even leave that far from the home islands, and they were already stalked by a submarine. This puts a lot of perspective on how dire Japan's situation was, as they can't even navigate in their own home waters without stressing the possibility of being watched.
I mean, the exact same thing was happening in Europe with Uboats. The submarine's ability to infiltrate was unmatched. As long as there was a submarine base within range, your coastline was never truly safe.
They’re actually not AS large as often assumed. The oft-cited 70,000+ ton displacement figures are at full load (including fuel, ammunition and crew), and their actual displacement is more like 65,000 tons. Which is still bigger than any other battleships that were actually built, but by a significantly smaller margin than often assumed (the next largest battleships were the Iowas at 45,000+ tons each without fuel or ammunition, though they were longer than the Yamatos)
Sadly I think this record will fall in our lifetime. Also there is some question in my mind whether the MOL Comfort was torpedoed in 2013. Keels don't just snap in half like that at random, and consider the political situation at the time.
@@The_Conspiracy_Analyst the America class took 4 weeks to scuttle, and people had to go on board to help out. Sinking one of those would take one hell of an effort
@@titanlord9267 The USS Harry S Truman took something like 8 torpedos to "sink" during wargames when I was on it. So that's a good estimation of what it would take. She a has pretty sophisticated system of bilge spaces around the water line, similar to the old anti-torpedo bulges.
Capt. Abe requested a delay to address serious concerns. I think his only real mistake was following orders to take Shinano to sea. This guy was set up for failure. Mad respect to Capt. Enright for not giving up on the hunt!
This was the IJN at the height of it's hubris. His only other real option was going to his superior officer and going through with seppuku in his office. Then his xo would have been made to take the ship out anyway.
@@majormagnumshow2528 the entire system was set up to fail from the start. There were 300 people for every car in Japan when they bombed Pearl harbor in America there were four people per car. Delusions are pretty common in some societies. We have a lot of people here who think the Japanese were interned and concentration camps in America. Unfortunately this is not true there is a such a thing as a concentration camp and it has a death chamber and is pushing people through it if they aren't working them to death and then pushing them through the death chamber. Every time you lose in the Japanese system you commit suicide thereby taking every lesson they possibly could have learned from a failure to the grave with you. The mission isn't a failure the commander is a failure the mission can't commit suicide the commander can commit suicide. On the American side if they lost a lot of men in the commander came back they gave the guy a cup of coffee fed him a good dinner and asked him what went wrong. Somewhere between the commander's actions the men's actions and the design of the mission improvements were made. In Japan the mission was sacred because the emperor was God and it was failing humans that let down God that caused the mission to fail and those humans need to commit suicide so better people can complete the mission correctly. This love of suicide and refusal to look at the plan instead of the people is an echoing disaster throughout Japanese history. Look at that Fukushima disaster they had a perfectly good set of plans with four or five redundant ways to shut off the radiation and cool everything down in case of the problem but the Japanese people didn't need redundancy. That plan was drawn up by an American idiot and it was a plant designed to be run by a bunch of American idiots with all that redundancy. The superior Japanese engineers thought a single way to shut this down was the answer. Japan is almost consumed itself. At the rate they're going there won't be anything there that isn't radioactive pretty soon.
Well to be fair the ijn had to pick the lesser of two evils. Send it out early and risk submarines or hold it in port and risk bombers. They didn't want Shimano have the same thing that happened to Tirpitz.
And the toilets. German submarines could not flush their toilets while diving, which especially in the latest stages of the war they had to do a lot. And when they then had to quickly change depth at a steep angle, well... Later designs had toilets that coud be flushed underwater, but handling that device required special training. One German submarine got lost through nothing but a mishandled toilet.
Ran across an old guy at a VA hospital when getting my teeth fixed before leaving the Army. He was sitting in the hallway rocking back and forth saying, "Oh me, Oh my, Small fry", over and over and over. When asked, an orderly stated the guy was a WW2 submariner that had survived "X" number of hours of depth charging and hadn't been alright since.
One thing I find funny is that the US Navy didn't believe that the Archerfish had sunk a carrier as large as the Shinano and credited it with sinking a light carrier with a displacement of 27,000 tons. It wasn't until after the war and the US got its hands on the Japanese archives that confirmed the Shinano existed that the Navy retroactively credited the Archerfish and her captain with sinking her and awarding Captain Enright the Navy Cross.
He earned it! I was disappointed that the captains and crews logs/thoughts weren't really talked about. I'm sure they were expecting to get hunted by those destroyers with very little chance of survival after launching those torpedoes.
An "unremarkable captain" maybe, but kudos to him for having the strength and courage to admit that he wasn't performing to the required level and relinquishing command of his previous boat, seemingly putting the lives of his crew ahead of his own career and ambition. That act could have spelled the end of any chance of him ever commanding again. But it didn't, and he went on to better things.
You nailed it. Not only was he successful, but he also paused when he felt he wasn't up to the job. I don't know what he did during the time before he resumed command, but clearly he improved his skills.
Impressive display of patience, holding his course after losing track of the Shinano. And what a payoff: one lone submarine sinks a carrier with just six torpedoes / four hits. It's not surprising he wasn't believed at first. Enright: "I just sank a Japanese aircraft carrier." Pacific Command: "Sure you did. And I'm flying to Mars this afternoon."
Imagine the entirety of Sakura Empire naval force was unable to sunk one of the oldest Eagle Union carriers and your newest carrier got sunk by a pesky little submarine...
To be fair, it wasn't a real aircraft carrier. It was a half assed Battleship conversion. Japan should have surrendered before sending it's young men on pointless suicide missions.
My father in law was a submariner in WW2. USS Shad, SS-235. He did two missions with that boat then one more on another. A Sub Captain was their luck. Any sub Commander who could both go out, complete the patrol and return his command to harbor was a good one in my book. Thousands of ways to die, very few ways to live and damn few to be successful. Iron men among the elite! all of them. RIP Bill
And remember, the only way you knew of a lost sub, was its listing on the overdue list back in Pearl. Their orders were so general in nature and the commanders were given such freedom and leeway to fight the war as the wanted, they usually only came back when they ran out of torpedoes or more rarely, fuel.
A deep water surface sailor salutes the courage of the submariners. The Silent Service. Under "Deep. Deep, Deep beneath the Ocean". Thank you for your brave service. "Single up all lines fore and aft. Cast off all lines fore and aft". "Underway Shift Colors"!. A famous American sailoe name of John Paul Jones, may have said ot best: "i wish to have no connection with any ship that does not sail fast, for i intend to go in harm'a way". If he had been aware of submarines in 18th century he would have mentiined "the boats" of the Silent Service i am sure. RIP all fellow sailors now at peace in the Good Lord God's "Ice Watee Mansion". Amen.
Yup, then ship did more rescue and recon missions than succesful attack patrols mostly because targets were scarce at that time of the war, that mission however more than compensated all the failed hunts
I am a Navy veteran and served on submarines while I was on active duty. Part of our initial training pipeline included a fair amount of submarine history. This incident is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what American submarine warfare was able to inflict upon the Japanese Navy during WWII. Something like 2/3rds of all Japanese tonnage sunk by the US Navy was sunk by our submarines. Wild!
One must also admit that IJN anti submarine capabilities were non existent and their disaster control drill simply substandard, as they proved in numerous sinkings. So this was another sitting duck, which would have been sunk anytime soon.
@@gordontubbs a lot of that had to do with sending liberty ships in basically unprotected. Towards the end of the war anti submarine warfare basically shut down the uboats in the Atlantic. The pby Catalina saw extensive use for this very reason.
The entire Shinano affair is just mindboggling. The IJN convert her from Battleship to carrier but don't have the pilots-the whole reason for moving her was due to lack of aircover- yet they insisted on following through with finishing her as a carrier for a naval air arm that no longer existed. They have the largest carrier in the world at that time and they make it a support hub for the other carriers(again which also lack pilots), then in typical IJN fashion, they continue to ignore even basic antisubmarine warfare precautions and when transferring it between ports for final work, most of the damage control wasn't operational, all the bulkheads are open and she's running her lights like a cruise ship...
When it comes to carriers, how many aircraft they can hold matters less than how many they can OPERATE. For all her size Shinano could operate an air wing about the same size as the British Armoured Carriers, that were almost 40,000 tons lighter. The Essex Class could operate an air wing almost double that of the Shinano, on 36,000 tons fully loaded. Yeah, she was a big carrier, that does not mean she was a GOOD carrier....
Yep, how amazingly stupid a decision it was to convert it to a carrier in 1942 while having such an inadequate pilot training program... it is not even a matter of hindsight, it is pure fantasy arrogance... does the commander of the submarine get any special award for sinking the largest white elephant in all of history as well?? Was it even worth the cost of the torpedoes???
@@mystikmind2005 ironically if he hadn't sunk it the ship might have been more detrimental to the IJN than the USN. It would have taken more resources Japan couldn't spare to finish, the fuel, pilots and planes couldn't be maintained and as a fleet carrier the ship would require constant protection and escort Destroyers that were being used as spare merchant and troop transports by 1944. So yeah, by sinking her, the sub may have done Japan a slight favor. Shinano sinking was definitely a loss, but having such a massive fuel guzzling ship that couldn't even fulfil its intended purpose draining the already insufficient resources of the IJN may well have been worse for the Japanese.
@@grandadmiralzaarin4962 Agree... Honestly, the only use it could be to the Japanese is for propaganda - and hence the reason for keeping the sinking quiet... The only practical use i an think of for it is to strip it down and make it into a fast cargo vessel... or try to sell it to Thailand!! lol
Shinano's captain was so concerned with protecting the ship from an imagined wolf pack that he made it vulnerable enough to the single submarine he knew was following them. If he had let his escort vessels chase off Archerfish to begin with, his assumption about one submarine not being a threat would have been right. But he took so many precautions to the wolf pack that he invalidated his own assumptions
@@looinrims Agreed. While Abe's assumptions were _incorrect_ and ended up dooming the ship, they were not _unreasonable_ assumptions to make. I can't really put too much blame on him for what happened here.
Actually met the sonor officer from this patrol. His wife was in our church choir. He rarely spoke out at events of this group. But he found himself narrating the attack to a rapt 15 years old. I was in awe of this gentleman.
I knew Capt Joe Enright well in the 1970s--We were on the Dover Mass Town Republican Committee together and he was a quiet, modest man--in his 60s perhaps at the time. I also met a WWII bomber pilot who flew 80+ missions over Germany who was similarly quiet and unassuming. Both men exemplified the ordinary Americans who acted like superheroes during the war and then quietly went back to civilian life. When I knew Capt Enright I had no idea that he was a WWII hero with the Navy Cross. Years later, browsing a used book rack, I saw the back cover of a small book featuring a picture ofJoe Enright--Captain of the Archerfish. I grabbed it and studied it--there was no mistake--it was the same guy I had known so well for years in Dover. I bought the book and it's a great story--he had a writer help him write it--and it included many documents from the Japanese post-war archives including the messages and diaries/logs of the Japanese officers on the carrier. After our sub started following the Carrier, the book tells the hour by hour cat and mouse game of the sub chasing down the carrier. A great read!
@@billgreene6926 That's wild, feels like today society needs role models like this. Giving back a responsibility in order to protect others, then making it his responsibility to achieve something completely unheard of, basically and literally taking care of the biggest problem he could've. Not talking about it afterwards is the cherry on top. He probably had to tell the story a million times, maybe by that time it got more interesting to hear others peoples stories. Other than that and not taking pride in actions that resulted in peoples deaths it just seems like the most superhero thing you could do for sure, you get as close as you can to single-handedly ending the war with a single rusty submarine and afterwards don't tell anyone about it, that's literally a superhero movie plot lmao
How is there not a Hollywood movie made about this and the Archerfish captain? It has everything. The journey from a captain who was unsure of himself to sinking a critical ship and achieving greatness.
@@Volvith Makes sense, To Hell and Back about Audie Murphy (starring the man himself) apparently left a lot out and changed some things to appear more realistic to the general public even though all that happened.
I love the story of this and how originally Pacific Command said they sank a battleship first until it was found the Captain had made a drawing of the carrier through the periscope, that he had originally throw in the bin. It wasn’t until one of the crew members had saved it from the bin because in training he was told to never throw anything out that they were able to prove it was in fact a carrier they sank.
The guy that saved that drawing from the trash deserved a big reward, and hopefully got one. If I was that captain this guy would get an on-the-spot promotion and anything else I could think of.
Joe Enright knew he blew it on Dace with his tactics and took the hit for it. Lockwood wasn't even going to necessarily hold it against him on his first time out. That's why he got sent out on Archerfish when he asked for another command.
I never heard of this incident. Thanks for sharing this. I particularly liked the detailed run down of the damage that was done and the flooding as it occurred. Astounding. Inada and his repair crews displayed tremendous courage in the face of certain death. May all of the dead from that war rest in peace.
Despite the size of the Shinano, it was until recently a fairly obscure vessel in WW2 as was its sinking. Many strategically more important battles of the Pacific War were much more famous. I think only two little-known and hard-to-find books in English were ever written about it some decades ago.
I'm a big history buff and have read dozens of books on the Pacific theater and just read about this a couple years ago. I can't recall what book had it. You'd think that sinking a 70,000 ton aircraft carrier would have drawn a bit more attention.
@@timothyhennig80 Imagine the destruction that vessel and its weapon systems onboard could've unleashed had it made its journey, and was perfected. Stopping it later, after it had been finished, with all the escorts and onboard protection would've been very difficult.
I remember hearing this story when I was younger and reading about it in a book. Love the animation and visuals for this retelling of USS Archerfish’s hunt of Shinano. If I remember, the sub was awarded the Presidential Unit Citation when it was discovered what ship she sunk.
Thank you for posting....my dad was a young sailor in the US Navy (8/11/42 - 4/6/46) and was a motor machinist 1st class on the USS Archerfish when they sunk the Shinano. I have read the book Gallant Lady by Ken Henry and was amazed - but this video is the most amazing account of the sinking.
Another great video. Some of the other issues that led to the sinking were: -in addition to the missing 4 boilers, Shinano was also missing a number of her pumps. -The shipyard hadn't sealed the holes for the pipes and cables -Most of the crew had no sea experience -Manholes and hatches were left open for convenience
@@vectorm4 Lol maybe not a moderate storm, but under normal circumstances, those torpedo hits should not have threatened a ship that large. But the Yamato design had some underwater flaws that almost certainly carried over to the Shinano. Musashi once took a single torpedo hit that led to flooding of 4,000 tons of seawater...North Carolina took a similar hit in around the same location yet saw 1/4 as much flooding. In December 1943 a single torpedo hit on Yamato caused the armor joint to split, letting in 3,000 tons of flooding. It didn't help matters that the design has some poor subdivision, and even without an untrained crew the IJN damage control was sub-par.
@@vectorm4 Japan lost many ships due to circumstances that were just bad. Ammunition and fuel on the flight deck getting hit and lighting up the whole ship is one of the better examples. This was due to swapping out aircraft ammunition. I'm not saying Japan had ships that were China level quality (their ships are made out paper, I used to watch their construction yards to keep track of their inventory). But they have been unlucky enough to be hit in ready states that were bad enough to give them the durability of a Chinese vessel rather than the durability of an American vessel (American vessels are VERY DIFFICULT to sink.
@@mandellorian790 Ships hit in port are easier to take down than ready ships at sea. I'm literally a Navy Veteran who was an intelligence analyst that watched China build their ships for a number of years. Yes, American ships ARE difficult to sink and Chinese vessels are made out of paper. Don't speak of things you don't understand, it makes you look like a fool. Especially don't attempt to correct someone when you don't understand the difference between an unattended ship and a ship at battle stations. A ship in port has everything open and a light crew making it near impossible to save. A ship at sea at battle stations has every water tight and air tight hatch sealed as well as a FULL crew to save the ship. Hatches are only open long enough during battle stations to transit through before they are closed. At full ready, you just aren't going to sink a US ship very easily. Next you try to correct someone, figure out if they know more about the topic than you do.
@Jfast Bravo! Thank you for your service. I wish I could pack you up and take you in amd out-of some of these threads to comment on some of these feeds. We need more people like you speaking truth and not just booty chatter that these people type spinning lies back and forth to one another. God Bless you sir!
A couple fun facts about Capitan Enright: One of the main reasons he resigned from Dace was because he was to scared to sink a carrier he found. Two, he got command of the Archerfish because an admiral noticed him playing an aggressive poker game.
The history of Submarine warfare is replete with this theme. The Germans had the same problem....it was known that only a small percentage of Submarine Captains actually were go-getters. The German Naval high command resorted to various measures to try and deter this behavior.....including sackings, radio check-ins, and tactical maneuvers that tried to deter this over cautiousness. Many submarines simply went on safe pleasure cruises and tried to avoid contact or went after contacts that were lone merchant stragglers. I'm sure the Americans did too to some extent. I don't know about the Japanese. If you poked around in the wrong waters with a sub back then it was too easy to get caught. Nobody wants to die in a steel tube underwater in the middle of nowhere.
@@electrolytics One of the most notable things about Theodor Detmers, the man infamous for sinking HMAS Sydney and killing her entire crew in the process... is that under normal circumstances he did his best to NOT kill anyone. He'd done his best to try to trick Sydney into leaving him alone. He didn't want a fight. In part because he knew he was likely to lose the Kormoran... which he did... but also he just didn't take pleasure in killing his enemies. He was notable for keeping dozens of prisoners on his ship for weeks at a time. He didn't want to kill anyone as part of his job. His job was to capture or destroy enemy ships, not to kill their crews. And, well, that sort of thing may have been why Enright hesitated to fire on the Shokaku. The idea of killing so many men, even as an act of war, during a war, just gave him a cold knot in his stomach.
@@electrolytics Japanese subs were actually expected to go after warships (especially carriers) and ignore merchant ships, but it turned out this was A BAD IDEA.
Thank you for this video. I was privileged to know Captain Enright as a child. He lived in my hometown and was friends with my mother. I clearly remember him talking at the local library about sinking the shinano. Your video added much more details about what actually happened to the ship as it sank. I would recommend Captain Enwright's book entitled Shinano! for anyone who is interested in his experience.
Met him briefly at a book signing in his home , a very honest and engaging man . that the US Navy did not believe him and wanted him to accept credit for a small ship if I recall.
@@speak-the-red-letters they never think that their ship will sink , or they will be killed long before they drown I guess. Something like why people went into the Army air corp and fought from bombers , no place to hide and low chances to parachute when the bomber was destroyed in mid -air
Great video. There is even a few fun little addendums and postscript to this (my source being Captain Enright's book, which is one of my rarest finds about the submarine war): *When Archerfish originally spotted Shinano, they consulted their spotting guides in order to find out what they were looking at. Being that the ship was brand new and also one of a kind, the captain was incredibly confused. "The Japanese don't have a 60,000 aircraft carrier", his XO said to him. "The hell they don't, I'm looking at one", was Enright's reply. They initially thought it might be an American carrier, but then they understood that it was so close to Japan it had to be Japanese. *They were finally able to confirm it was a carrier when the signals the US Navy picked up from Japan proved it. *The Shinano was full of workers who were aboard to finish the interior fabrications.
The US Navy also didn't believe that the Archerfish had sunk a carrier that large and credited it with sinking a light carrier. It wasn't until after the war and the US got its hands on the Japanese archives that confirmed the Shinano existed that the Navy retroactively credited the Archerfish and her captain with sinking her and awarding Captain Enright the Navy Cross.
@@everybuddy5924 It also happens in the Offshore industry. I was on a semi-submersable rig, and the civilian welders and pipe=fitters worked until we got onto the drill site, about a 15 day tow.
Although she'd been formally commissioned Shinano was still incomplete. Most notably, many of her watertight doors hadn't yet been fitted and a lot of her bulkheads still had open holes in them for the fitting of pipes and cables. Compounding those problems was the fact that many of Captain Abe's actions immediately after the ship was torpedoed accelerated her flooding.
@@Dayvit78 The doors were there I believe, it was the rubber gaskets that make them water tight that were absent. The Japanese by this point in the war were short many materials, including rubber. They no longer had the ability to produce or transport these items.
@@Dayvit78 She was still fitting out and wasn't really ready for sea, but a US plane flew over and the IJN was afraid she'd been spotted and would be bombed if she stayed where she was, so her captain was ordered to move her.
It’s fascinating how his relinquishing of his position on Dace allowed both him and his former boat to play such pivotal roles in the war. His sinking of the Shinano and his his former ship going after Musashi and Yamato (and their escorts) during the multi day battle of Leyte Gulf. You never know what event might trigger such a chain reaction. Fun fact, Dace would later be sold to the Italians and be renamed the Da Vinci, surviving until the 70s.
Jesus is the love of your life. Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. John 14:27 ✝🌅 Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. Ephesians 6:11 ✝🌅 He that rejecteth me, and receiveth not my words, hath one that judgeth him: the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day. John 12:48 ✝🌅
Absolutely terrifying. I can't fathom the kind of grit it took these men and boys to even be there let alone fight these epic battles at sea. My grandfathers were fly boys - gunners, and what a nightmare beyond imagining that was as well. God Bless all these brave men, whatever side.
Falling out of the sky is more terrifying but the death is quick. Drowning while trapped in a sinking ship or submarine and having your lungs fill with water seems more horrible. Or worse being eaten by a sharks on a feeding frenzy.
War is hell and all those who are forced into it are victims along with the rest of the casualties. If you're lucky enough to survive, it's likely that war killed your soul anyway. Knowing how badly my household trauma affected me, it's a wonder anyone emerges from war still functioning.
Of all the factors involved I would say the experience of the crew, or lack thereof, was the most crucial one. Main reason why Musashi took 19 torpedoes and 17 bombs to sink were her damage control crews, superbly skilled and highly experienced. Shinano, when compared, was basically crewed by raw recruits. An issue compounded immensely by the fact Abe made every wrong decision he possibly could when dealing with the crisis.
I would love to criticize Abe's decision-making, but it feels hard to do as he had incomplete information and we have the advantage of hindsight. I feel in his position most of the decisions he made were probably the correct ones given the information he had
I certainly don't envy Abe and I highly doubt anyone competent would. He knew the ship wasn't ready and petitioned for more time but was ordered out anyway, those are some major reasons to become paranoid. If the ship was actually made up to standard, he truly wouldn't have had anything to fear from a lone submarine and it's pure bad luck that he encountered one that actually decided to engage alone.
Fun fact: Shinano was built in the same drydock that built another, far more successful carrier: Shokaku. Shinano began construction shortly after Shokaku had left that particular slipway. Edit: this is part of why “Japan could have built twice as many carriers as it already had by not building the Yamatos” thing is actually wrong. The number of ships Japan could build was constrained not by the amount of steel available, but by the amount of slipways. Japan only had a grand total of FOUR slipways at the time that could accommodate something the size of a carrier or a battleship, and when the first two Yamatos were being built in two of them, the other two were already busy at work building the Shokakus. Thus, not building Yamato and Musashi gives Japan only two extra drydocks/slipways to build aircraft carriers in, so you only get two more aircraft carriers, even if you have the steel for 6 more carriers. And keep in mind, Japan already had pre-war plans to expand its carrier force in the 1940s with the Unryus and actually completed or almost completed a fair number of them before the surrender: they just didn’t have any pilots to fly off of them.
It is also worth noting that the IJN was arguably one of the most BATTLESHIP-centric of all major ww2 navies. Certainly, they began with a potent carrier force but, by and large, it was seen as an adjunct to the hallowed Line Of Battle. For example, in the Battle Of Midway, the carriers were a separate group, and the so-called Main Force (including Yamato) was over two hundred miles to the rear, contributing absolutely nothing. For most of the war, most of the IJN was fixated on the idea of an eventual Jutland-style showdown between their battleships and the USN, a major reason why most of their BBs just sat around in Japan, as distinct from actually doing very much. That only began to change in 1944-45, but even then the IJN seemed largely clueless.
@@Brslldyeah meanwhile the USN had plenty of oil not to mention steel,pilots,dockyards etc. I mean the US outproduced literally EVERY OTHER COUNTRY COMBINED IN WW2. In short: don’t touch America’s boats lmao
@@7thsealord888 First of all, there really wasn’t anything the IJN could have accomplished by using battleships more aggressively instead of preserving them for a battle that was never going to happen. Take a look at the combat record of American battleships during the war: sure, they were present in a lot more battles, but they didn’t actually justify their involvement (unless the battles were Second Guadalcanal or Surigao Strait), especially when it came to the new fast battleships. They mostly got used as glorified monitors or (for the fast battleships) glorified CLAAs. All that the Japanese really would have achieved by using their battleships more aggressively and more often would have been the waste of even more fuel. Letting them waste away in port was the right call; trying to use a weapon that can’t justify itself in combat is NOT a good idea unless you have no other choice. Second…Japan was actually one of the LEAST battleship-oriented navies of WWII once you look at construction. Keep in mind, almost all of their battleships were things they built back in WWI, with the two Yamatos being their only new battleships. Even accounting for the fact those two were the two largest battleships ever, they actually represented a smaller expenditure of resources and infrastructure (even in relative terms) than the battleships other navies were building at the same time, especially the Germans.
This narrative claimed that the Archerfish had no idea what Shinano's ultimate destination was... and while technically speaking that was true, they did have a pretty good idea. Captain Enright asked his navigator to plot the ship's course and try to get an idea of where Shinano was headed. The navigator plotted her zig-zag course for hours, then finally drew a straight line thru the average of all the zig zagging. He told Enright that He believed Her course to be The Phillipines, which made perfect sense. The biggest problem that the damage control parties aboard Shinano faced was the fact that the ship was not finished and those 300 dock workers they had aboard, working to fit her out on her way to join the fight. They had not installed many of the watertight door gaskets. In those compartments where they had been installed, there were power cables and air lines running from compartment to compartment, preventing watertight doors from being closed to the incoming flooding. The fact that Shinano was rushed into battle before she was ready contributed significantly to her loss. American submarines stationed off Japan were posted there to spend their evenings retrieving downed B29 crewmen from the water. This was their primary job and they were not allowed to engage in attacks on Japanese shipping when seving in this role. The fact that there were storms over Japan that night meant that US bombing raids on Japan were cancelled. That freed up Archerfish (and all other US subs) from this duty, leaving her to pursue targets of opportunity. Had their been clear skies that night, Archerfish would have been obligated to remain on station to rescue airmen. It would seem that Shinano's destruction was the result of converging factors that created the perfect storm.
Japan was not used to have a nemesis. In China they faced a buncho of peasants with rifles. And the regime applied heavy censorship. The problem of having strong disinformation infrastructure is that it disinforms even own decision makers.
@@randomrazrThe resolution of the bottom of the sea is about one pixel for a 3x3 miles area. That is not enough resolution Mapping a detailed grid is expensive. And for any sea bottom below 400 meters, any features of the bottom of the sea are irrelevant for sub operations.
Your vids are among the very best on YT. Well written, well researched, well presented. The narration is articulate and not drowned out by background music. The animations are simple without being simplistic, providing easily understandable visualization of the story without undue flashy splashy bells and whistles. Well done across the board. Thank you for the time and effort you put into this channel.
Used to be a history buff, and read someplace that Commander Enright had preciously talked to an American battle ship commander about battleship weak points. He was told to set his torpedo's at a shallow depth at the top edge of the armor belt. This way the water inflow was from the top in the damaged areas and could not be stopped or the bulkhead doors below could not be closed to stop the water. If the bottom below the armor belt was punctured the upper doors and hatches could be close then compressed air in the below chambers could be used to force some of the water out and keep more from coming in.
Yes; I have Enright's book right here to skim as I watched the video. On p. 150 he talks about how he'd made up his mind to try to capsize the carrier due to its higher weight above the waterline and also habit - for most of the war our torpedoes ran deeper than they were set. And also, because Enright was consciously tossing "the book" - standard operating procedures - aside. "The book" is how he lost his confidence as CO of the Dace, a story he goes into extensively in his book "Shinano!" (Highly recommended) Since people seem curious, tl;dr is that as CO of the Dace he had an ULTRA message giving him the predicted location of a carrier and ordering him to go attack it. His gut and his own senior officers felt the carrier would show up in a different location due to currents (want to know more, read the book). In the end he decided to follow orders, with the result that he and his sub missed the carrier, which he got to watch showing up exactly where his XO, Navigator, and he himself thought it would be. To get back on topic, "the book" called for setting torpedoes at 25-30 feet; he ordered his set to 10 feet.
I was on a World War II decommission submarine and I have nothing but respect for the brave men who served on those submarines because I was feeling very claustrophobic and the ship was not in battle
I needed a book in school for a book report and picked up "Shinano" just because the boat looked cool. Absolutely fired my love for naval reading. The whole book is step by step this hunt.
Thank you so much for delivering this story. I thought I knew most of the major naval battles in the Pacific but honestly I had never heard of this. As my uncle David Burton Swiney was lost on the USS Drexler sinking I have for my entire life absorbed all information about these great historical battles.
Alot of folks, myself included, that have great interest in the US/Japanese sea war of WW2, didn't know of this sinking until hearing about it in this video. I would think that something this monumental would be among the most widely known events but instead, it seems to be one of the most obscure.
@@jamesstreet228 since childhood I have watched every documentary and movie I could find just hoping to find out something about my uncles ship. Turns out a survivor of the Drexler made a You Tube video about it and we never knew of any survivors. Told all about it. I suppose there are hundreds of similar untold stories like these. So many untold stories going to graves with old men and yet sadly so many new stories are being created every day.
This story reminds me of two phases of the war that don't get a lot of publicity but were vital in our efforts against the Japanese. We out did the enemy in damage control and underway replenishment by a huge margin. Both were invaluable to the war effort.
Agreed. A number of less glamorous advances enabled US victory -- code breaking, replenishment, the DC-3 aircraft, proximity fuse artillery, radar onboard aircraft, Victory ships, and abundant fuel of all types.
Yeah a lot of it falls under logistics, like the other huge part that played into the Yorktown, which is our ability to repair and turn around equipment faster than anyone else.
I'm a huge WW2 fan/buff and I actually didn't know about this particular engagement. I've been studying this war since I was a child and still in my 30's I'm learning new things about it I never knew. Thankyou. I will definitely share this knowledge with others. My wife is actually a history teacher and I'm sure she'll love to be able to throw this tid bit of info into one of her lessons.
Hey Historigraph, I absolutely love the use of top down ship diagrams for indicating the flooding and torpedo damage, its very well done. Also, I love how you actually showed the list of the ship by angleing it. When people hear 10 degrees they think its not that much, but actually overlaying a cross section and angleing it at 10 degrees shows how that list is already massive and very noticable. I have never seen this done before, it is great. Also, people are quick to hate on captains for making "stupid" or "wrong" or "bad" decisions, but you always provide much more context than most other RUclipsrs do and you show the fog of war situation (another great example for that being your Midway and Force Z videos). In this case, it doesnt look to me as Captain Abe made a wrong call with changing his course and speed, he did everything right according to the information available to him and his guesswork. He went off the "worst case scenario", a wolf pack, which is a generally a good thing to base your decisions on. The fact that this put him directly in front of Archerfish was just bad luck. This cant be said about the continuing at maximum speed after being hit, but apparently the additional flooding after that was also heavily influenced by the shitty construction of Shinano, as you said. Other ships (especially battleships, and shinanos underwater hull and torpedo protection essentially was that of a battleship) had no problems continuing at high speed after torpedo impacts. All in all, excellent video, as usually. Very good research, very good context, and very good presentaition and visualiation of it. Thank you for your hard work. And I wish you a merry christmas as well :)
I was aware that U.S. submarines were taking their toll on the IJN, but had not heard or read about this story before. Great storytelling and great graphics! Thanks for sharing this with us.
Historigraph is always a must watch, but the attention to detail and visual representations in this video are better than ever. Great video, well done. The Historigraph team deserves credit.
9:58 The painting of Archerfish surfacing in daylight in full view of her dying victim's helpless crew is visually interesting but totally fanciful. With Shinano being attended by three of Japan's most capable destroyers, Cdr. Enright would have been barking mad to surface his boat when a periscope observation would suffice. I suppose the artist, Jaroslaw Wrobel, was chagrined to learn that he painted Shinano heeling the wrong way. Three Kagerō-class destroyers were an odd choice for Shinano's escort. With six 5-inch guns and eight 24-inch Long Lance torpedo tubes, the Kagerōs were cruiser killers; their paltry 18 depth charges were just token anti-submarine armament. The much smaller Shimushu-class gunboats carried sixty or more.
We'll give the artist "artistic license" on that. As for the escorts, I believe it was down to the fact thats all they had available at the time, they had lost so many ships by then.
15:44 The Cavella, on the bottom of the list, is a submarine that you can visit in Texas at Galveston island. I’ve been there twice and she is a pretty awesome boat. She sank an aircraft carrier that participated in Pearl Harbor
Sorry... none of the Carriers Akagi, Kaga, Hiryu, and Soryu, were sunk by a sub, they were all sunk by Enterprise and Yorktown. Perhaps you were thinking of Zuikako?
@@enterprisethesylveon5787 there were a total of 6 for the Pearl Harbor attack, the 4 you listed plus the Shokaku and zuikaku. The Zuikaku was sunk by aircraft, the Shokaku was sunk by the Cavella in 1944 The 4 Carriers that you listed were all sunk by SBD dauntless at the battle of midway in 1942
First video I've seen from this channel and it's good stuff. No unnecessary padding or filler content and no needless editorializing. Look forward to more!
@@mistersalsa And you Pablo, as a coward, didn't do anything for this country, but whine and criticize. Shame on you. And no one cares about Pablo, so go away.
I have been a very in-depth ww2 history buff for about 30 years. Although I mostly focus on the eastern and western fronts. I do delve in the the neglected history of the pacific at times. And I have to say, I have never heard of this ship or battle. Ever... Amazing how massive some things can be and yet its like it never existed. I hope we see a dive of the wreck some day.
There was just so much going on in WW2, I paid more attention to the western front for a long time as well. Now I think the Pacific is more interesting, the biggest most insane naval battles that have ever happened. Men flying out to torpedo ships without even having enough fuel to return, while carrying defective torpedoes! A destroyer charging the biggest Pacific fleet ever amassed. Island hopping with multiple beach landings and banzai attacks. The war in the pacific was absolutely insane.
@@bobbygetsbanned6049when you really read some of the stories and digest it the Pacific was literally like the Wild West of WW2. I was just watching the story of a machine gunner on an island that repelled several bonsai charges and may have killed a few hundred Japanese in one night! Wtf?
"Knowledge is power, hide it well." Even with easier FOI requests, security classifications finally sunsetting, and surviving vets opening up before they go, there will be plenty of stories about WW2 we will never know in any detail. Sometimes that's as it should be.
@@Einwetok my wife had a client a few years ago that was 97 years old. My wife was his caretaker. I had the privilege of sitting down with him for hours one night while he told me his WW2 experiences. I was absolutely incredible. He was a mathematician that was part of the artillery unit. He would make calculations for targeting adjustments on the fly by hand. He told me him and his boys could put a shell in your back pocket if they wanted to.😉 he died a year or so after that. I still think about all the cool stories he told me about being airdropped into France.
I had the pleasure of meeting Cmdr Enright when was preparing to move from he moved to from California to Cataula, Georgia. I was his mortgage lender for his new home. Yes a VA loan. He also ended up moving into my neighborhood. I spotted his WWII service in the Pacific Theater on his DD214. I asked him what he did in the war. He replied, “How about I send you a book?” It was the book “Shinano!” He autographed it. It is a cherished possession of mine. Joseph Enright was a regular guy. I visited his home several times with my wife and children. He loved to talk about the Navy. Unfortunately, he ended up having some memory issues. His wife passed away and his family moved him to Virginia. It was an honor to know him briefly on his journey.
Much respect for you guys covering this. Not only this story, but the very EXISTENCE of this ship is a myth to most. Just another part of WW2 that is understudied. Great work as usual.
Considering that the ship was active less than a day and only a single US sub was involved, I'm not surprised it's relegated to the "odd stories of WW2" section.
Out of curiosity, why did the ship choose the heading that it did? Why not hug the coast on it's way to it's destination? I don't mean miles offshore, but in sight of shore. An unfinished ship can have any number of problems, but especially down 1/3 of it's boilers. It seems like the equivalent of taking a new, just barely flightworthy, aircraft, on a maiden flight across the Atlantic. It leaves no room for suprises.
11:52 Imagine sinking 10 ships and only getting 4th in terms of tonnage for a single patrol. I'm also curious about what the heck Cavalla sank to get 30,000 tonnage with just 1 kill. edit: The Cavalla sank the IJN Shokaku, which was apparently only half the tonnage or her much larger cousin.
But was far more dangerous of an enemy. Shokaku was the ship that sank the original Hornet, and she participated in that and various other operations (including Pearl Harbor) with her sister ship, the two of them being the most dangerous Axis capital ships (and two of the most dangerous capital ships period) of WWII.
Computer game Silent Service have a scenario called USS Cavalla hits the jackpot. It was not avalible to those of us with the game on Commodore 64 tape version though. It seems to have been a carrier.
Thank you for the illustrated presentation. It is astounding that with one sinking, the Archerfish leapfrogged to the top spot in tonnage sunk by a submarine.
I mean.... If you know anything about the Japanese during WW2 you shouldn't feel too bad. I feel bad for the innocent workers much more than the enlisted men
Archer Fish's commander, Enwright, may have been unremarkable compared to many other sub commanders. But, in this instance, he did not give up, was prepared to improvise and did pretty much everything exactly right.
That explanation of Shinano’s demise was outstanding. The graphics were easy to understand and the script was perfect. Well done to the makers of this documentary, I hope it won an award somewhere it certainly deserved many. .
@@jagdson2701 Something that is now considered a war crime, though I am not sure of the nuance of that. But as the old saying goes, its never a war crime the first time. Side note: I always forget the Japanese didn't have sonar, as this attack would have been next to impossible on an American battlegroup. Sonar not only would have told them the sub was approaching, but how many.
@@goldenhate6649 Depends on the target you want to be strafe. Strafing the defenseless/sitting duck combatants such as sailors in the water was, and is, YES it's considered a war crime under international military law. But strafing on tanks, armored vehicles, and other armed ground targets usually it's NOT considered a war crime
@@jagdson2701 I doubt there would be documention on that even if true. However, and i am not some blushing milkmaid, I find it hard to believe we would do that. Then again, the hatred of the Japanese, especially toward the end of the war as the atrocities were made known, maybe it did happen. But, it would require command to take a blind eye. Just my thoughts.
I have so much respect and am in total awe of my Submarine Brothers who went before me. I only hope they are proud of those who tried to carry on in their honor, and make the US Navy Submarine Force a feared adversary. If you want to talk to a hero, find a WWII Submarine Vet, if you can, and chat with him for a while - it will change your life. It is an honor to wear Dolphins because of men like this.
From the perspective of an audience member, it is important to pause and recognize the impressive dedication and hard work behind this intriguing exhibition. I would like to extend my sincere appreciation to all the spice bottle cleaners for their devoted work. Your enthusiasm and passion are truly impressive. Your efforts captivate and entertain the audience, and we genuinely appreciate your commitment. We acknowledge the long hours you tirelessly put in, often without breaks, and the demanding tasks you undertake daily.
I had never heard this story before. Seems like a case where one captain was doomed from the get-go and the other was very lucky and did everything right.
When Isokaze went after Archer-fish, who was on the surface, if the destroyer had not been recalled by Abe, Enright would have been forced to dive the sub which would allow Shinano to get so far past Archer-fish that if Isokaze held her down for just 30 minutes, Enright could never have caught up. Abe should have let his destroyer captains do their job.
@@johnemerson1363 this can be said in hindsight knowing that only 1 submarine was trailing the carrier. In the fog of war, Abe assumed the worst case scenario, which was that there was a Wolfpack of submarines trailing the ship, which is generally the better option. It was simply bad luck that his choice put him in the direct line of archerfish
Reading this Christmas Day 2022...always amazed that there is always something new to learn about WW2. God rest those sailors...even though they were our enemy.
I have never seen anything said about Shinanos loss that was so precise and descriptive. I actually didn't think that there was so much detail to the event that existed. All I knew about the sinking was that it was mostly due to the water tight doors not being installed. Great story! Thanks
Excellent documentary! The description of the inside of IJN CV Shinano is unparalleled. The action report and graphics are suspenseful and accurate . I was on the edge of my seat even though I knew about this sinking!
I read somewhere that as the situation began to deteriorate, Abe intended to give the order "All civilians to the flight deck", but in the panic said "All hands to the flight deck". Unlike on most carriers where there is one main corridor, the Shinano had 2. The crew had been given very little training on the passageways to the flight deck during an emergency, so Abe's mistake saved more lives.
As an old Sailor in the late sixties in Vietnam I really enjoyed this story and video and as such there is nothing more horrifying and sad than a ship sinking taking all those young sailors with it to the bottom~! The Swabbies on those Subs are truly a very special group of Real Men and I have the highest admiration of them.
When I was in bootcamp in the Navy i think I remember them telling me for the average ship you had to swim about 150 yards away from it or else you’ll be “sucked in”. So I can imagine how horrifying it would be. Even if you swim, if you don’t swim far enough…..you’re gonna have a bad bad day. I suppose it’s even further for a ship this large.
@@ShadowForever-qh4ox Yes I was taught the same thing at Government Island in Alameda Coast Guard Boot Camp and they had us jump off a high tower into a huge pool and swim away fast and then showed us how to remain floating by using our Chambery shirts and bell bottoms to trap air into them. So many great memories now at age 78 and I'm still just as proud as I was then to enter the war against the NVA~!! Thanks for your reply~!!
My first CO on my atomic sub was, in 1944, a young ensign on the USS Archerfish. He was a character. He was commanding his 3rd sub and I remember him saying, "The highest form of life is to command a man of war on the high seas".
Getting stuck in a tin can next to a nuclear reactor thousands of feet under water with hundreds of sweaty dudes, definitely a dream job. Thank you for your service
Not really. Because of the stupid decision to build her as a support carrier, most of her aircraft capacity and facilities were dedicated to aircraft from other carriers; her own air wing was only around 40 aircraft. Though I do wonder what would have happened if someone gutted her internals and rebuilt her as a proper carrier (if still a bit slow for a carrier), because in that case, her air wing could have been doubled or even tripled.
@@bkjeong4302 Doubled would have given her an air wing around the same as an Essex, tripled.... See the issue? An Essex was 36,000 tons fully loaded. Shinano was 30,000 tons higher displacement, and as far as I can determine (though I may be wrong), that's BASE displacement, not fully loaded. Essex Class base displacement is about 30,000 tons.... So, give me a carrier that can operate 80 aircraft on 30,000 tons light, or one that can operate 120 aircraft on 68,000 tons light, and you know what I will choose?
@@alganhar1 Oh, I never said Shinano was going to be an especially good carrier (the slow-for-a-carrier speed is what really screws her over: 27 knots is reasonable for a battleship but too slow for a carrier). But it’s still a drastic improvement on the abomination that she would have been IRL if she hadn’t been sunk.
@@bkjeong4302 The "support carrier" thing was one of those "by necessity" things. It wasn't a good idea, but there were not better options really. They had already built and installed the barbettes as I recall. If the decision to convert her had come a lot sooner, then the conversion would have been different, and more effective.
I first read this story in Reader's Digest, and since then, no one really speaks of this story or mentions the Shinano much. Glad to finally see a good animated documentary about it. Good work. 👍
This was a great video. The details of Shinano's sinking was unbelievable, especially the fact that Archerfish sailed under the destroyer without the destroyer knowing. I hope that an underwater research team can be put together to find shinano.
The idea of a warship being assigned to anti-submarine warfare was considered shameful (I don't remember why) to the Imperial Japanese Navy. Only during the last months of the war did the Japanese begin to consider it. Considering how our subs mauled Japanese shipping (once our torpedo problem was addressed), I don't understand that.
@@markforster6457 I read once that the Japanese didn't think the US would have good submarine crews because they thought Americans were too tall to fit into submarines and too undisciplined to work as a crew together underwater for long periods of time.
It’s incredible how similar this situation was to the sinking of the Shikako. Both were covert Japanese task forces and both were taken out by a single stalking American submarine. Please do a video on that! 🙏🏼
The man who first laid eyes on her was Marteen “Bob” Fuller. He was 19 and had the sharpest eyes on the boat. He and his wife, Charlotte invested in me and provided greater than can be described benefits in my life. I didn’t do them right and of the things I would re do, that’s high on the list. I got to hear about this fantastic battle many times. Bob passed away, went to Heaven, in the parking lot of Cape Canaveral Hospital the same weekend the book made it to the shelves. Following seas Bob and Charlotte. Y’all done good, real good.
I was watching a documentary on Musashi and they had figured out that both her and Yamato had serious design flaws in the citadel armor. The steel plates due to their thickness were riveted instead of welded and when hit by a torpedo, the rivets would fail and allow water to stream in.
Only the thickest parts of the armour were riveted, actually: the rest of it was welded. This was actually standard practice at the time across all navies, where most of a battleship’s armour would be welded, but the thickest sections were usually too thick to weld and had to be riveted.
@@StephenCole1916 Less that the original blueprints are incorrect, and more that the information was presented badly in the documentary. What the original blueprints show is that the thickest sections of the armour were riveted because there wasn’t a practical way to weld those sections, and that this posed a potential weak point: however, the documentary erred by a) wrongly claiming this weakness applied to the ENTIRETY of the armour, which it didn’t, and b) omitting that this particular weakness was universal among battleships and not something wrong with the Yamatos in particular.
I've read articles and documentaries about this event and I find it mirroring the sinking of Yorktown when she was sunk by I-168(she was alone when she sunk her). Thank you for this interesting and informative video Historiograph. Is it possible for you to do a video about Taiho the carrier that was sunk due to her inexperienced crew
The heck are you on about? Yorktown was being towed by the fleet tug USS Vireo and guarded by 3 destroyers plus USS Hammann was providing Auxiliary power. So that wasn’t alone.
Yorktown was already bombed and torpedoed multiple times before that. It was very different situation, they figured the Yorktown was going to sink in afew hours but it turned out, she didnt. So a tug boat was sent to save her. Yorktown was already abandoned and empty during her sinking
Most people do not even know she existed, that's how 'well known' she was. That's how much she was one of the 'worlds favourite ships'. Rest in pieces Shinano, best forgotten....
@@alganhar1 Most people don't even know a fair amount about Japanese Naval History but, for one of the world's largest ships I believe she is to be known and, not to mention the only the ones in a small community (I say small community meaning in our world) who expand their knowledge are the ones who know. Set aside differences of Naval action between the Japanese and Americans, she was an awesome ship that (like the Yamamoto) was just poorly managed. So, to say your argument just shows a fair amount of ignorance and a lack of mind power to expand one's knowledge of debatable important history. And set-aside "People" in this case are different from a "World" where this ship proves extraordinary differences at the time and undoubtedly other Historians can agree upon (Even noted in the video I recall)
Also, sorry for the paragraph lol, Shinano itself was just an awesome ship and ignorant people just don't understand how Naval powers society at the time were back then but also. (I might remember World of Warships including Shinano and if you include Azur Lane that is a number of online players, so that's so much for "people" not knowing her) Merry Christmas!
@@CamoTheGuy I wouldn’t consider Shinano an especially noteworthy warship in the vein of her sisters (which were quite capable battleships that got screwed over by the fact battleships in general were obsolete at that point, which is something you can say about any battleship class to enter service in WWII). Shinano was designed for a nonsensical role as a support carrier.
@@bkjeong4302 I would agree on that apart that Shinano was short of attainting anything noteworthy as her voyage was too short to see noteworthy action caused by Foolish Japanese Naval HICOM (Just like her sister ships) but, her role as a Carrier (being the largest aircraft carrier yet) as well as having the capability to carry the most aircraft is a large amount of potential power, aside as a "support carrier" where the Japanese view of using her to change the course of the war as a main fleet carrier. A video I recommend as well on the point is "Yamato, the right ship for the wrong war" by Potential History. But, to conclude on it you can debate on her being noteworthy as she yet alone held the record till the USS Forrestal in 1954, I'd say that is pretty noteworthy itself alone.
Luck was definitely on the side of Archerfish and her crew that night, but Shinano’s commanding officer made some crucial mistakes, namely not allowing his escorts to provide an effective screen, and ignoring the severity of the damage his vessel took from those torpedo hits until it was too late. Of course, the Japanese admiralty is arguably more at fault because they ignored his requests to delay the voyage until the ship was better prepared.
I love your style of video production and story telling! If I may make 1 suggestion, it can be difficult sometimes to get geographic context - maybe a small inset map showing the broader area in question?
@@martinadams7949 im sorry to hear that Martin im sorry about your loss. I forget his name. I left 3 months ago and he was doing good last I heard. He served after ww2 on the sub.
Love the video Historigraph! Well done and well researched. Another WW2 US Sub attack that would make an excellent video is the sinking of the IJN Kongo by the USS Sealion. Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of that action is that an audio recording exists of part of the attack, including the moment several torpedoes strike the Kongo. It's really incredible stuff! AFAIK the only recording of a WW2 sub attack in existence.
Fun Fact: Ppl actually don't know the full detail of how Shinano look like due to the secrecy of the Japanese when buliding her plus there is only one photograph of her
The secrecy applies to all of the Yamatos, actually. To the point most IJN officers were unaware of their true specs (a few, like Kurita, managed to figure it out on their own) and most of the Japanese public didn’t even know they existed until after the war. Incidentally, this is why the entire idea of the Yamatos as being propaganda projects or symbols of power is a postwar fabrication: hard to be symbolic or prestigious if you’re shrouded in so much secrecy. It’s only from the 1950s onwards that the Yamatos entered Japanese public knowledge and only from SBY onwards that they really became famous. Even then, SBY almost ended up being Space Battleship Nagato instead because Nagato was the ACTUAL symbol of the IJN.
@@aslamnurfikri76403 Destroyers? The amount the Yamato must have cost they could have hidden it as a Destroyer flotilla, and a Light Cruiser and still had change!
@@richardcowling7381 Yamato cost around $80,500,000 (using late 1930s Yen-to-Dollar exchange rates, since she was laid down in 1937). Most of that was already allotted for in the naval budget, and the three destroyers just covered up the cost overruns. Incidentally, the two Yamatos aren’t the most expensive individual battleships ever built: the Iowas individually cost around $100,000,000 apiece, due to cost overruns (due to, among other things, issues with procuring their main armament thanks to a BuOrds bureaucratic fuckup).
Wow, I never realized that the Shinano was sunk by Joe Enright on Archerfish. I remember watching the episode on Silent Service (an old TV show from the 1950s) where Joe Enright had recused himself of sub duty and became a base commander instead due to his lack of self confidence. He was speaking with a friend (a fellow sub captain) and he decided to take another crack at command. He was certain that he had sunk a battlewagon, but when he returned to base in Guam he was informed that it was the Shinano (although I don't remember them saying which carrier it was). Good to see Joe going on to make history!
This story was amazing! It literally just came down to multiple instances of chain luck after pitting two very cautious Commanders up against one another.
I remember reading the book "Shinano!" that the skipper of the Archerfish wrote. Very fascinating story that many don't know about. Thanks for covering it!
I'm impressed by that captain and the U.S. Navy. He determined he was not competent to command his first boat. But then the Navy allowed him to go on to command the Archerfish with first rate results.
At the beginning you are all for the hunt... watching and waiting. Then as the ship sinks you just feel it is a tragedy - even though it is the enemy. Superb presentation as always :)
TO HISTORIGRAPH: I really enjoy your videos, and appreciate how you use excellent, but simple and clear, animated graphics to show things like the courses the ships took (as shown in this video), the size comparisons of ships, and even the spread of torpedoes (including misses), and the use of the compass rose to show us general direction of course. These things might seem like minor details or unnecessary for telling the story. But, because you use them, and show them so well, it brings the facts of the story "to life" and makes your videos (and the narration) so much more understandable and compelling story telling. Well done! Put another way, while I have read accounts of naval battles, your animations (and clear narration) make them so much more easy to follow, easier to understand, and much more memorable. Well done!
Thank you so much for this thoughtful comment. There is always such tremendous support and love below these videos and i love reading trough them after every project. It is true as you say that it's all the little things that truly makes the video come togheter and that is not lost on us. it's also these things that often are the hardest to make and even think off to begin with, atleast for an amature animator like myself. Therefore it fills me with joy and motivation to see detailed comments like these, showing the effort is clearly not lost on people, whether they notice it consciously (like you did) or not. Much Love, The Animator
A great video to end the year. I enjoyed the little cinematic close up of the sub passing under the destroyer screen, as well as the mapping of the flooding carrier. Great stuff!
Merry Christmas everyone and thanks for watching this video and all our videos in 2022. There’s no sponsor for this one and things are looking a bit tougher on RUclips going into 2023, so if you enjoyed this video and want to see us keep making more (and hopefully not be so reliant on sponsorships in future) please consider supporting us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/historigraph - it really does make a difference.
Other US Pacific Submarine Videos:
The Submarine that Invaded Japan - The Incredible USS Barb: ruclips.net/video/kviX-W-rjBI/видео.html
How Allied Submarines Crippled Japan in WW2 ruclips.net/video/m5e0Tor2kMg/видео.html
When Five Ships were Sunk in 30 minutes - Ramage's Rampage ruclips.net/video/ZnB82cT1LQI/видео.html
Merry Christmas and thanks for uploading great content!
Why are things going to be tougher in 2023?
Merry christmas u too !
The reason the sister carrier took so many hits is because they were torpedoed from both port and starboard which allowed and caused counter flooding. The US Navy figured it out and applied the lessons learned to the sinking of the Yamamoto. In other words Capt. Enright got lucky.
@@readhistory2023 Musashi is a battleship
And it's *Yamato, not Yamamoto
:D
Commander Enright: "a cautious and uncertain skipper"
also Commander Enright: drives his boat ten feet under an enemy ship
Cautious and uncertain by Submarine Captain standards. Keep in mind, he wasn't the one that sunk a train.
Actually directly under the escort was a safe place to be. They probably did it on purpose because it hid their own engine noises. And if they dropped depth charges the escort risked blowing themselves up. They would sooner circle back and do an attack from a better vector, but by that time Archerfish would’ve finished the attack and gone deep. It was night so it would be very difficult to hit her with shells.
So true.
Not Jackie Chan!
@@1337penguinmanthe one who sunk a train didn’t do so by torpedo or guns: they blew up a bridge with the train on it after landing a crew…
Imagine winning the tons competition by sinking only one ship. That's just insane.
Yeah. There were captains and boats that sank more overall, but not on a single patrol
"That still only counts as one!"
@@redshirt5126 hehe
Yeah that's some pretty low quality ship.
@@redshirt5126 The perfect reference.
What intrigues me is that the supercarrier was sunk near it's own coast. They didn't even leave that far from the home islands, and they were already stalked by a submarine. This puts a lot of perspective on how dire Japan's situation was, as they can't even navigate in their own home waters without stressing the possibility of being watched.
I mean, the exact same thing was happening in Europe with Uboats.
The submarine's ability to infiltrate was unmatched. As long as there was a submarine base within range, your coastline was never truly safe.
Just as it Should be: Take the fight to the heart of the enemy. . . .
It was a spawn kill lol
I mean there were German U-Boats sunk in the Gulf of Mexico
u-boats were lurking outside of New Yorks harbor during the war. It doesn't really reflect the state of the war.
*Commander Enright sinks largest naval ship in the war and wins the combined tonnage patrol record*
Gimli: "That still only counts as one!"
😂
Yes, but he didn't sink a train!
Lol
😂
@@panzerabwerkanone the old bastards did
I just love that the US didn't believe that the Archerfish sank something that huge. Goes to show how unbelievably large the Yamatos were
They’re actually not AS large as often assumed. The oft-cited 70,000+ ton displacement figures are at full load (including fuel, ammunition and crew), and their actual displacement is more like 65,000 tons. Which is still bigger than any other battleships that were actually built, but by a significantly smaller margin than often assumed (the next largest battleships were the Iowas at 45,000+ tons each without fuel or ammunition, though they were longer than the Yamatos)
@HobbitJack Yup
@@bkjeong4302 Not to methion that all super carriers are of that size or greater.
@@hobbitjack5275 IIRC US Intel was informed by a POW that a Yamato-class BB was being converted.
@@GreenBlueWalkthrough Were they around in 1945?
This was a monumental Achievement, as to this day Shinano is still the largest warship to be sunk in combat and largest ship to be sunk by submarine.
Sadly I think this record will fall in our lifetime. Also there is some question in my mind whether the MOL Comfort was torpedoed in 2013. Keels don't just snap in half like that at random, and consider the political situation at the time.
@@The_Conspiracy_Analyst the America class took 4 weeks to scuttle, and people had to go on board to help out. Sinking one of those would take one hell of an effort
@@titanlord9267 The USS Harry S Truman took something like 8 torpedos to "sink" during wargames when I was on it. So that's a good estimation of what it would take. She a has pretty sophisticated system of bilge spaces around the water line, similar to the old anti-torpedo bulges.
Wait until China tries to invade Taiwan . The record will be broken very quickly in the South China Seas . At least its not far for them to swim home
Yamato and Musashi were sunk in combat. Because of their thicker armor they outweighed Shinano.
Capt. Abe requested a delay to address serious concerns. I think his only real mistake was following orders to take Shinano to sea. This guy was set up for failure. Mad respect to Capt. Enright for not giving up on the hunt!
This was the IJN at the height of it's hubris. His only other real option was going to his superior officer and going through with seppuku in his office. Then his xo would have been made to take the ship out anyway.
@@majormagnumshow2528 the entire system was set up to fail from the start. There were 300 people for every car in Japan when they bombed Pearl harbor in America there were four people per car. Delusions are pretty common in some societies. We have a lot of people here who think the Japanese were interned and concentration camps in America. Unfortunately this is not true there is a such a thing as a concentration camp and it has a death chamber and is pushing people through it if they aren't working them to death and then pushing them through the death chamber. Every time you lose in the Japanese system you commit suicide thereby taking every lesson they possibly could have learned from a failure to the grave with you. The mission isn't a failure the commander is a failure the mission can't commit suicide the commander can commit suicide. On the American side if they lost a lot of men in the commander came back they gave the guy a cup of coffee fed him a good dinner and asked him what went wrong. Somewhere between the commander's actions the men's actions and the design of the mission improvements were made. In Japan the mission was sacred because the emperor was God and it was failing humans that let down God that caused the mission to fail and those humans need to commit suicide so better people can complete the mission correctly. This love of suicide and refusal to look at the plan instead of the people is an echoing disaster throughout Japanese history. Look at that Fukushima disaster they had a perfectly good set of plans with four or five redundant ways to shut off the radiation and cool everything down in case of the problem but the Japanese people didn't need redundancy. That plan was drawn up by an American idiot and it was a plant designed to be run by a bunch of American idiots with all that redundancy. The superior Japanese engineers thought a single way to shut this down was the answer. Japan is almost consumed itself. At the rate they're going there won't be anything there that isn't radioactive pretty soon.
Well to be fair the ijn had to pick the lesser of two evils. Send it out early and risk submarines or hold it in port and risk bombers. They didn't want Shimano have the same thing that happened to Tirpitz.
I love that Enright just kept going despite his previous doubts. Wars are won when people recognise their failings, but keep on and learn from it.
Maybe if he had let that lead destroyer chase the sub, things would have been different.
Imagine living and fighting on a WWII submarine. The hot, sweaty fear and ominous noises that were sonar, torpedos and depth charges. Mad respect
Something I could never do, that's for sure
And the toilets. German submarines could not flush their toilets while diving, which especially in the latest stages of the war they had to do a lot. And when they then had to quickly change depth at a steep angle, well... Later designs had toilets that coud be flushed underwater, but handling that device required special training. One German submarine got lost through nothing but a mishandled toilet.
@@Nickname-ef9tvbut that just applies to u boats tho
Ran across an old guy at a VA hospital when getting my teeth fixed before leaving the Army. He was sitting in the hallway rocking back and forth saying, "Oh me, Oh my, Small fry", over and over and over. When asked, an orderly stated the guy was a WW2 submariner that had survived "X" number of hours of depth charging and hadn't been alright since.
Watch Das Boot. It's about exactly that, from a German submarine perspective.
It's tense and claustrophobic.
One thing I find funny is that the US Navy didn't believe that the Archerfish had sunk a carrier as large as the Shinano and credited it with sinking a light carrier with a displacement of 27,000 tons. It wasn't until after the war and the US got its hands on the Japanese archives that confirmed the Shinano existed that the Navy retroactively credited the Archerfish and her captain with sinking her and awarding Captain Enright the Navy Cross.
He earned it! I was disappointed that the captains and crews logs/thoughts weren't really talked about. I'm sure they were expecting to get hunted by those destroyers with very little chance of survival after launching those torpedoes.
govt work, good and slow
@@bobbygetsbanned6049ml.
@Trevor Braun ok little timmy time for school
We'll give you a reward if it weighs more than the rest , but you won't get one if it's lighter .
An "unremarkable captain" maybe, but kudos to him for having the strength and courage to admit that he wasn't performing to the required level and relinquishing command of his previous boat, seemingly putting the lives of his crew ahead of his own career and ambition. That act could have spelled the end of any chance of him ever commanding again.
But it didn't, and he went on to better things.
Genuinely admirable of him.
You nailed it. Not only was he successful, but he also paused when he felt he wasn't up to the job. I don't know what he did during the time before he resumed command, but clearly he improved his skills.
Lesson: Just do your job and everything else will take care of itself.
@@CinemaDemocratica Do u say that when u pole dance?😮
@@MrHAPPYHAWAIIAN There's actual video of me pole-dancing.
Impressive display of patience, holding his course after losing track of the Shinano. And what a payoff: one lone submarine sinks a carrier with just six torpedoes / four hits. It's not surprising he wasn't believed at first.
Enright: "I just sank a Japanese aircraft carrier."
Pacific Command: "Sure you did. And I'm flying to Mars this afternoon."
I heard that Mars ain't the kind of place to raise your kids, in fact it's cold as hell. 😁
Imagine the entirety of Sakura Empire naval force was unable to sunk one of the oldest Eagle Union carriers and your newest carrier got sunk by a pesky little submarine...
Elon steps up *Right this way*
Wow how so many guys died in sinking it took a long ass time to sink
To be fair, it wasn't a real aircraft carrier. It was a half assed Battleship conversion. Japan should have surrendered before sending it's young men on pointless suicide missions.
My father in law was a submariner in WW2. USS Shad, SS-235. He did two missions with that boat then one more on another. A Sub Captain was their luck. Any sub Commander who could both go out, complete the patrol and return his command to harbor was a good one in my book. Thousands of ways to die, very few ways to live and damn few to be successful. Iron men among the elite! all of them. RIP Bill
And remember, the only way you knew of a lost sub, was its listing on the overdue list back in Pearl. Their orders were so general in nature and the commanders were given such freedom and leeway to fight the war as the wanted, they usually only came back when they ran out of torpedoes or more rarely, fuel.
The only reason we use high risk submarines, is that they bring in high rewards.
A deep water surface sailor salutes the courage of the submariners. The Silent Service. Under "Deep. Deep, Deep beneath the Ocean". Thank you for your brave service. "Single up all lines fore and aft. Cast off all lines fore and aft". "Underway Shift Colors"!. A famous American sailoe name of John Paul Jones, may have said ot best: "i wish to have no connection with any ship that does not sail fast, for i intend to go in harm'a way". If he had been aware of submarines in 18th century he would have mentiined "the boats" of the Silent Service i am sure. RIP all fellow sailors now at peace in the Good Lord God's "Ice Watee Mansion". Amen.
I read the book "Archerfish". Not only did it sink the Shinano but performed admirably during the Cold War as a spy ship as well.
Yup, then ship did more rescue and recon missions than succesful attack patrols mostly because targets were scarce at that time of the war, that mission however more than compensated all the failed hunts
@@cesaravegah3787 Correct!
awsome
Another book to Read if you have not already. Thunder Below by Admiral Eugene B. "Lucky" Flucky of the USS Barb.
No one performed “admirably” during the “Cold War” besides JFK….
I am a Navy veteran and served on submarines while I was on active duty. Part of our initial training pipeline included a fair amount of submarine history. This incident is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what American submarine warfare was able to inflict upon the Japanese Navy during WWII. Something like 2/3rds of all Japanese tonnage sunk by the US Navy was sunk by our submarines. Wild!
And just from 1944-1945!
One must also admit that IJN anti submarine capabilities were non existent and their disaster control drill simply substandard, as they proved in numerous sinkings. So this was another sitting duck, which would have been sunk anytime soon.
@@christians6734 For sure. ASW was pretty weak in the 1940s, considering how effective German submarine warfare was in the Atlantic.
@@gordontubbs a lot of that had to do with sending liberty ships in basically unprotected. Towards the end of the war anti submarine warfare basically shut down the uboats in the Atlantic. The pby Catalina saw extensive use for this very reason.
Why hasn't anyone made more of this. Sounds like a great film in the making.
The entire Shinano affair is just mindboggling. The IJN convert her from Battleship to carrier but don't have the pilots-the whole reason for moving her was due to lack of aircover- yet they insisted on following through with finishing her as a carrier for a naval air arm that no longer existed. They have the largest carrier in the world at that time and they make it a support hub for the other carriers(again which also lack pilots), then in typical IJN fashion, they continue to ignore even basic antisubmarine warfare precautions and when transferring it between ports for final work, most of the damage control wasn't operational, all the bulkheads are open and she's running her lights like a cruise ship...
When it comes to carriers, how many aircraft they can hold matters less than how many they can OPERATE.
For all her size Shinano could operate an air wing about the same size as the British Armoured Carriers, that were almost 40,000 tons lighter. The Essex Class could operate an air wing almost double that of the Shinano, on 36,000 tons fully loaded.
Yeah, she was a big carrier, that does not mean she was a GOOD carrier....
@@alganhar1 that's my point. Her design and intent were not practical or remotely ideal even if she'd been introduced in 1942. By 1944 it was a joke.
Yep, how amazingly stupid a decision it was to convert it to a carrier in 1942 while having such an inadequate pilot training program... it is not even a matter of hindsight, it is pure fantasy arrogance... does the commander of the submarine get any special award for sinking the largest white elephant in all of history as well?? Was it even worth the cost of the torpedoes???
@@mystikmind2005 ironically if he hadn't sunk it the ship might have been more detrimental to the IJN than the USN. It would have taken more resources Japan couldn't spare to finish, the fuel, pilots and planes couldn't be maintained and as a fleet carrier the ship would require constant protection and escort Destroyers that were being used as spare merchant and troop transports by 1944.
So yeah, by sinking her, the sub may have done Japan a slight favor. Shinano sinking was definitely a loss, but having such a massive fuel guzzling ship that couldn't even fulfil its intended purpose draining the already insufficient resources of the IJN may well have been worse for the Japanese.
@@grandadmiralzaarin4962 Agree... Honestly, the only use it could be to the Japanese is for propaganda - and hence the reason for keeping the sinking quiet... The only practical use i an think of for it is to strip it down and make it into a fast cargo vessel... or try to sell it to Thailand!! lol
Shinano's captain was so concerned with protecting the ship from an imagined wolf pack that he made it vulnerable enough to the single submarine he knew was following them. If he had let his escort vessels chase off Archerfish to begin with, his assumption about one submarine not being a threat would have been right. But he took so many precautions to the wolf pack that he invalidated his own assumptions
It sounds like it was a pos ship
As said the ship shouldn’t have been so mortally threatened on paper, but to assume any submarine is a lone submarine is asking for trouble
Weird how the same culture can produce such conservatism and audacity simultaneously.
I guess history repeats no matter what, Yorktown sank form 4 tropedos, and shinano was sank by again, 4 torpedoes form a submarine
@@looinrims Agreed. While Abe's assumptions were _incorrect_ and ended up dooming the ship, they were not _unreasonable_ assumptions to make. I can't really put too much blame on him for what happened here.
Actually met the sonor officer from this patrol. His wife was in our church choir. He rarely spoke out at events of this group. But he found himself narrating the attack to a rapt 15 years old. I was in awe of this gentleman.
Wow, hearing those stories first hand must have been incredible.
I knew Capt Joe Enright well in the 1970s--We were on the Dover Mass Town Republican Committee together and he was a quiet, modest man--in his 60s perhaps at the time. I also met a WWII bomber pilot who flew 80+ missions over Germany who was similarly quiet and unassuming. Both men exemplified the ordinary Americans who acted like superheroes during the war and then quietly went back to civilian life. When I knew Capt Enright I had no idea that he was a WWII hero with the Navy Cross. Years later, browsing a used book rack, I saw the back cover of a small book featuring a picture ofJoe Enright--Captain of the Archerfish. I grabbed it and studied it--there was no mistake--it was the same guy I had known so well for years in Dover.
I bought the book and it's a great story--he had a writer help him write it--and it included many documents from the Japanese post-war archives including the messages and diaries/logs of the Japanese officers on the carrier. After our sub started following the Carrier, the book tells the hour by hour cat and mouse game of the sub chasing down the carrier. A great read!
@@billgreene6926 That's wild, feels like today society needs role models like this. Giving back a responsibility in order to protect others, then making it his responsibility to achieve something completely unheard of, basically and literally taking care of the biggest problem he could've. Not talking about it afterwards is the cherry on top. He probably had to tell the story a million times, maybe by that time it got more interesting to hear others peoples stories. Other than that and not taking pride in actions that resulted in peoples deaths it just seems like the most superhero thing you could do for sure, you get as close as you can to single-handedly ending the war with a single rusty submarine and afterwards don't tell anyone about it, that's literally a superhero movie plot lmao
How is there not a Hollywood movie made about this and the Archerfish captain? It has everything. The journey from a captain who was unsure of himself to sinking a critical ship and achieving greatness.
Nobody thought the story believable enough. :P
@@Volvith Makes sense, To Hell and Back about Audie Murphy (starring the man himself) apparently left a lot out and changed some things to appear more realistic to the general public even though all that happened.
Not to mention the sub going right under the destroyer! Pure Hollywood!
There's only so much Tom Hanks can do.
Just make sure it’s directed by Michael Bay.
I love the story of this and how originally Pacific Command said they sank a battleship first until it was found the Captain had made a drawing of the carrier through the periscope, that he had originally throw in the bin. It wasn’t until one of the crew members had saved it from the bin because in training he was told to never throw anything out that they were able to prove it was in fact a carrier they sank.
The guy that saved that drawing from the trash deserved a big reward, and hopefully got one. If I was that captain this guy would get an on-the-spot promotion and anything else I could think of.
I thought they were first credited with a Cruiser.
Typical midwestern modesty lol
@@isolinear9836 Cruiser seem more likely than battleship, this was after all a battleship hull.
tHATS THE NAVY ....waste not, want not
You gotta love a man who failed and knows it. Then made it right, he picked himself up proved himself with bravery. This captain was a brave man.
You told me everything I needed to know about the sub captain when you said he relieved himself of command. That is a good Naval Officer.
All captains have to relieve themselves.
@@oaktadopbok665 Yes, and so do the seamen
And then there were captains who only rose through the ranks because people wanted to promote them away and at every new rank did a terrible job.
Joe Enright knew he blew it on Dace with his tactics and took the hit for it. Lockwood wasn't even going to necessarily hold it against him on his first time out. That's why he got sent out on Archerfish when he asked for another command.
I never heard of this incident. Thanks for sharing this. I particularly liked the detailed run down of the damage that was done and the flooding as it occurred. Astounding. Inada and his repair crews displayed tremendous courage in the face of certain death. May all of the dead from that war rest in peace.
Despite the size of the Shinano, it was until recently a fairly obscure vessel in WW2 as was its sinking. Many strategically more important battles of the Pacific War were much more famous. I think only two little-known and hard-to-find books in English were ever written about it some decades ago.
Japs, German Nazis, and Italian fascists can go to hell. Everyone else can rest in peace.
I'm a big history buff and have read dozens of books on the Pacific theater and just read about this a couple years ago. I can't recall what book had it. You'd think that sinking a 70,000 ton aircraft carrier would have drawn a bit more attention.
And they sunk it before it had ever fought - the biggest interdiction ever?
@@timothyhennig80 Imagine the destruction that vessel and its weapon systems onboard could've unleashed had it made its journey, and was perfected. Stopping it later, after it had been finished, with all the escorts and onboard protection would've been very difficult.
I remember hearing this story when I was younger and reading about it in a book. Love the animation and visuals for this retelling of USS Archerfish’s hunt of Shinano. If I remember, the sub was awarded the Presidential Unit Citation when it was discovered what ship she sunk.
my dads copy is hanging on our wall
Thank you for posting....my dad was a young sailor in the US Navy (8/11/42 - 4/6/46) and was a motor machinist 1st class on the USS Archerfish when they sunk the Shinano.
I have read the book Gallant Lady by Ken Henry and was amazed - but this video is the most amazing account of the sinking.
Another great video. Some of the other issues that led to the sinking were:
-in addition to the missing 4 boilers, Shinano was also missing a number of her pumps.
-The shipyard hadn't sealed the holes for the pipes and cables
-Most of the crew had no sea experience
-Manholes and hatches were left open for convenience
My goodness, is all of that accurate? If so, that carrier would have sunk if they sailed into a moderate storm.
@@vectorm4 Lol maybe not a moderate storm, but under normal circumstances, those torpedo hits should not have threatened a ship that large.
But the Yamato design had some underwater flaws that almost certainly carried over to the Shinano. Musashi once took a single torpedo hit that led to flooding of 4,000 tons of seawater...North Carolina took a similar hit in around the same location yet saw 1/4 as much flooding. In December 1943 a single torpedo hit on Yamato caused the armor joint to split, letting in 3,000 tons of flooding. It didn't help matters that the design has some poor subdivision, and even without an untrained crew the IJN damage control was sub-par.
@@vectorm4 Japan lost many ships due to circumstances that were just bad. Ammunition and fuel on the flight deck getting hit and lighting up the whole ship is one of the better examples. This was due to swapping out aircraft ammunition.
I'm not saying Japan had ships that were China level quality (their ships are made out paper, I used to watch their construction yards to keep track of their inventory). But they have been unlucky enough to be hit in ready states that were bad enough to give them the durability of a Chinese vessel rather than the durability of an American vessel (American vessels are VERY DIFFICULT to sink.
@@mandellorian790 Ships hit in port are easier to take down than ready ships at sea.
I'm literally a Navy Veteran who was an intelligence analyst that watched China build their ships for a number of years. Yes, American ships ARE difficult to sink and Chinese vessels are made out of paper.
Don't speak of things you don't understand, it makes you look like a fool. Especially don't attempt to correct someone when you don't understand the difference between an unattended ship and a ship at battle stations.
A ship in port has everything open and a light crew making it near impossible to save. A ship at sea at battle stations has every water tight and air tight hatch sealed as well as a FULL crew to save the ship. Hatches are only open long enough during battle stations to transit through before they are closed. At full ready, you just aren't going to sink a US ship very easily.
Next you try to correct someone, figure out if they know more about the topic than you do.
@Jfast Bravo! Thank you for your service. I wish I could pack you up and take you in amd out-of some of these threads to comment on some of these feeds. We need more people like you speaking truth and not just booty chatter that these people type spinning lies back and forth to one another. God Bless you sir!
A couple fun facts about Capitan Enright: One of the main reasons he resigned from Dace was because he was to scared to sink a carrier he found. Two, he got command of the Archerfish because an admiral noticed him playing an aggressive poker game.
What was the carrier he found but was too scared to go for while in command of the USS Dace?
@@scarletcrusade77 It was Shokaku on November 15, 1943.
The history of Submarine warfare is replete with this theme. The Germans had the same problem....it was known that only a small percentage of Submarine Captains actually were go-getters. The German Naval high command resorted to various measures to try and deter this behavior.....including sackings, radio check-ins, and tactical maneuvers that tried to deter this over cautiousness.
Many submarines simply went on safe pleasure cruises and tried to avoid contact or went after contacts that were lone merchant stragglers.
I'm sure the Americans did too to some extent. I don't know about the Japanese.
If you poked around in the wrong waters with a sub back then it was too easy to get caught.
Nobody wants to die in a steel tube underwater in the middle of nowhere.
@@electrolytics One of the most notable things about Theodor Detmers, the man infamous for sinking HMAS Sydney and killing her entire crew in the process... is that under normal circumstances he did his best to NOT kill anyone. He'd done his best to try to trick Sydney into leaving him alone. He didn't want a fight. In part because he knew he was likely to lose the Kormoran... which he did... but also he just didn't take pleasure in killing his enemies. He was notable for keeping dozens of prisoners on his ship for weeks at a time. He didn't want to kill anyone as part of his job. His job was to capture or destroy enemy ships, not to kill their crews.
And, well, that sort of thing may have been why Enright hesitated to fire on the Shokaku. The idea of killing so many men, even as an act of war, during a war, just gave him a cold knot in his stomach.
@@electrolytics
Japanese subs were actually expected to go after warships (especially carriers) and ignore merchant ships, but it turned out this was A BAD IDEA.
Thank you for this video. I was privileged to know Captain Enright as a child. He lived in my hometown and was friends with my mother. I clearly remember him talking at the local library about sinking the shinano. Your video added much more details about what actually happened to the ship as it sank. I would recommend Captain Enwright's book entitled Shinano! for anyone who is interested in his experience.
Amazing, and thank you for sharing.
Met him briefly at a book signing in his home , a very honest and engaging man . that the US Navy did not believe him and wanted him to accept credit for a small ship if I recall.
Just saying. Why do people keep getting on ship yet they can’t swim.
@@speak-the-red-letters they never think that their ship will sink , or they will be killed long before they drown I guess.
Something like why people went into the Army air corp and fought from bombers , no place to hide and low chances to parachute when the bomber was destroyed in mid -air
@@speak-the-red-letters same answer to why would people go to wars if they don’t wanna fight
Be Joseph Enright:
> patrol continuously
> didn't achieve any success 99.9% of the time
> sunk one ship
> become top 1 of the entire war
> leaves
Clutch win. GG noobs
An excellently executed pro gamer move
imagine using greentext style writing outside of chinese cartoon forums
all that on his first voyage
Great video. There is even a few fun little addendums and postscript to this (my source being Captain Enright's book, which is one of my rarest finds about the submarine war):
*When Archerfish originally spotted Shinano, they consulted their spotting guides in order to find out what they were looking at. Being that the ship was brand new and also one of a kind, the captain was incredibly confused. "The Japanese don't have a 60,000 aircraft carrier", his XO said to him.
"The hell they don't, I'm looking at one", was Enright's reply.
They initially thought it might be an American carrier, but then they understood that it was so close to Japan it had to be Japanese.
*They were finally able to confirm it was a carrier when the signals the US Navy picked up from Japan proved it.
*The Shinano was full of workers who were aboard to finish the interior fabrications.
Japanese worker: "Now that the Bonsais are in the right position, we can final-"
[BOOM]
Japanese worker: "Oh, for fuck's sake!"
Even in today's Navy, Workers will remain on ship to complete tasks that has not been completed before being set to sea. Just as USS Ford.
The US Navy also didn't believe that the Archerfish had sunk a carrier that large and credited it with sinking a light carrier. It wasn't until after the war and the US got its hands on the Japanese archives that confirmed the Shinano existed that the Navy retroactively credited the Archerfish and her captain with sinking her and awarding Captain Enright the Navy Cross.
@@ZaydinTTV We're from the government and we are here to help.
@@everybuddy5924 It also happens in the Offshore industry. I was on a semi-submersable rig, and the civilian welders and pipe=fitters worked until we got onto the drill site, about a 15 day tow.
Although she'd been formally commissioned Shinano was still incomplete. Most notably, many of her watertight doors hadn't yet been fitted and a lot of her bulkheads still had open holes in them for the fitting of pipes and cables. Compounding those problems was the fact that many of Captain Abe's actions immediately after the ship was torpedoed accelerated her flooding.
It seems like watertight doors should be one of the first things finished before going out into the water?
@@Dayvit78 The doors were there I believe, it was the rubber gaskets that make them water tight that were absent. The Japanese by this point in the war were short many materials, including rubber. They no longer had the ability to produce or transport these items.
@@Salty_Balls she may have headed for the East Indies after everything else was completed, as the rubber there was under Japanese control
@@Dayvit78 She was still fitting out and wasn't really ready for sea, but a US plane flew over and the IJN was afraid she'd been spotted and would be bombed if she stayed where she was, so her captain was ordered to move her.
@@Dayvit78 You'd think, right?
It’s fascinating how his relinquishing of his position on Dace allowed both him and his former boat to play such pivotal roles in the war. His sinking of the Shinano and his his former ship going after Musashi and Yamato (and their escorts) during the multi day battle of Leyte Gulf. You never know what event might trigger such a chain reaction.
Fun fact, Dace would later be sold to the Italians and be renamed the Da Vinci, surviving until the 70s.
Jesus is the love of your life.
Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. John 14:27 ✝🌅
Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. Ephesians 6:11 ✝🌅
He that rejecteth me, and receiveth not my words, hath one that judgeth him: the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day. John 12:48 ✝🌅
Nice!
@@miriadlamentations maybe he should stop wars?
I've sunk down the Historigraph rabbit hole and I can't stop.
Someone help me
Absolutely terrifying. I can't fathom the kind of grit it took these men and boys to even be there let alone fight these epic battles at sea. My grandfathers were fly boys - gunners, and what a nightmare beyond imagining that was as well. God Bless all these brave men, whatever side.
Falling out of the sky is more terrifying but the death is quick. Drowning while trapped in a sinking ship or submarine and having your lungs fill with water seems more horrible. Or worse being eaten by a sharks on a feeding frenzy.
@@GizmoMaltese I can't imagine being an armor crewman/tanker. Getting ripped apart by metal fragments while trapped in a hot, cramped coffin.
@@donovanwilliams5424 Pretty much sucks to lie in the mud for days and then get shredded by artillery. Seems like war kinda sucks.
War is hell and all those who are forced into it are victims along with the rest of the casualties. If you're lucky enough to survive, it's likely that war killed your soul anyway. Knowing how badly my household trauma affected me, it's a wonder anyone emerges from war still functioning.
Of all the factors involved I would say the experience of the crew, or lack thereof, was the most crucial one. Main reason why Musashi took 19 torpedoes and 17 bombs to sink were her damage control crews, superbly skilled and highly experienced. Shinano, when compared, was basically crewed by raw recruits. An issue compounded immensely by the fact Abe made every wrong decision he possibly could when dealing with the crisis.
Slowing down wasn't much of an option TBH.
Bulkheads and doors were not finish
I would love to criticize Abe's decision-making, but it feels hard to do as he had incomplete information and we have the advantage of hindsight. I feel in his position most of the decisions he made were probably the correct ones given the information he had
I certainly don't envy Abe and I highly doubt anyone competent would. He knew the ship wasn't ready and petitioned for more time but was ordered out anyway, those are some major reasons to become paranoid. If the ship was actually made up to standard, he truly wouldn't have had anything to fear from a lone submarine and it's pure bad luck that he encountered one that actually decided to engage alone.
Musashi also took torpedoes on both sides. Shinano (and Yamato) were torpedoed on just one side (mostly, in the case of Yamato.)
Fun fact: Shinano was built in the same drydock that built another, far more successful carrier: Shokaku. Shinano began construction shortly after Shokaku had left that particular slipway.
Edit: this is part of why “Japan could have built twice as many carriers as it already had by not building the Yamatos” thing is actually wrong. The number of ships Japan could build was constrained not by the amount of steel available, but by the amount of slipways. Japan only had a grand total of FOUR slipways at the time that could accommodate something the size of a carrier or a battleship, and when the first two Yamatos were being built in two of them, the other two were already busy at work building the Shokakus. Thus, not building Yamato and Musashi gives Japan only two extra drydocks/slipways to build aircraft carriers in, so you only get two more aircraft carriers, even if you have the steel for 6 more carriers. And keep in mind, Japan already had pre-war plans to expand its carrier force in the 1940s with the Unryus and actually completed or almost completed a fair number of them before the surrender: they just didn’t have any pilots to fly off of them.
It is also worth noting that the IJN was arguably one of the most BATTLESHIP-centric of all major ww2 navies. Certainly, they began with a potent carrier force but, by and large, it was seen as an adjunct to the hallowed Line Of Battle. For example, in the Battle Of Midway, the carriers were a separate group, and the so-called Main Force (including Yamato) was over two hundred miles to the rear, contributing absolutely nothing.
For most of the war, most of the IJN was fixated on the idea of an eventual Jutland-style showdown between their battleships and the USN, a major reason why most of their BBs just sat around in Japan, as distinct from actually doing very much. That only began to change in 1944-45, but even then the IJN seemed largely clueless.
And just like Germany, the Japanese can't just make "more x" because they lack another important component: oil.
@@Brslldyeah meanwhile the USN had plenty of oil not to mention steel,pilots,dockyards etc. I mean the US outproduced literally EVERY OTHER COUNTRY COMBINED IN WW2.
In short: don’t touch America’s boats lmao
That is a really FUN FACT 🇺🇸
@@7thsealord888
First of all, there really wasn’t anything the IJN could have accomplished by using battleships more aggressively instead of preserving them for a battle that was never going to happen. Take a look at the combat record of American battleships during the war: sure, they were present in a lot more battles, but they didn’t actually justify their involvement (unless the battles were Second Guadalcanal or Surigao Strait), especially when it came to the new fast battleships. They mostly got used as glorified monitors or (for the fast battleships) glorified CLAAs. All that the Japanese really would have achieved by using their battleships more aggressively and more often would have been the waste of even more fuel. Letting them waste away in port was the right call; trying to use a weapon that can’t justify itself in combat is NOT a good idea unless you have no other choice.
Second…Japan was actually one of the LEAST battleship-oriented navies of WWII once you look at construction. Keep in mind, almost all of their battleships were things they built back in WWI, with the two Yamatos being their only new battleships. Even accounting for the fact those two were the two largest battleships ever, they actually represented a smaller expenditure of resources and infrastructure (even in relative terms) than the battleships other navies were building at the same time, especially the Germans.
This narrative claimed that the Archerfish had no idea what Shinano's ultimate destination was... and while technically speaking that was true, they did have a pretty good idea. Captain Enright asked his navigator to plot the ship's course and try to get an idea of where Shinano was headed. The navigator plotted her zig-zag course for hours, then finally drew a straight line thru the average of all the zig zagging. He told Enright that He believed Her course to be The Phillipines, which made perfect sense.
The biggest problem that the damage control parties aboard Shinano faced was the fact that the ship was not finished and those 300 dock workers they had aboard, working to fit her out on her way to join the fight. They had not installed many of the watertight door gaskets. In those compartments where they had been installed, there were power cables and air lines running from compartment to compartment, preventing watertight doors from being closed to the incoming flooding.
The fact that Shinano was rushed into battle before she was ready contributed significantly to her loss.
American submarines stationed off Japan were posted there to spend their evenings retrieving downed B29 crewmen from the water. This was their primary job and they were not allowed to engage in attacks on Japanese shipping when seving in this role. The fact that there were storms over Japan that night meant that US bombing raids on Japan were cancelled. That freed up Archerfish (and all other US subs) from this duty, leaving her to pursue targets of opportunity. Had their been clear skies that night, Archerfish would have been obligated to remain on station to rescue airmen. It would seem that Shinano's destruction was the result of converging factors that created the perfect storm.
has the wreck ever been found
Japan was not used to have a nemesis. In China they faced a buncho of peasants with rifles. And the regime applied heavy censorship. The problem of having strong disinformation infrastructure is that it disinforms even own decision makers.
@@randomrazrThe resolution of the bottom of the sea is about one pixel for a 3x3 miles area. That is not enough resolution Mapping a detailed grid is expensive. And for any sea bottom below 400 meters, any features of the bottom of the sea are irrelevant for sub operations.
could we take oceangate down their?@@aquarius5719
The Shinano was going to become a loss anyways. Either in her old dock, on sea, in her new dock, or if against all odds she made it to a battle.
Your vids are among the very best on YT. Well written, well researched, well presented. The narration is articulate and not drowned out by background music. The animations are simple without being simplistic, providing easily understandable visualization of the story without undue flashy splashy bells and whistles. Well done across the board. Thank you for the time and effort you put into this channel.
Thanks a lot!
Well researched huh? The USS Tang sunk 33 vessels for over 116,000 tons of shipping. So much for the "research". Maybe he should re-search the facts.
Well said and I agree.
Used to be a history buff, and read someplace that Commander Enright had preciously talked to an American battle ship commander about battleship weak points. He was told to set his torpedo's at a shallow depth at the top edge of the armor belt. This way the water inflow was from the top in the damaged areas and could not be stopped or the bulkhead doors below could not be closed to stop the water. If the bottom below the armor belt was punctured the upper doors and hatches could be close then compressed air in the below chambers could be used to force some of the water out and keep more from coming in.
Yes; I have Enright's book right here to skim as I watched the video. On p. 150 he talks about how he'd made up his mind to try to capsize the carrier due to its higher weight above the waterline and also habit - for most of the war our torpedoes ran deeper than they were set. And also, because Enright was consciously tossing "the book" - standard operating procedures - aside. "The book" is how he lost his confidence as CO of the Dace, a story he goes into extensively in his book "Shinano!" (Highly recommended)
Since people seem curious, tl;dr is that as CO of the Dace he had an ULTRA message giving him the predicted location of a carrier and ordering him to go attack it. His gut and his own senior officers felt the carrier would show up in a different location due to currents (want to know more, read the book). In the end he decided to follow orders, with the result that he and his sub missed the carrier, which he got to watch showing up exactly where his XO, Navigator, and he himself thought it would be.
To get back on topic, "the book" called for setting torpedoes at 25-30 feet; he ordered his set to 10 feet.
I was on a World War II decommission submarine and I have nothing but respect for the brave men who served on those submarines because I was feeling very claustrophobic and the ship was not in battle
I needed a book in school for a book report and picked up "Shinano" just because the boat looked cool. Absolutely fired my love for naval reading. The whole book is step by step this hunt.
Thank you so much for delivering this story. I thought I knew most of the major naval battles in the Pacific but honestly I had never heard of this. As my uncle David Burton Swiney was lost on the USS Drexler sinking I have for my entire life absorbed all information about these great historical battles.
Alot of folks, myself included, that have great interest in the US/Japanese sea war of WW2, didn't know of this sinking until hearing about it in this video. I would think that something this monumental would be among the most widely known events but instead, it seems to be one of the most obscure.
@@jamesstreet228 since childhood I have watched every documentary and movie I could find just hoping to find out something about my uncles ship. Turns out a survivor of the Drexler made a You Tube video about it and we never knew of any survivors. Told all about it. I suppose there are hundreds of similar untold stories like these. So many untold stories going to graves with old men and yet sadly so many new stories are being created every day.
This story reminds me of two phases of the war that don't get a lot of publicity but were vital in our efforts against the Japanese. We out did the enemy in damage control and underway replenishment by a huge margin. Both were invaluable to the war effort.
Agreed. A number of less glamorous advances enabled US victory -- code breaking, replenishment, the DC-3 aircraft, proximity fuse artillery, radar onboard aircraft, Victory ships, and abundant fuel of all types.
The second is part of logistics.
And it's just as important as manufacturing.
Yeah a lot of it falls under logistics, like the other huge part that played into the Yorktown, which is our ability to repair and turn around equipment faster than anyone else.
I'm a huge WW2 fan/buff and I actually didn't know about this particular engagement. I've been studying this war since I was a child and still in my 30's I'm learning new things about it I never knew. Thankyou. I will definitely share this knowledge with others. My wife is actually a history teacher and I'm sure she'll love to be able to throw this tid bit of info into one of her lessons.
Hey Historigraph, I absolutely love the use of top down ship diagrams for indicating the flooding and torpedo damage, its very well done.
Also, I love how you actually showed the list of the ship by angleing it. When people hear 10 degrees they think its not that much, but actually overlaying a cross section and angleing it at 10 degrees shows how that list is already massive and very noticable. I have never seen this done before, it is great.
Also, people are quick to hate on captains for making "stupid" or "wrong" or "bad" decisions, but you always provide much more context than most other RUclipsrs do and you show the fog of war situation (another great example for that being your Midway and Force Z videos). In this case, it doesnt look to me as Captain Abe made a wrong call with changing his course and speed, he did everything right according to the information available to him and his guesswork. He went off the "worst case scenario", a wolf pack, which is a generally a good thing to base your decisions on. The fact that this put him directly in front of Archerfish was just bad luck. This cant be said about the continuing at maximum speed after being hit, but apparently the additional flooding after that was also heavily influenced by the shitty construction of Shinano, as you said. Other ships (especially battleships, and shinanos underwater hull and torpedo protection essentially was that of a battleship) had no problems continuing at high speed after torpedo impacts.
All in all, excellent video, as usually. Very good research, very good context, and very good presentaition and visualiation of it. Thank you for your hard work.
And I wish you a merry christmas as well :)
Right. Seeing 10° made me realize how hard it would be to stand up or move around. Never would have seen it without the ship's profile.
I was aware that U.S. submarines were taking their toll on the IJN, but had not heard or read about this story before. Great storytelling and great graphics! Thanks for sharing this with us.
Historigraph is always a must watch, but the attention to detail and visual representations in this video are better than ever.
Great video, well done. The Historigraph team deserves credit.
9:58 The painting of Archerfish surfacing in daylight in full view of her dying victim's helpless crew is visually interesting but totally fanciful. With Shinano being attended by three of Japan's most capable destroyers, Cdr. Enright would have been barking mad to surface his boat when a periscope observation would suffice. I suppose the artist, Jaroslaw Wrobel, was chagrined to learn that he painted Shinano heeling the wrong way.
Three Kagerō-class destroyers were an odd choice for Shinano's escort. With six 5-inch guns and eight 24-inch Long Lance torpedo tubes, the Kagerōs were cruiser killers; their paltry 18 depth charges were just token anti-submarine armament. The much smaller Shimushu-class gunboats carried sixty or more.
We'll give the artist "artistic license" on that. As for the escorts, I believe it was down to the fact thats all they had available at the time, they had lost so many ships by then.
15:44
The Cavella, on the bottom of the list, is a submarine that you can visit in Texas at Galveston island. I’ve been there twice and she is a pretty awesome boat. She sank an aircraft carrier that participated in Pearl Harbor
Sorry... none of the Carriers Akagi, Kaga, Hiryu, and Soryu, were sunk by a sub, they were all sunk by Enterprise and Yorktown.
Perhaps you were thinking of Zuikako?
@@enterprisethesylveon5787 there were a total of 6 for the Pearl Harbor attack, the 4 you listed plus the Shokaku and zuikaku. The Zuikaku was sunk by aircraft, the Shokaku was sunk by the Cavella in 1944
The 4 Carriers that you listed were all sunk by SBD dauntless at the battle of midway in 1942
@@enterprisethesylveon5787 Nope. Shokaku was sunk by Cavella. Shokaku was Zuikako’s sister ship and both attacked Pearl Harbor.
@@jakfuki I've toured this sub and the display itself states it sank a carrier that participated in the Pearl Harbor attack.
First video I've seen from this channel and it's good stuff. No unnecessary padding or filler content and no needless editorializing. Look forward to more!
He has made dozens that are just as good or even better. Have a look at his back catalog.
I served on the nuclear submarines USS Archerfish and the USS Indianapolis. Proud to have done it and for the history in the names.
thank you for your service
Thanks for your service to our country.
Fun fact the conning tower for the USS Indianapolis is at the Indiana Military Museum in Vincennes.
Wow nice job trying to make it about you. No one cares
@@mistersalsa And you Pablo, as a coward, didn't do anything for this country, but whine and criticize. Shame on you. And no one cares about Pablo, so go away.
I have been a very in-depth ww2 history buff for about 30 years. Although I mostly focus on the eastern and western fronts. I do delve in the the neglected history of the pacific at times. And I have to say, I have never heard of this ship or battle. Ever... Amazing how massive some things can be and yet its like it never existed. I hope we see a dive of the wreck some day.
There was just so much going on in WW2, I paid more attention to the western front for a long time as well. Now I think the Pacific is more interesting, the biggest most insane naval battles that have ever happened. Men flying out to torpedo ships without even having enough fuel to return, while carrying defective torpedoes! A destroyer charging the biggest Pacific fleet ever amassed. Island hopping with multiple beach landings and banzai attacks. The war in the pacific was absolutely insane.
@@bobbygetsbanned6049when you really read some of the stories and digest it the Pacific was literally like the Wild West of WW2. I was just watching the story of a machine gunner on an island that repelled several bonsai charges and may have killed a few hundred Japanese in one night! Wtf?
Unfortunately, in all likelihood, what remains of the Shinano has been salvaged by illegal Chinese salvage ships.
"Knowledge is power, hide it well." Even with easier FOI requests, security classifications finally sunsetting, and surviving vets opening up before they go, there will be plenty of stories about WW2 we will never know in any detail. Sometimes that's as it should be.
@@Einwetok my wife had a client a few years ago that was 97 years old. My wife was his caretaker. I had the privilege of sitting down with him for hours one night while he told me his WW2 experiences. I was absolutely incredible. He was a mathematician that was part of the artillery unit. He would make calculations for targeting adjustments on the fly by hand. He told me him and his boys could put a shell in your back pocket if they wanted to.😉 he died a year or so after that. I still think about all the cool stories he told me about being airdropped into France.
I had the pleasure of meeting Cmdr Enright when was preparing to move from he moved to from California to Cataula, Georgia. I was his mortgage lender for his new home. Yes a VA loan. He also ended up moving into my neighborhood. I spotted his WWII service in the Pacific Theater on his DD214. I asked him what he did in the war. He replied, “How about I send you a book?” It was the book “Shinano!” He autographed it. It is a cherished possession of mine. Joseph Enright was a regular guy. I visited his home several times with my wife and children. He loved to talk about the Navy. Unfortunately, he ended up having some memory issues. His wife passed away and his family moved him to Virginia. It was an honor to know him briefly on his journey.
Ultimate flex: here's the book of what I did in the war
Much respect for you guys covering this. Not only this story, but the very EXISTENCE of this ship is a myth to most. Just another part of WW2 that is understudied. Great work as usual.
Considering that the ship was active less than a day and only a single US sub was involved, I'm not surprised it's relegated to the "odd stories of WW2" section.
Out of curiosity, why did the ship choose the heading that it did? Why not hug the coast on it's way to it's destination? I don't mean miles offshore, but in sight of shore.
An unfinished ship can have any number of problems, but especially down 1/3 of it's boilers.
It seems like the equivalent of taking a new, just barely flightworthy, aircraft, on a maiden flight across the Atlantic. It leaves no room for suprises.
11:52
Imagine sinking 10 ships and only getting 4th in terms of tonnage for a single patrol. I'm also curious about what the heck Cavalla sank to get 30,000 tonnage with just 1 kill.
edit: The Cavalla sank the IJN Shokaku, which was apparently only half the tonnage or her much larger cousin.
But was far more dangerous of an enemy. Shokaku was the ship that sank the original Hornet, and she participated in that and various other operations (including Pearl Harbor) with her sister ship, the two of them being the most dangerous Axis capital ships (and two of the most dangerous capital ships period) of WWII.
@@bkjeong4302 And it was the ship that Enright was afraid to attack the previous year.
@@terraflow__bryanburdo4547
And was built in the same dock Shinano later got built in, and at the same time as Shinano’s two older half-sisters.
@@bkjeong4302 And yet just as irrelevant enemy by 1944. Zuikaku fate from Leyte showcases that Shoukaku survival in June wouldn't mean anything.
Computer game Silent Service have a scenario called USS Cavalla hits the jackpot. It was not avalible to those of us with the game on Commodore 64 tape version though. It seems to have been a carrier.
The simplicity of the animations actually helps me visualize the action much better.
Great video!
Thank you for the illustrated presentation. It is astounding that with one sinking, the Archerfish leapfrogged to the top spot in tonnage sunk by a submarine.
War is a horrible thing.
70+ years later I feel bad for all lost & their families
I mean.... If you know anything about the Japanese during WW2 you shouldn't feel too bad. I feel bad for the innocent workers much more than the enlisted men
The story of ww2 is one of German and Japanese soldiers killing unarmed civilians. Both armies were evil and deserving of death one and all.
Educating yourself on the treatment of civilians and prisoners by the Japanese during WW2 will liberate you of such sentiment
Archer Fish's commander, Enwright, may have been unremarkable compared to many other sub commanders. But, in this instance, he did not give up, was prepared to improvise and did pretty much everything exactly right.
Or, he did ENOUGH right. And got the result.
That explanation of Shinano’s demise was outstanding. The graphics were easy to understand and the script was perfect. Well done to the makers of this documentary, I hope it won an award somewhere it certainly deserved many.
.
Wow those destroyers did well to rescue so many, it's not easy rescuing sailors lost in the sea, even when you know where they are
So true
It's easier when there are no aircraft strafing the men in the water.
@@jagdson2701 Something that is now considered a war crime, though I am not sure of the nuance of that. But as the old saying goes, its never a war crime the first time.
Side note: I always forget the Japanese didn't have sonar, as this attack would have been next to impossible on an American battlegroup. Sonar not only would have told them the sub was approaching, but how many.
@@goldenhate6649 Depends on the target you want to be strafe. Strafing the defenseless/sitting duck combatants such as sailors in the water was, and is, YES it's considered a war crime under international military law. But strafing on tanks, armored vehicles, and other armed ground targets usually it's NOT considered a war crime
@@jagdson2701 I doubt there would be documention on that even if true. However, and i am not some blushing milkmaid, I find it hard to believe we would do that. Then again, the hatred of the Japanese, especially toward the end of the war as the atrocities were made known, maybe it did happen. But, it would require command to take a blind eye. Just my thoughts.
I have so much respect and am in total awe of my Submarine Brothers who went before me. I only hope they are proud of those who tried to carry on in their honor, and make the US Navy Submarine Force a feared adversary. If you want to talk to a hero, find a WWII Submarine Vet, if you can, and chat with him for a while - it will change your life. It is an honor to wear Dolphins because of men like this.
It is incredible that we have this much detail recorded about the sinking of an enemy ship.
From the perspective of an audience member, it is important to pause and recognize the impressive dedication and hard work behind this intriguing exhibition. I would like to extend my sincere appreciation to all the spice bottle cleaners for their devoted work. Your enthusiasm and passion are truly impressive. Your efforts captivate and entertain the audience, and we genuinely appreciate your commitment. We acknowledge the long hours you tirelessly put in, often without breaks, and the demanding tasks you undertake daily.
I had never heard this story before. Seems like a case where one captain was doomed from the get-go and the other was very lucky and did everything right.
When Isokaze went after Archer-fish, who was on the surface, if the destroyer had not been recalled by Abe, Enright would have been forced to dive the sub which would allow Shinano to get so far past Archer-fish that if Isokaze held her down for just 30 minutes, Enright could never have caught up. Abe should have let his destroyer captains do their job.
@@johnemerson1363 this can be said in hindsight knowing that only 1 submarine was trailing the carrier. In the fog of war, Abe assumed the worst case scenario, which was that there was a Wolfpack of submarines trailing the ship, which is generally the better option. It was simply bad luck that his choice put him in the direct line of archerfish
@splender88 It's not a story.
Reading this Christmas Day 2022...always amazed that there is always something new to learn about WW2.
God rest those sailors...even though they were our enemy.
I have never seen anything said about Shinanos loss that was so precise and descriptive. I actually didn't think that there was so much detail to the event that existed.
All I knew about the sinking was that it was mostly due to the water tight doors not being installed. Great story!
Thanks
Thanks!
This is the way to produce a documentary: Well organized graphics, understandable narration, no silliness. Bravo.
Excellent documentary! The description of the inside of IJN CV Shinano is unparalleled. The action report and graphics are suspenseful and accurate . I was on the edge of my seat even though I knew about this sinking!
I read somewhere that as the situation began to deteriorate, Abe intended to give the order "All civilians to the flight deck", but in the panic said "All hands to the flight deck". Unlike on most carriers where there is one main corridor, the Shinano had 2. The crew had been given very little training on the passageways to the flight deck during an emergency, so Abe's mistake saved more lives.
Yeah I read this in Enrights book. Apparently the two commands in Japanese sound very similar r
Great presentation of a piece of history that is hard to believe.
Your narration is very well done.
Thank you.
As an old Sailor in the late sixties in Vietnam I really enjoyed this story and video and as such there is nothing more horrifying and sad than a ship sinking taking all those young sailors with it to the bottom~! The Swabbies on those Subs are truly a very special group of Real Men and I have the highest admiration of them.
When I was in bootcamp in the Navy i think I remember them telling me for the average ship you had to swim about 150 yards away from it or else you’ll be “sucked in”. So I can imagine how horrifying it would be. Even if you swim, if you don’t swim far enough…..you’re gonna have a bad bad day.
I suppose it’s even further for a ship this large.
@@ShadowForever-qh4ox Yes I was taught the same thing at Government Island in Alameda Coast Guard Boot Camp and they had us jump off a high tower into a huge pool and swim away fast and then showed us how to remain floating by using our Chambery shirts and bell bottoms to trap air into them. So many great memories now at age 78 and I'm still just as proud as I was then to enter the war against the NVA~!!
Thanks for your reply~!!
My first CO on my atomic sub was, in 1944, a young ensign on the USS Archerfish. He was a character. He was commanding his 3rd sub and I remember him saying, "The highest form of life is to command a man of war on the high seas".
Sounds like he had one of those mythical "Dream Jobs" we all hear about
Getting stuck in a tin can next to a nuclear reactor thousands of feet under water with hundreds of sweaty dudes, definitely a dream job. Thank you for your service
I cant believe more people haven't covered this story more. Thanks for doing that.
Nicely done documentary. Loved it. A shame Shinano wasn't captured in port, what a beast of a ship.
Not really. Because of the stupid decision to build her as a support carrier, most of her aircraft capacity and facilities were dedicated to aircraft from other carriers; her own air wing was only around 40 aircraft.
Though I do wonder what would have happened if someone gutted her internals and rebuilt her as a proper carrier (if still a bit slow for a carrier), because in that case, her air wing could have been doubled or even tripled.
@@bkjeong4302 Doubled would have given her an air wing around the same as an Essex, tripled....
See the issue? An Essex was 36,000 tons fully loaded. Shinano was 30,000 tons higher displacement, and as far as I can determine (though I may be wrong), that's BASE displacement, not fully loaded. Essex Class base displacement is about 30,000 tons....
So, give me a carrier that can operate 80 aircraft on 30,000 tons light, or one that can operate 120 aircraft on 68,000 tons light, and you know what I will choose?
@@alganhar1
Oh, I never said Shinano was going to be an especially good carrier (the slow-for-a-carrier speed is what really screws her over: 27 knots is reasonable for a battleship but too slow for a carrier). But it’s still a drastic improvement on the abomination that she would have been IRL if she hadn’t been sunk.
@@bkjeong4302 The "support carrier" thing was one of those "by necessity" things. It wasn't a good idea, but there were not better options really. They had already built and installed the barbettes as I recall. If the decision to convert her had come a lot sooner, then the conversion would have been different, and more effective.
@@Rocketsong
Fair enough.
I first read this story in Reader's Digest, and since then, no one really speaks of this story or mentions the Shinano much.
Glad to finally see a good animated documentary about it.
Good work. 👍
Captain Enrights book is well worth looking for .
This was a great video. The details of Shinano's sinking was unbelievable, especially the fact that Archerfish sailed under the destroyer without the destroyer knowing. I hope that an underwater research team can be put together to find shinano.
YES, my dad was on that patrol, there was more than 4 holes
The idea of a warship being assigned to anti-submarine warfare was considered shameful (I don't remember why) to the Imperial Japanese Navy. Only during the last months of the war did the Japanese begin to consider it. Considering how our subs mauled Japanese shipping (once our torpedo problem was addressed), I don't understand that.
@@markforster6457
Maybe that was because of how bad our early torpedoes were. 😞
@@lordgarion514 That's a thought. Thank you.
@@markforster6457 I read once that the Japanese didn't think the US would have good submarine crews because they thought Americans were too tall to fit into submarines and too undisciplined to work as a crew together underwater for long periods of time.
It’s incredible how similar this situation was to the sinking of the Shikako. Both were covert Japanese task forces and both were taken out by a single stalking American submarine. Please do a video on that! 🙏🏼
The man who first laid eyes on her was Marteen “Bob” Fuller. He was 19 and had the sharpest eyes on the boat. He and his wife, Charlotte invested in me and provided greater than can be described benefits in my life. I didn’t do them right and of the things I would re do, that’s high on the list. I got to hear about this fantastic battle many times. Bob passed away, went to Heaven, in the parking lot of Cape Canaveral Hospital the same weekend the book made it to the shelves. Following seas Bob and Charlotte. Y’all done good, real good.
I was watching a documentary on Musashi and they had figured out that both her and Yamato had serious design flaws in the citadel armor. The steel plates due to their thickness were riveted instead of welded and when hit by a torpedo, the rivets would fail and allow water to stream in.
what the, it's like riveted tanks, but, worse. Shouldn't have invested that much in the ONBOARD ORCHESTRA
Only the thickest parts of the armour were riveted, actually: the rest of it was welded.
This was actually standard practice at the time across all navies, where most of a battleship’s armour would be welded, but the thickest sections were usually too thick to weld and had to be riveted.
The 'documentary' was wrong. Listen to the guy above me, he is spot on in this case.
@@alganhar1 So the original blueprints are incorrect? Interesting.
@@StephenCole1916
Less that the original blueprints are incorrect, and more that the information was presented badly in the documentary.
What the original blueprints show is that the thickest sections of the armour were riveted because there wasn’t a practical way to weld those sections, and that this posed a potential weak point: however, the documentary erred by a) wrongly claiming this weakness applied to the ENTIRETY of the armour, which it didn’t, and b) omitting that this particular weakness was universal among battleships and not something wrong with the Yamatos in particular.
I've read articles and documentaries about this event and I find it mirroring the sinking of Yorktown when she was sunk by I-168(she was alone when she sunk her). Thank you for this interesting and informative video Historiograph. Is it possible for you to do a video about Taiho the carrier that was sunk due to her inexperienced crew
Anything is possible. If this video does well we'll look at doing more breakdowns of sinkings like this in future
The heck are you on about? Yorktown was being towed by the fleet tug USS Vireo and guarded by 3 destroyers plus USS Hammann was providing Auxiliary power. So that wasn’t alone.
@@ph89787 I mean the submarine.
Yorktown was already bombed and torpedoed multiple times before that. It was very different situation, they figured the Yorktown was going to sink in afew hours but it turned out, she didnt. So a tug boat was sent to save her. Yorktown was already abandoned and empty during her sinking
@@Aspir3xx ah.
Excellent explanation of how this happened. Fascinating. Congratulations!
Awe the poor Shinano, how one of the world's favorites ships ended up at the bottom of the sea...
Rest in peace Shinano. Never forgotten.
Most people do not even know she existed, that's how 'well known' she was. That's how much she was one of the 'worlds favourite ships'.
Rest in pieces Shinano, best forgotten....
@@alganhar1 Most people don't even know a fair amount about Japanese Naval History but, for one of the world's largest ships I believe she is to be known and, not to mention the only the ones in a small community (I say small community meaning in our world) who expand their knowledge are the ones who know. Set aside differences of Naval action between the Japanese and Americans, she was an awesome ship that (like the Yamamoto) was just poorly managed. So, to say your argument just shows a fair amount of ignorance and a lack of mind power to expand one's knowledge of debatable important history.
And set-aside "People" in this case are different from a "World" where this ship proves extraordinary differences at the time and undoubtedly other Historians can agree upon (Even noted in the video I recall)
Also, sorry for the paragraph lol, Shinano itself was just an awesome ship and ignorant people just don't understand how Naval powers society at the time were back then but also. (I might remember World of Warships including Shinano and if you include Azur Lane that is a number of online players, so that's so much for "people" not knowing her) Merry Christmas!
@@CamoTheGuy
I wouldn’t consider Shinano an especially noteworthy warship in the vein of her sisters (which were quite capable battleships that got screwed over by the fact battleships in general were obsolete at that point, which is something you can say about any battleship class to enter service in WWII). Shinano was designed for a nonsensical role as a support carrier.
@@bkjeong4302 I would agree on that apart that Shinano was short of attainting anything noteworthy as her voyage was too short to see noteworthy action caused by Foolish Japanese Naval HICOM (Just like her sister ships) but, her role as a Carrier (being the largest aircraft carrier yet) as well as having the capability to carry the most aircraft is a large amount of potential power, aside as a "support carrier" where the Japanese view of using her to change the course of the war as a main fleet carrier. A video I recommend as well on the point is "Yamato, the right ship for the wrong war" by Potential History. But, to conclude on it you can debate on her being noteworthy as she yet alone held the record till the USS Forrestal in 1954, I'd say that is pretty noteworthy itself alone.
honestly the Shinano made a lot of good, sensible calls to play it safe and the Archerfish basically crossed its fingers and hoped for the best
And the best happened because Abe was playing it "safe."
And the Archerfish was not harassed by any destroyers- if it was made to do evasive maneuvers it possibly wouldn't been able to get such a clean shot.
If you support US military you are party to the murders of humans committed by them around the world
Luck was definitely on the side of Archerfish and her crew that night, but Shinano’s commanding officer made some crucial mistakes, namely not allowing his escorts to provide an effective screen, and ignoring the severity of the damage his vessel took from those torpedo hits until it was too late. Of course, the Japanese admiralty is arguably more at fault because they ignored his requests to delay the voyage until the ship was better prepared.
I love your style of video production and story telling! If I may make 1 suggestion, it can be difficult sometimes to get geographic context - maybe a small inset map showing the broader area in question?
Not a bad idea
So many heroic, stories of the war!! no room in the history books for all. I think a movie would be in order.
I used to work in a assisted living home. One of the residents there served on the archerfish. If I remember correctly he was a sonar tech.
Matthew, please see my note
@@mikepotter6426 ?
@@GameTimeWithMatt Matthew, I put in my own story about a U.S.S. ARCHERFISH vet. He was such an awesome guy.
My Dad John Adams was a sonar tech on that patrol. he was in a home for six days before passing
@@martinadams7949 im sorry to hear that Martin im sorry about your loss. I forget his name. I left 3 months ago and he was doing good last I heard. He served after ww2 on the sub.
Love the video Historigraph! Well done and well researched. Another WW2 US Sub attack that would make an excellent video is the sinking of the IJN Kongo by the USS Sealion. Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of that action is that an audio recording exists of part of the attack, including the moment several torpedoes strike the Kongo. It's really incredible stuff! AFAIK the only recording of a WW2 sub attack in existence.
Fun Fact: Ppl actually don't know the full detail of how Shinano look like due to the secrecy of the Japanese when buliding her plus there is only one photograph of her
There are actually three photographs of her iirc, but the others are recon photos
The secrecy applies to all of the Yamatos, actually. To the point most IJN officers were unaware of their true specs (a few, like Kurita, managed to figure it out on their own) and most of the Japanese public didn’t even know they existed until after the war.
Incidentally, this is why the entire idea of the Yamatos as being propaganda projects or symbols of power is a postwar fabrication: hard to be symbolic or prestigious if you’re shrouded in so much secrecy. It’s only from the 1950s onwards that the Yamatos entered Japanese public knowledge and only from SBY onwards that they really became famous. Even then, SBY almost ended up being Space Battleship Nagato instead because Nagato was the ACTUAL symbol of the IJN.
Even the government was tricked by disguising Yamato's budget as budget for 3 destroyers
@@aslamnurfikri76403 Destroyers?
The amount the Yamato must have cost they could have hidden it as a Destroyer flotilla, and a Light Cruiser and still had change!
@@richardcowling7381
Yamato cost around $80,500,000 (using late 1930s Yen-to-Dollar exchange rates, since she was laid down in 1937). Most of that was already allotted for in the naval budget, and the three destroyers just covered up the cost overruns.
Incidentally, the two Yamatos aren’t the most expensive individual battleships ever built: the Iowas individually cost around $100,000,000 apiece, due to cost overruns (due to, among other things, issues with procuring their main armament thanks to a BuOrds bureaucratic fuckup).
Wow, I never realized that the Shinano was sunk by Joe Enright on Archerfish. I remember watching the episode on Silent Service (an old TV show from the 1950s) where Joe Enright had recused himself of sub duty and became a base commander instead due to his lack of self confidence. He was speaking with a friend (a fellow sub captain) and he decided to take another crack at command. He was certain that he had sunk a battlewagon, but when he returned to base in Guam he was informed that it was the Shinano (although I don't remember them saying which carrier it was). Good to see Joe going on to make history!
This story was amazing! It literally just came down to multiple instances of chain luck after pitting two very cautious Commanders up against one another.
I remember reading the book "Shinano!" that the skipper of the Archerfish wrote. Very fascinating story that many don't know about. Thanks for covering it!
Near perfect vid bro! No BS, good animations and your voice over sound captivating yet not distracting. Keep it up :)
There's a WWII Sub docked in Cleveland Ohio I went on board and couldn't believe how cramped it was inside. Couldn't imagine being on one for months.
I'm impressed by that captain and the U.S. Navy. He determined he was not competent to command his first boat. But then the Navy allowed him to go on to command the Archerfish with first rate results.
At the beginning you are all for the hunt... watching and waiting. Then as the ship sinks you just feel it is a tragedy - even though it is the enemy. Superb presentation as always :)
TO HISTORIGRAPH: I really enjoy your videos, and appreciate how you use excellent, but simple and clear, animated graphics to show things like the courses the ships took (as shown in this video), the size comparisons of ships, and even the spread of torpedoes (including misses), and the use of the compass rose to show us general direction of course. These things might seem like minor details or unnecessary for telling the story. But, because you use them, and show them so well, it brings the facts of the story "to life" and makes your videos (and the narration) so much more understandable and compelling story telling. Well done!
Put another way, while I have read accounts of naval battles, your animations (and clear narration) make them so much more easy to follow, easier to understand, and much more memorable. Well done!
Thank you so much for this thoughtful comment. There is always such tremendous support and love below these videos and i love reading trough them after every project. It is true as you say that it's all the little things that truly makes the video come togheter and that is not lost on us. it's also these things that often are the hardest to make and even think off to begin with, atleast for an amature animator like myself. Therefore it fills me with joy and motivation to see detailed comments like these, showing the effort is clearly not lost on people, whether they notice it consciously (like you did) or not.
Much Love, The Animator
Interesting side note! Both Shinano and Archerfish are currently available on World of Warships "Steel Fleet" in the Armory!
A great video to end the year. I enjoyed the little cinematic close up of the sub passing under the destroyer screen, as well as the mapping of the flooding carrier. Great stuff!