Sinking Chōkai
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- Опубликовано: 23 янв 2025
- Japan had little luck with its cruisers in late October, 1944. We already explored the loss of Chikuma, which went missing. Today, we are going to dive into the loss of Chōkai, another cruiser that was lost under obscure circumstances. Enjoy the video.
Such a contrast between the USN and IJN. Early war, everything went Japan’s way and by the end of the Guadalcanal Campaign, things were reversed.
I find it so heartbreakingly sad when a ship is lost with all hands.
Kudos on your content and presentation.
Keep up the good work.
A very distinctive bridge structure. 👍🏻🏴
Another outstanding video. This channel is the gold standard for the Imperial Navy...
It's heartbreaking to hear of stories like this where the ship carrying survivors of a lost ship end up dying with all hands of the rescueing vessel. A sad fact of war is simply that these events can certianly occur, as any ship in a theatre of war can be a viable target.
It's incredible so many cruisers were lost in one battle. The once feared Japanese heavy cruisers were decimated at Leyte. At the end of it all, the half sunken wrecks of Tone and Aoba were left with the sternless Myoko and Takao languishing at Singapore.
Wait, wasn't Takao destroyed fighting Godzilla?
The Aoba was sunk in the late stages of guadalcanal NOT in the Philippines.
I did state at the end of it all, ie WWII, not at the Phillipines, hence why I said Aoba and Tone. along with Myoko and Takao. And Aoba was not sunk at Guadalcanal, she was bombed by Task Force 38 in 1945 and settled on the bottom at Kure, along with Tone. You might be thinking of Aoba's sister ship Kinugasa, which was sunk at Guadalcanal. Cheers.
You are absolutely correct my friend, I mistake Aoba not for Kinugasa in guadalcanal but for the Furutaka, wich was also sunk in the Solomons, greetings from Portugal.
A really awful story; to be rescued from your sinking ship only to have the rescuing ship take you down with no survivors later.
Yea 😬
Don’t get much worse luck than that for sure.
No sympathy….
that is very interesting, awesome video
Thanks for this, it's ironic that the least modernised of the Takeo class cruisers had the best fighting record of all of them. Her bridge is in amazing condition in wreck photos but it's still not clear what disabled her. I even read article that stated she was hit by shellfire from the Kongo during her last battle. She is not the largest warship to have been lost with all her crew, the carrier Chiyoda sank in the same battle with her entire crew of 1470! Think she must be the largest?
We do know White Plains didn’t sink her as often assumed
fantastic reporting and detail. Just astounding to think that not once, but twice in this one battle two cruisers were sunk, their surviving crew members plucked out of the ocean and rescued on destroyers, only to be sunk again - with loss of _all_ hands, every last soul! Those Helldivers really earned their name! Oh wait - at Battle of Samar, there were no Helldivers... or even SBD Dauntleses!! The SBDs couldn't fold their wings, so were too large for the small escort carriers. So most of the damage was done by Avengers with bombs. (The escorts weren't prepared for anti-ship warfare, they had Avengers, but didn't have many torpedoes). Well, it was Helldivers (and fleet carrier, torpedo armed Avengers) that sank the mighty Musashi the day before, and one Helldiver even landed a 1,000 lb bomb hit on the Yamato, which "only" reduced it's speed by 1 or 2 knots... but most likely contributed to Kurita turning tail the next day. When being attacked by waves of swarming aircraft, it's hard to tell the difference between machine-gun armed Wildcats and heavy-bomb laden SBDs. Kurita thought he would face A DELUGE of heavy bombs and torpedoes at any moment, that Yamato would get the Musashi treatment, so he turned and ran, snatching defeat from jaws of victory. Not passing judgement - without bombs, the Wildcats (and of course the Taffy-3 destroyers) were focusing on shooting up the bridges of every Jap ship, so the bridge of every Jap ship was hell on earth for the entire duration of the battle.
The idea the CVEs didn’t have aerial torpedoes is a MYTH; they did have them, just not loaded onto their aircraft at the start of the battle. Furthermore, Taffy 2 was also involved in the battle as far as air attacks went and they used torpedoes from the start.
The air attacks were an ACTUAL threat to Centre Force, NOT an imaginary one as Hornsfischer’s wrongly led many to believe.
And Kurita never snatched defeat from the jaws of victory-*because there never were the jaws of victory at Samar.* He was five days behind the actual American landings, and even with Third Fleet lured away the main body of Seventh Fleet was still covering the landing zone and able to intercept him.
Kurita was right about his judgment though, if he had continued, halsey’s 8 carriers were 100% going to come down and completely wreck centre force, that’s not even mentioning task force 34’s 6 battleships which kurita would never be able to stand up to.
Interesting. Learned something new.
Great channel, thanks!
Tough fate for Chokai. In 1942 she was Mikawa's flagship for the smashing Japanese victory at Savo Island.
I would love to know the reactions of IJN officers who were at Leyte upon learning they ran away from light escort ships.
Given the level of air attacks that were happening at Samar (something that often gets ignored by the “lol IJN ran away from destroyers” narrative) and the fact the rest of Seventh Fleet wasn’t far away (it was THIRD Fleet that had been lured away)? That would actually be further from the truth than what the Japanese officers assumed.
I love Chokai and Maya because they kept their original Conning Tower Layout. Will build her in 1:100 Scale after I've finished my 1:100 Mikuma.
The IJN was so insular, that the concept of adapting and overcoming the difficulties presented during real time battle situations was an impossibility. Doctrine was much more important than real time tactics and strategy improvisation. The irreplaceable losses of their best combat commanders early on in the fleet action encounters, introduced more commanders with fatality ingrained rigid doctrinal adherence. The US fleet and task force commanders were very capable of taking maximum advantage of the IJN inflexibility.
Do you think you will still try to cover the IJN Hiei? She also was never seen sinking and the the new article by Robert Lundgren reveals that she was hit by more USN Destroyer torps than ever realized.
It was great that the researchers discovered her along with her sister, Maya, which was Setsuko's father's ship in the anime, directed by the late Isao Takahata, which pre-dated Studio Gibli, and was made in 1988.
I hope their sisters, Takao, and Ataago will also be discovered.
May I ask if you will ever make a video on all of these discovered warships, that wwere funded by the late o-founder of Microsoft, Paul G. Allen?
Take care, and all the best.
It's worth noting that the 4 heavy cruisers of the Takao class had been preserved, like the battleships, for the anticipated decisive battle with the USN. Unfortunately for Japan, 3 of the ships were torpedoed during the approach to Leyte Gulf with 2 ships sinking and the other having to leave the attack. Chokai was the last of the class still in action when it went down. So 3 of these beautiful ships sank in a span of only 3 days.
During this same 3 day period, 2 of the 3 surviving Mogami class cruisers were also sunk along with Chikuma of the latest, Tone class. Of the 6 ships lost, 4 went down on the same day, 25 October 1944.
And this massive Japanese attack only succeeded in sinking 1 CVL, 1 CVE, 2 DDs, and 1 DE. (I'm not counting the CVEs sunk by kamikazes.)
Takao did not sink after the 2 torpedoe hits, she did manage to steam to Singapore where she ended up beeing "captured" by the British togeather with Myoko.
@@niclasjohansson4333 My bad. I re-worded the above to eliminate my mistake.
while being pummelled by 5" rifle fire from the Johnston, how would a captain be able to distinguish a bomb hit from 8" ammo cooking off?
The TBF's/TBM's from Taffy3 that attacked the IJN force off Samar had only GP bombs. No AP because their job was to support the beach head. And they had to attack by glide bombing or level bombing. They aren't dive bombers. That was a tough fight.
Informative
I had heard that torpedoes onboard were responsible for explosion which sunk Chokai. Apparently, they weren't. News to me.
And the poor historiography surrounding her loss led to the unfounded legend of White Plains’s gun kill that never happened.
...so Taffy 3 actually won the battle off samar ... amazing ...truly a modern David vs Goliath
With the help of 400 aircrafts including the ones from Taffy 1 and 2, so actually not.....
Very interesting
How is your Lusitania build coming along?
I, indeed learned something.
so, a like and a comment. tada!
The Japanese never learned the lesson they taught at Pearl Harbor, Ships without air cover are just mobile targets, and the Air Plane always wins.
They did learn the lesson; there was just not much they could do about it at this point of the war.
Also, the real issue had far more to do with aircraft extending combat ranges to the point basically nothing else could even participate in the fight, meaning that it was the lack of OFFENSIVE capability and not vulnerability that led to the downfall of surface ship dominance (especially battleships).
Sinking battleships at harbor in peacetime is quite different from sinking one in battle...
Cooked
Wow first
Hi don
@@genegantii8638Hygiene