Wreck of HIJMS Hayanami (早波)

 Second World War 1939-1945, military, navy, shipwreck, destroyer (ship)

Laid down in mid-1942 at the Maizuru Naval Arsenal, HIJMS Hayanami was the 5th member of the Yūgumo Class of Destroyers and commissioned into Imperial Japanese Navy service on July 31st, 1943. Following her shakedown and training in the Sea of Japan, the Hayanami was assigned to Destroyer Division 32, Squadron 2, IJN Second Fleet and began convoy escort operations in September.

Based primarily out of the Palaus, the Hayanami made regular runs to Saipan, Ponape, Truk and Rabaul screening merchant and naval convoys for the balance of 1943 and into 1944, but shifted her operating area to the former Dutch East Indies in March 1944. Assigned to provide escort to the increasingly vital (and increasingly targeted) convoys of Oil Tankers moving around the East Indies, the Hayanami began operations between the Palau and Philippine islands and Borneo on March 10th and continued this work into early May.

Briefly detached from Tanker duty to screen the Mobile Fleet to its anchorage at Tawitawi from May 12th through the 15th, the Hayanami stood out of harbor again with a convoy of Tankers bound for Balikpapan on June 6th. Less than a day out of port the convoy came under submarine attack and the Destroyer Minazuki was sunk with heavy loss of life. Detaching from the convoy to carry out anti-submarine patrols, the Hayanami spent the night of June 6th sporadically depth charging undersea contacts without success as she slowly moved North far behind the convoy. As dawn broke and contacts diminished the Hayanami and her crew prepared to depart the area and rejoin the convoy when lookouts sighted three torpedoes inbound on their ship at short range.

The American Submarine USS Harder (SS-257), responsible for sinking the Minazuki the day prior, had spent the night of June 6th in deep water eluding the Imperial Japanese Navy's efforts to depth charge her and had stealthily returned to periscope depth after dawn on the 7th. Finding the slow-moving Hayanami slightly under 1000 yards away, the Harder quickly moved into attack position and sent a spread of three torpedoes at the Japanese Destroyer from nearly point-blank range, making evasive maneuvers all but impossible.

The Hayanami's crew had barely passed the warning of inbound torpedoes thorough the watches when the first of two torpedoes slammed into her side directly amidships, followed seconds later by a second torpedo which hit just forward of her #3 gun turret. Rolling heavily from the force of the blasts, the shell-shocked crew of the Hayanami were thrown about on the ship as she listed and then returned to an even keel and many were still struggling to their feet when the Hayanami was decimated by an explosion in her aft 5-inch magazines that blew open her Stern hull plating and cracked the Destroyers keel. Wrenching in two from both the force of the blast and the sudden inrush of massive amounts of seawater, the Hayanami quickly reared up and sank in two pieces at this location on June 7th, 1944. Only 45 of her crew of 253 were able to get off the ship as she went down in less than a minute.

www.combinedfleet.com/hayana_t.htm