Wreck of HIJMS Matsu (松)

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

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Laid down at the Maizuru Naval Arsenal in August 1943, HIJMS Matsu was the lead ship of her class of Destroyers, designed primarily to be cheaply and quickly built to fill Japan’s enormous lack of dedicated convoy escort vessels. Armed primarily with anti-aircraft and anti-submarine weaponry at the expense of the standard heavy gun and torpedo battery of contemporary Japanese Destroyers, the Matsu commissioned into service with the Imperial Japanese Navy in April 1944.

Initially assigned to Destroyer Squadron 11 for training, Matsu and her crew were eventually assigned to Destroyer Division 43 and began frontline operations in July 1944 as the Flagship of the 2nd Convoy Escort Group at Tateyama. Departing on her first mission on the 29th of July, Matsu and her crew joined with the merchant ships of Convoy No. 4804 and stood out for Chichi Jima where they arrived without incident on August 1st. After screening her charges as they offloaded their cargo, the Matsu led her reformed convoy back out to sea for the return trip to Japan under the cover of darkness shortly before dawn on the 4th.

Steaming Northward from Chichi Jima and lit by the rising sun, the Matsu and her convoy were sighted by a single recon aircraft flying from American Naval Task Group 58.1, which consisted of four Aircraft Carriers, three Cruisers and ten Destroyers. The sighting quickly brought an airstrike to the vicinity of the Matsu and her convoy shortly before noon, and in the resulting aerial melee two merchant ships were sunk and Mastu crippled by a single torpedo which struck her aft of her engine room and warped both of her propeller shafts. Unable to keep pace with her convoy, Matsu joined with three damaged merchant ships and turned back for Chichi Jima in the hopes of reaching sheltered waters where repairs could be effected. Steaming roughly 45 miles Northwest of Chichi Jima as her battered convoy slowly made their way South, radar operators aboard Matsu began to pick up surface contacts approaching at high speed. Lookouts quickly indentified a group of several American Destroyers and Cruisers as they appeared on the horizon, prompting Matsu’s gun crews to man their uncovered mounts as the convoy began evasive maneuvering.

The American ships quickly split up and began engaging Matsu’s entire convoy, forcing Matsu to split her already meager anti-surface weaponry among multiple targets. Quickly expending her small load of torpedoes without effect, Matsu’s crew struggled valiantly to conceal her convoy with smoke while her three single 5-inch gun mounts exchanged long-range fire with the enemy. As the American Destroyers USS Cogswell (DD-651), USS Ingersoll (DD-652) and USS Knapp (DD-653) closed in on her position, the crippled Matsu was unable to outrun or outgun her attackers and was soon being rocked by dozens of proximity fused shells fired by the combined fifteen 5-inch guns on the American ships. While the bombardment did little damage to the ship itself, the bursting artillery caused absolute carnage to Matsu’s unprotected gun crews who were all but wiped out by the mass of shrapnel cutting across her decks. Now with no way of defending herself against her attackers, the American Destroyers closed on Matsu and began shelling her without mercy with traditional high-explosive shells across her entire length, causing further casualties and fatal damage. With nearly her entire crew dead or wounded, no order to abandon ship ever came for the men serving aboard Matsu, those who were still alive simply took to the water as their ship foundered in a mass of flames. Left to her fate by her assailants, HIJMS Matsu eventually sank Stern-first at this location at 1900hrs on August 4th, 1944, taking all but six of her 210-man crew with her to the bottom.

www.combinedfleet.com/matsu_t.htm