Wreck of HIJMS Yūnagi (夕凪)

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

Laid down at the Sasebo Naval Arsenal in September 1923 as the final member of the Kamikaze Class of Destroyers, HIJMS Yūnagi commissioned into Imperial Japanese Navy service in May 1925 as a member of the First Air Fleet. Operating with the fledgling Japanese Aircraft Carrier Force on Japan’s Pacific coast and Inland Sea for the majority of her first decade of service, Yūnagi and her crew were eventually reassigned to more mundane rear-area escort work as more capable Destroyers came into service.

Though she was obsolete as a frontline asset beginning to show her age, Yūnagi and her crew were nonetheless in service with Destroyer Division 29, Squadron 6 in the IJN Fourth Fleet and based at Truk conducting convoy escort duty when hostilities commenced with the United States and her Allies on December 8th, 1941. Immediately attached to the transports heading towards Wake Island, Yūnagi opened her role in the Second World War by providing fire support to Japanese forces during the two attempts to secure Wake Island, Yūnagi conducted convoy escort operations out of Truk until the end of January 1942 when she was assigned for duty screening the troopships and transports bound for Rabaul and points East. After taking part in the successful invasions of Rabaul, Lae and Salamaua, Yūnagi resumed her convoy escort work around the Bismarck Sea but was forced back to Japan for repairs and upgrades after suffering moderate damage from an air attack.

Resuming her convoy escort duty in July 1942 as a member of the 2nd Surface Escort Division, Yūnagi returned to Rabaul and became heavily involved with the Japanese effort to resupply their garrisons on Guadalcanal and other islands in the Southern Solomons, known as the “Tokyo Express” to Allied troops. Finding heavy use in a new role as a fast transport, Yūnagi spent the balance of 1942 and all of 1943 shuttling Japanese forces around the Solomon and Admiralty Islands before returning to Japan for a much-needed refit in January 1944. Reassigned to the Central Pacific Area Fleet upon her emergence from the yard in March, Yūnagi began regular escort runs between Japan and Saipan through May after which she was assigned to the Philippine Islands and began convoy screening work among dozens of Japanese outposts. Pulled from this duty to screen escorted Admiral Ozawa’s 1st Supply Force during the disastrous Battle of the Philippine Sea in June, Yūnagi returned to her escort work around the Philippines as Japanese forces began to bolster troop numbers and supplies in advance of a likely American Invasion.

Assigned to escort the ill-fated Convoy HI-71 from Mako to Manila on August 10th, 1944, Yūnagi screened the enormous and heavily defended troopship and supply convoy safely from the Pescadores to the seas North of Luzon when the convoy was attacked by American Submarines, leaving the tanker Eiyo Maru damaged. Detached from the convoy to escort the wounded ship to Takao, Yūnagi and her crew were spared the fate of many of the ships in the convoy when it came under coordinated Submarine attack several days later with heavy losses. Despite avoiding this fate, Yūnagi was attached to a reinforcement convoy and ordered to steam for Manila at top speed, heading into the same Submarine-infested waters that had claimed so many vessels from the previous convoy. Well aware of the dangers posed by their upcoming mission, Yūnagi and four other escort ships put to sea on August 21st escorting five transports.

Four days out of Takao the formation came within sight of Luzon Island, and in accordance with traditional anti-submarine tactics moved close to the shoreline with the valuable merchant ships shielded against the coast by the five escorts to seaward. Met by Japanese patrol aircraft, the convoy proceeded at its top speed along the coast but as it neared Cape Bojeador it was spotted by the periscope of USS Picuda (SS-382). The American Submarine’s Skipper was quick to close in on the speedy convoy and penetrated its outer ring at depth, then using his positive buoyancy to silently rise back to periscope depth inside of the formation attacked and sunk the transport Kotoku Maru. Hydrophone operators and lookouts aboard the Yūnagi were quick to identify the enemy Submarine’s location by both its engine sounds and telltale bubble trails left by its torpedo shots, and the Veteran Destroyer went to flank speed from the rear of the formation to prosecute a depth charge attack. Picking up the noises of Yūnagi’s high-speed screws closing in on his position, Picuda’s Captain swung his boat directly into the path of the onrushing Destroyer and with only one torpedo reloaded into his bow tubes unhesitatingly fired on the Japanese ship.

With almost no time to evade the single torpedo bearing down on her, Yūnagi’s Captain sounded the collision alarm only seconds before the fast-moving torpedo slammed into Yūnagi’s equally fast moving bow and detonated, causing a blast beneath her bridge that cracked the Destroyer’s hull directly beneath her forward engine room bulkhead and opened up a large portion of the ship’s bow to catastrophic flooding. Coming to a dead stop as her rapidly sinking bow brought her still-turning screws out of the water, the Destroyer’s bow began to separate from the hull as flooding in her engine and boiler rooms brought the hull lower into the water, prompting Yūnagi’s Captain to order the ships’ depth charges secured and the Yūnagi abandoned. As her fellow escorts conducted ineffective depth charge attacks on the withdrawing American Submarine, HIJMS Yūnagi sank bow-first at this location on August 25th, 1944, taking 32 of her crew with her.

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