Wreck of HIJMS Suzuya (鈴谷)

 Second World War 1939-1945, military, navy, shipwreck, cruiser

Laid down in December 1933 at the Yokosuka Naval Arsenal Shipyard as the third member of the Mogami Class of Light Cruisers built for the Imperial Japanese Navy, HIJMS Suzuya was deemed ready for service by October 1937 but several design faults discovered with her completed sisterships led to her remaining in the yard and under refit until September 1939. Formally commissioned into service as a Heavy Cruiser as her original armament had been upgraded to ten 8in guns, the Suzuya joined her three sisterships to form Cruiser Division 7 and stood out of Kure in July 1941 to participate in the occupation of French Indochina.

Still in Southeast Asian waters as the Second World War began for Japan against the United States and her Allies, Suzuya stayed paired with her sisters as they screened and supported Japanese invasion forces moving into the sparsely defended colonies of Holland and Britain in present day Malaysia and Indonesia. Taking part in the capture of Singora, Patani and Kota Bharu on the 8th of December 1941, Suzuya and her crew moved South and helped to secure Sarawak, Sumatra and Java through March of 1942 before reporting to the recently-captured port of Singapore for refueling and reprovisioning. Joining the IJN Second Expeditionary Fleet as it moved Westward out of Singapore and into the Bay of Bengal on the 1st of April, Suzuya and her crew spent the next eighteen days engaged in highly successful commerce raiding, sharing in a total of twenty Allied merchant ships sunk before shaping a course back to Japan for voyage repairs.

In action once again by May 1942 with the IJN Combined Fleet under Admiral Yamamoto as it made its way towards the American Island of Midway, Suzuya and her sisters were operating roughly 400 miles distant from Midway as the first Japanese Carrier strikes were carried out, and with the returning pilots reporting that American defenses were far better prepared than anticipated, Suzuya and her sisters were ordered to bombard the island as soon as possible. Moving at 35 knots into heavy seas as they raced to get into position, the formation was still nowhere near enough to Midway by the time the Combined Fleet’s Carriers were decimated by Allied air attack and were ordered to fall back at 2120hrs. The sudden appearance of an American Submarine moments later caused chaos in the retiring formation of Cruisers shortly after their formation turn, and though the enemy vessel failed to damage any of the Japanese ships its presence caused two of Suzuya’s sisters to collide, with HIJMS Mikuma being badly damaged and subsequently sunk by American forces the next day. Detached following Midway to take part in the Japanese Invasion of Burma, the American Invasion of Guadalcanal in August 1942 brought Suzuya and her crew to the Solomon Islands where she would eventually take part in rear-area actions in both the Battle of the Eastern Solomons and the Battle of Santa Cruz. Spending much of the next year engaged in convoy escort work between Japan, Truk and Rabaul as Japanese forces worked to stop the Allied advance up the Solomons Island chain, Suzuya and her crew eventually withdrew to Singapore as Allied forces caused the abandonment of both Rabaul and Truk by March 1944.

Joining forces once again with the IJN Combined Fleet as it moved to repulse the American Invasion of the Marianas Islands in June 1944, Suzuya once again found herself part of an enormous air battle as the Battle of the Philippine Sea raged on to the ruin of what remained of Japan’s Carrier Air Forces. Retiring to Japan once again for the addition of an advanced radar system and upgrades to her anti-aircraft armament through July 1944, Suzuya and her crew departed Japan for the final time and joined the balance of Japan’s Capital Ships in extensive wargames and training exercises off Singapore. Ordered to Brunei on October 18th, 1944 in response to the American Invasion of the Philippines, Suzuya joined her sistership HIJMS Kumano, three Battleships, six Heavy Cruisers and fifteen Destroyers as the “Center Force” of a planned three-part Japanese Naval Assault on the American beachhead at Leyte. Standing out for battle on October 22nd, Suzuya took her position in the formation as it sped at 27 knots in complete radio silence along the coast of Palawan towards the Sibuyan Sea and the San Bernardino Strait beyond, however the presence of two American Submarines acting as pickets doomed the secrecy surrounding the Center Forces’ movements from the start. Caught in torpedo crossfire at dawn on the 23rd, two Cruisers were sunk and a third severely damaged in barely half an hour of action which was followed the next day by heavy air attacks in the Sibuyan Sea that caused damage to almost every ship in the force and sank the SuperBattleship HIJMS Musashi. Forced into a Westward backtrack to allow damage control teams time to effect repairs on their battered ships, Suzuya’s crew spent a nervous night at their General Quarters stations covering their fleetmates before the entire Center Force reversed course under the cover of darkness went into single-file formation to enter the San Bernardino Strait

Exiting into open waters off the Northern Coast of Samar at 0030hrs, Suzuya and the Center Force steamed Eastward into the open ocean before making a Southward turn towards the American beachhead at Leyte Gulf at 0300hrs. Continuing Southwards undetected and unchallenged, Suzuya’s lookouts joined their counterparts on other ships in sighting American Naval Forces on the distant horizon shortly after sunrise. Initially thought to be a large force of Cruisers, Destroyers and Fleet Carriers, the sighting of enemy ships caused the Center Force to move into a general and unorganized attack pattern on what they thought was a formidable enemy force, when in reality they were bearing down on the ships of Task Force Taffy 3; a group of six Escort Carriers, Three Destroyers and six Destroyer Escorts whose combined weight was less than the Japanese Flagship HIJMS Yamato. Steaming towards the rear of the Japanese formation, Suzuya’s crews raced to arm their ship’s formidable main and secondary batteries with anti-ship armor piercing rounds as they closed distance on the enemy ships, which at that point were hastily retreating towards rain squalls and making copious amounts of black smoke to conceal their movements. With the lead ships in the formation already firing onto the American ships, Suzuya’s Captain brought his ship Westward to unmask his rear batteries at about the same time as the first enemy aircraft began to appear out of the low cloud decks. Suddenly under attack by over a dozen aircraft at the same time, Suzuya’s overwhelmed AA gunners did their best to repulse their attackers but several near miss-bombs were soon bracketing the ship, one of which caused sufficient enough damage to her outermost Port propeller to cause it to shear off, lowering her top speed to 20 knots. Finding herself being steadily left behind by the Southward-moving battle, Suzuya’s gunners kept up a high rate of fire on the retreating enemy carriers but by 0900hrs Suzuya’s guns were largely outranged and she moved to cover the withdrawing Center Force as it made its way back towards the North.

Withdrawing at the rear of her formation at 20 knots, Suzuya’s gunners were kept busy by several small waves of enemy aircraft still overflying her position but were succeeding in keeping them at bay until the arrival of over 30 aircraft at 1050hrs. Attacked once again en masse and from multiple directions, Suzuya amazingly took no direct hits from multiple bombs that bracketed the ship, however one or more near-miss explosions sent a hail of shrapnel tearing through her #1 Starboard torpedo battery where large oxygen-fuel-fed fire quickly broke out and grew unmanageable. Shortly after the initial fire started a warhead on one “Long Lance” torpedo detonated, followed at 1100hrs by the sympathetic detonations of the rest of the battery which unleashed over 3,000lbs of explosives into Suzuya’s hull. With the majority of her available firefighting and damage control teams wiped out by the blast, Suzuya’s fate was sealed as flames and smoke found their way through shattered hull plating into her engine rooms, forcing their abandonment and bringing the ship to a halt at 1130hrs. Cloaked in out-of-control fires burning across her midsection, Suzuya was ordered abandoned at 1150hrs and her 403 surviving crew was taken aboard the Destroyer HIJMS Okinami, which could not scuttle the badly damaged Cruiser with torpedoes due to her overcrowded decks. Slowly settling to her Starboard side as she continued to burn and suffer ammunition detonations, HIJMS Suzuya finally capsized and sank at this location at 1322hrs on October 25th, 1944.

www.combinedfleet.com/suzuya_t.htm