Wreck of HIJMS Wakaba (若葉)

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

HIJMS Wakaba was the third member of the Hatsuharu Class of Destroyers built for the Imperial Japanese Navy, laid down at the Sasebo Naval Arsenal in December 1931 and commissioned into service in October 1934 as the Flagship of Destroyer Division 21, Squadron 1, IJN First Fleet.

Active in amphibious operations at Shanghai and Hangzhou during the Second Sino-Japanese War, the Wakaba and her crew spent much of their first seven years in service engaged in active patrols and exercises along the Southern Chinese coast before reporting back to Japan shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War. Remaining in Japanese home waters for the first two months of the war, the Wakaba and her division eventually departed Japan as an escort for a convoy of troopships bound for the Netherland East Indies in early February. Seeing her first combat as she screened landing forces at Sulawesi and Makassar Islands, the Wakaba and her crew returned to Japan in March following the successful operations and were reassigned to Northern Waters patrols.

Heavily involved with Japanese operations in the Kurile and Aleutian Islands for the next fifteen months, Wakaba joined the IJN Fifth Fleet in landing forces on Attu and Kiska Islands and in clashing with her counterparts in the US Navy at the Battle of the Komandorski Islands in March 1943. Twice damaged by collisions in the rough and frequently foul-weather cloaked seas, Wakaba took part in the evacuation of the Aleutians before receiving an overhaul which while increasing her anti-aircraft armament kept her out of action through October 1943. Rejoining her sisterships as the Flagship of her Division once more upon her emergence from the yard, Wakaba began regular convoy escort work out of Mainland Japan to Truk as part of the IJN Combined Fleet, frequently screening major surface units as they were shuffled around Japan's rapidly shrinking territory in the Central and South Pacific. Following a midyear overhaul, Wakaba and the ships of Division 21 were reassigned to troop transport convoys operating between Japan, Formosa and Luzon in the Philippines as part of the Japanese buildup of forces in the former American colony. Arriving in Manila on October 23rd from Takeo, Formosa while carrying a contingent of support crew for the 2nd Air Fleet, Wakaba and her sisters were ordered to steam at once for the Surigao Strait and join the Japanese Southern Force heading for the American beachhead at Leyte Gulf as part of a three-prong assault on the American invasion.

Steaming in formation with her sisters through the Mindoro strait as dawn broke on the morning of October 24th, Wakaba's crew were already at their General Quarters stations as the moved into contested waters, but likely had no knowledge that just over 120 miles to the North the Center Force of the Japanese Navy was under a large-scale and coordinated air attack by US Navy Carrier aircraft. Unknowingly sighted by advanced recon aircraft covering the attack on the Center Force as they made their way South towards the entrance to the Bohol Sea, Wakaba and her sisters soon found themselves under heavy attack by strike aircraft flying off the USS Franklin (CV-13). Though her decks bristled with recently-installed AA guns and her seasoned crew mounted a strident defense against their attackers, American flyers were quick to split up and successfully employed "hammer and anvil" tactics to drive Wakaba into the path of awaiting dive-bombers. Struck with at least two bombs and repeatedly strafed during the course of the hour-long attack, Wakaba began to lose headway as heavy flooding penetrated her enginerooms and forced their abandonment. Steering his ship towards the shore of Sibay Island in the hopes of beaching her, Wakaba's Captain was forced to order her abandoned as several internal bulkheads gave way and the ship began to rapidly sink by the Stern. With her survivors taken off by two of her sister Destroyers, HIJMS Wakaba flooded and sank Stern-first at this location on October 24th, 1944, taking 42 of her crew with her.

www.combinedfleet.com/wakaba_t.htm