Wreck of Kinugawa Maru

 Second World War 1939-1945, scuba diving facility / area, place with historical importance, shipwreck

The Kinugawa Maru was a transport ship in service with the Imperial Japanese Navy as a transport during the Second World War, and had been heavily active in the supply runs known as the 'Tokyo Express' during the opening stages of the Guadalcanal Campaign.

One such run saw the Kinugawa Maru join up with a convoy of eleven other cargo ships and their escorts at New Georgia Island, from where they proceeded towards Guadalcanal on November 13th, 1942. As they crossed the open ocean towards the Southern Solomon Islands, the Kinugawa Maru and her convoy were sighted by an American recon plane on the morning of November 14th, which radioed their course and heading to the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise. The convoy came under air attack in the early afternoon on the 14th, and while the Kinugawa Maru avoided any damage in the action, seven of the cargo ships in the convoy were sunk, and another two so heavily damaged they were forced to withdraw from the mission. Now steaming with the remaining four cargo ships and a small escort of Destroyers, the crew onboard the Kinugawa Maru prepared to unload their cargo of over a thousand troops and supplies onto Guadalcanal during the coming night.

Dawn on the 15th of November found the Kinugawa Maru and her three counterparts just offshore of Guadalcanal, still offloading troops and supplies. US Marine shore batteries opened fire on the stationary transports, and quickly had two of the four ablaze and under heavy, accurate fire. Airstrikes were called in from Henderson Field and the Destroyer USS Meade, on patrol at the time, swept in from Ironbottom Sound and raked the Japanese Maru's with 5-inch shellfire. By noon, the attacks were joined by aircraft from the USS Enterprise which had all four transports heavily damaged, on fire and sinking. The Captain of the Kinugawa Maru elected to beach his ship with the remaining engine power she had before her boiler room flooded, and the ship was run ashore here at approximately 13:00hrs on November 15, 1942.

Her crew and the remaining soldiers onboard abandoned ship into the shallow waters and escaped ashore, leaving the Kinugawa Maru to her fate, burning and slowly settling by the Stern. An American fighter from Guadalcanal put a bomb into her Stern cargo hold in the evening of November 15th, and the Kinugawa Maru finally sank shortly thereafter.

The wreck remained in her partially sunk state until the 1960's when a partial salvage of the ship was conducted, but by that time she had slipped into deeper waters on the shoreline. Today the Kinugawa Maru is a popular wreck dive site in Guadalcanal.

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