The Day Japan Lost 36 Ships in 48 Hours to 11 American Carriers
American Pacific War
72 views
#OperationDesecrate1 #WW2Pacific #NavalHistory
On 30 March 1944, Japanese gunners at Palau watched American planes fly low and slow across the reef — the exact profile of a torpedo run — and drop nothing but cylinders on parachutes. They stopped firing because it made no sense. By the time they understood, the door was locked and 36 ships were trapped in the lagoon with nowhere left to run.
This documentary tells the story of the two days that emptied Japan's last forward anchorage in the Pacific. There was no fleet battle — the fleet had already gone. What Admiral Mitscher's Task Force 58 found at Palau was everything a navy needs to keep fighting: the tankers that carried the fuel, the repair ship that fixed the hulls, the tenders and transports that kept the Combined Fleet at sea. Instead of storming in, the Americans did something no carrier force had ever done in a Pacific harbour first — they mined all three channels from the air and sealed the anchorage shut before the bombing even began.
From the crippled tanker Iro, torpedoed days earlier and still waiting for repairs, to the vanishing of Admiral Koga himself, discover how 11 aircraft carriers destroyed 130,000 tons of shipping, wiped out the western Carolines' entire air strength, and left a lagoon full of wrecks that divers still descend to today.
🔥 In this video:
The Trap: How Task Force 58's Avenger squadrons mined every exit and turned a fortress anchorage into a prison — the first carrier-launched aerial mining of the war.
The Tanker Iro: Torpedoed by a US submarine 300 miles out, she limped into Palau on a patched bow and never left.
Admiral Koga's Last Flight: The Commander-in-Chief of the Combined Fleet who flew into a storm the night his last base burned — and was never found.
Firepower vs the Fleet That Couldn't Run: Why the support ships were left behind, and why losing them broke the Japanese Navy's ability to stay at sea.
The Reckoning: 36 ships sunk, an entire airfield destroyed, not one American ship touched — and the wrecks still on the lagoon floor 82 years later.
Sources of Where I get my facts:
Lindemann, K.P. (1991) Desecrate 1: The Shipwrecks of Palau. Belleville, MI: Pacific Press Publications.
Bailey, D.E. (1991) World War II Wrecks of Palau. Redding, CA: North Valley Diver Publications.
Morison, S.E. (1953) History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, Volume VIII: New Guinea and the Marianas. Boston: Little, Brown and Company.
Dull, P.S. (1978) A Battle History of the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1941–1945. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press.
MacDonald, R. (2016) Dive Palau: The Shipwrecks. Dunbeath: Whittles Publishing.
Disclaimer: This video is a historical documentary intended for educational purposes.
#OperationDesecrate1 #WW2Pacific #NavalHistory #TaskForce58 #ImperialJapaneseNavy #Palau #WW2 #History #Mitscher #PacificWar
The Day Japan Lost 36 Ships in 48 Hours to 11 American Carriers
American Pacific War
72 views
#OperationDesecrate1 #WW2Pacific #NavalHistory
On 30 March 1944, Japanese gunners at Palau watched American planes fly low and slow across the reef — the exact profile of a torpedo run — and drop nothing but cylinders on parachutes. They stopped firing because it made no sense. By the time they understood, the door was locked and 36 ships were trapped in the lagoon with nowhere left to run.
This documentary tells the story of the two days that emptied Japan's last forward anchorage in the Pacific. There was no fleet battle — the fleet had already gone. What Admiral Mitscher's Task Force 58 found at Palau was everything a navy needs to keep fighting: the tankers that carried the fuel, the repair ship that fixed the hulls, the tenders and transports that kept the Combined Fleet at sea. Instead of storming in, the Americans did something no carrier force had ever done in a Pacific harbour first — they mined all three channels from the air and sealed the anchorage shut before the bombing even began.
From the crippled tanker Iro, torpedoed days earlier and still waiting for repairs, to the vanishing of Admiral Koga himself, discover how 11 aircraft carriers destroyed 130,000 tons of shipping, wiped out the western Carolines' entire air strength, and left a lagoon full of wrecks that divers still descend to today.
🔥 In this video:
The Trap: How Task Force 58's Avenger squadrons mined every exit and turned a fortress anchorage into a prison — the first carrier-launched aerial mining of the war.
The Tanker Iro: Torpedoed by a US submarine 300 miles out, she limped into Palau on a patched bow and never left.
Admiral Koga's Last Flight: The Commander-in-Chief of the Combined Fleet who flew into a storm the night his last base burned — and was never found.
Firepower vs the Fleet That Couldn't Run: Why the support ships were left behind, and why losing them broke the Japanese Navy's ability to stay at sea.
The Reckoning: 36 ships sunk, an entire airfield destroyed, not one American ship touched — and the wrecks still on the lagoon floor 82 years later.
Sources of Where I get my facts:
Lindemann, K.P. (1991) Desecrate 1: The Shipwrecks of Palau. Belleville, MI: Pacific Press Publications.
Bailey, D.E. (1991) World War II Wrecks of Palau. Redding, CA: North Valley Diver Publications.
Morison, S.E. (1953) History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, Volume VIII: New Guinea and the Marianas. Boston: Little, Brown and Company.
Dull, P.S. (1978) A Battle History of the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1941–1945. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press.
MacDonald, R. (2016) Dive Palau: The Shipwrecks. Dunbeath: Whittles Publishing.
Disclaimer: This video is a historical documentary intended for educational purposes.
#OperationDesecrate1 #WW2Pacific #NavalHistory #TaskForce58 #ImperialJapaneseNavy #Palau #WW2 #History #Mitscher #PacificWar