The boat swayed from a nearby explosion, knocked down people fell on the nearest bulkhead. The strong hull withstood this time too: slowly, rolling from side to side, the boat restored balance, continuing to go into the arms of the ocean.
“240 feet, 260 feet,” the watchkeeper at the control room monotonously counted the depth.
Another explosion shook the submarine, almost spilling out caustic electrolyte from the battery pits. The boat was heading downward. The trim on the bow now reached 15 °, and moving along the deck resembled climbing the sacred Mount Fuji.
Below them lay a real operational space - the depths in this part of the ocean reached 9 kilometers. Unfortunately, the rugged hull of the Ottsu-Gata B1 submarine was designed for a submersion depth of only 330 feet.
A new rapprochement with the enemy made everyone think that the end was near.
"Propeller noise, bearing left twenty, intensity five."
Two destroyers crossed in another attempt to destroy the invisible I-19, but the series of explosions did not follow. The bombs were dropped somewhere off to the side, obviously they were dropped just by chance.
The dim light of the emergency lighting caught sweaty, tense faces out of the twilight. The temperature in the compartments reached an agonizing level, with a minimum oxygen content. Electric fans uselessly drove the stuffiness through the compartments, but the tired submariners did not seem to notice the heat. The fight with the destroyers is not over yet: one precise blow, and the sea water will open up through the bursting casing.
77th, 78th, 79th … Now the bombs fell so far that it became clear that the enemy had completely lost contact with the submarine.
“We were lucky this time,” Commander Kinasi breathed. "I will keep going the same course, in the hope that the enemy will continue to throw bombs where we are not."
At this time, his colleague, Nobuo Ishikawa, the commander of the submarine I-15, watched the battle with a periscope, probably accompanying what he saw with surprised exclamations.
The aircraft carrier Wasp blazed on the horizon. But, the Japanese did not have time to notice that a new tragedy was unfolding in the distance.
At a distance of 10-11 km from the battle group AB "Wasp" writhing writhing destroyer "O'Brien" with a destroyed bow end.
The battleship North Caroline, struck by a torpedo on the port side (area 45-46 sht.), Six meters under the waterline, was absurdly sagging next to him.
Upon receiving news of the attack, Pearl Harbor grabbed their heads.
Combat damage
The escort ships did not immediately guess what exactly happened to the Wasp. The smoke generated above the deck was initially perceived as an accident (an aircraft on deck fires - an unpleasant but frequent occurrence). Nobody saw the torpedo hits. A hefty ship, almost a quarter of a kilometer long, covered with its hull the sultans of spray, who had shot up from the explosions on the starboard side.
Several planes fell overboard. Smoke drifted. Radio communications remained inactive until a message broke through the crackle of interference: "torpedoes … heading zero-eight-zero."
“Wasp” was doomed at once: torpedoes hit the area of fuel tanks and ammunition storage. The blast wave threw up the aircraft standing on the deck with such force that their landing gear collapsed. The aircraft in the hangar were torn from their places and piled on top of each other; in a matter of minutes the hangar and flight decks turned into a firestorm. Next, the ammunition of the starboard anti-aircraft guns detonated, riddling the bow of the ship with shrapnel.
After a few more minutes, the roll will increase to 15 degrees on PB. Aviation gasoline flowing out of the holes spread over the waves as a burning carpet. At this time, the commander of "Wasp" was still making attempts to save the aircraft carrier, turning it in the wind, so that heat and flames spread along the side, towards the bow. But in vain.
34 minutes after the torpedo attack, the order was given to leave the burning ship. The last aircraft carrier to leave Captain Sherman at 16:00, making sure that there were no survivors on board.
193 crew members of "Wasp" became victims of fire, more than 300 sailors were injured.
Of the 26 aircraft in the air, 25 managed to land on the nearby Hornet. However, most of the Wospa air wing (45 units) perished along with the aircraft carrier.
The wounded were picked up by ships. The squadron was heading west.
Having received a mournful order, the destroyer Laffey struck a "blow of mercy" by letting in five torpedoes (of which two did not explode) at the aircraft carrier. However, death did not come to Wasp immediately. The blazing box drifted until sunset, hissing with hot metal and gradually settling in the water.
4 minutes after the torpedoing of the Wasp, the destroyer O'Brien received her portion of the Japanese anger. The explosion destroyed the bow, but luckily for the Yankees, all of the crew were unharmed.
The destroyer kept its course and could keep afloat. The next day, he arrived in Vanuatu, where an emergency repair was made. On October 10, O'Brien, who received first aid, moved out for a major overhaul in San Francisco. However, a week later, it turned out that his wound was fatal.
The torpedo explosion irreversibly damaged the power pack. At the next stage of the transoceanic passage, the destroyer fell apart and sank, having covered almost 3000 nautical miles since the attack.
The battleship North Caroline survived the attack most easily, 45 thousand tons of steel and fire. 400 kg of Japanese explosives were like pellets to an elephant.
Five people died, 20 were injured, a hole about 9.8 meters long and 5.5 meters high opened in the side, four bulkheads of the PTZ system were pierced. The explosion also led to a fire in the transfer room of tower No. 1, but the rapid flooding of the bow cellars avoided a disaster. But these the damage had no effect on the battleship's ability to maintain its place in the ranks and maintain squadron speed. The initial roll of 5.5 ° by the efforts of the emergency parties was quickly corrected within 6 minutes.
"North Caroline" retained its combat effectiveness, and the damage and losses received were really small against the background of the scale of the battleship. However, the very fact of torpedoing one of the strongest ships (and the only fast battleship in the Pacific) was extremely unpleasant for the Americans.
An initial inspection and repair of damage was carried out at Tongatabu Atoll with the help of the Vestal floating workshop. The next stop was Pearl Harbor, where the battleship underwent a full repair with the installation of additional anti-aircraft weapons, from September 30 to November 17, 1942.
The mysticism of naval battles
The devastating attack on I-19 has become one of the unsolved mysteries of the ocean. The researchers had doubts about the damage to the three ships by a single torpedo salvo.
How could the paths of an aircraft carrier, battleship and submarine converge?
On that day, September 15, 1942, Wasp and Hornet, escorting the battleship North Carolina, 7 cruisers and 13 destroyers, provided cover for a convoy of six transports carrying Marine units to Guadalcanal. Each aircraft carrier was covered by its own security order. The battle groups were on a parallel course, within sight of each other. The battleship and destroyer O'Brien were part of the Hornet formation.
At the time of the attack, the submarine I-19 was inside the Wasp guard order at a distance of 900 meters from the target. Three of the six torpedoes fired struck the aircraft carrier, the rest left in the direction of the Hornet battle group.
The torpedoes had to pass at least 10-11 km before meeting the battleship and destroyer.
The ambiguities are added by discrepancies in the reports of American ships: the existing discrepancies in time, differences in the indicated torpedo courses indicate the presence of two (and even three) Japanese submarines.
Witnesses on the Wasp's bridge also noticed traces of only four torpedoes (which, however, contradicts Japanese tactics and common sense - such an important target as an aircraft carrier should have been attacked with a full, six-torpedo salvo).
On the part of the Japanese, there is no one to interrogate: all the participants in these events were killed during the hostilities in the Pacific Ocean. I-15 was sunk a month later off the Solomon Islands. I-19 died with the entire crew a year later, in November 1943. The Imperial Navy Archives were severely damaged by fires as a result of American bombing.
One thing is certain: both submarines, I-15 and I-19, were that day in the area of the sinking of the aircraft carrier Wasp. At the same time, only one submarine, I-19, made a report on entering a torpedo attack on 1942-15-09. Her partner only testified to the success by immediately reporting the death of an American aircraft carrier to headquarters.
Of course, neither one nor the other submarines were seen, and they could not know that three warships at once became victims of the attack.
Despite such incredible coincidences, most sources lean towards the traditional point of view: the aircraft carrier, linor and destroyer were the victims of the I-19 torpedo salvo.
From a technical point of view, the Japanese navy had torpedoes “type 95 mod. 1”, capable of traveling 12 km at a speed of 45 knots. That was enough to attack two distant battle groups.
The discrepancies in the reports of the American ships can be explained by the turmoil at the time of the torpedo attack. The torpedo tracks were noticed at the last moment, when the ships made a sharp evasive maneuver - hence the difficulty in determining the exact course and direction from which the torpedoes were fired. The discrepancies in time (one or two minutes on some ships) are also explained by the natural tension of the battle.
The hit of the remaining torpedoes on the destroyer and battleship is a rare accident, which was facilitated by the large composition of the American squadron.
From the point of view of the divers themselves, any accident is not accidental. Due to their fighting qualities, submarines are able to perform feats, penetrating inside protected perimeters, through security orders and shooting targets at close range. Therefore, more interest in this story is caused by the very launch of the I-19 attack, which went unnoticed either by warships or dozens of aircraft in the air. At the same time, the Yankees were well aware of the presence of an underwater threat: just two weeks before the events described, a Japanese submarine torpedoed the aircraft carrier Saratoga in this area.
Buried a periscope in the wave, Torpedoes were sent to the target.
The enemy goes to the bottom.
The boat has everything to win …
