n the refit but you can see where they were located as the railway tracks used to move the torpedoes across the deck remain visible. All that remains in this spot, apart from the tracks, is empty deck space.
The rear funnel is forward of here and the first section of superstructure. Behind the funnel is a search light platform and in between the funnels there are two machine guns (originally a heavy gun). The forward funnel has fallen over and you can look into the engine room and see two of the four boilers. Alongside the funnel area you can see the apparatus that housed the torpedoes for the forward torpedo launcher (more about this later). The entire bridge area is destroyed, not as one would imagine from a bomb, but just through erosion over the years. This happened in 1988. There is some china in this area as well as some gas masks.
|Two of the shell boxes on the forward gun, |
including an open box showing shells
Photo by Kelly McFadyen
In front of the bridge is the only remaining torpedo launcher. It looks like three huge pipes with a steel wall at one end. The pipes held the torpedoes and the "wall" was a shield for the operators. The launcher could hold three torpedoes, presumably they all had to be loaded facing the shield but this may not have been the case. The launcher was pivoted in the middle and it rotated to port or starboard so that it could fire. The torpedoes were loaded from the rear of the ship.
On the same level as the torpedo launcher is the forecastle. This can be accessed via either of two doors located on each side of the ship. The room is quite open and has a wheel apparatus on the starboard side near the door. There are some hatchways leading to the lower level of the forecastle. You can drop down there but it is very cramped.
Above and in front of the torpedo launcher is the bow. You can see the front gun platform here as well as the main gun. There are some (four I think) shell boxes here as well as some loose shells and free cordite.
The bow is quite interesting. As well as seeing the anchor chain from the starboard side streaming out from the wreck, the shape of the bow, a large winch, the deck in the bow area and the hull for the first 10 or 15 metres is quite different from most other wrecks you will ever see, especially in Chuuk.
This is also an excellent wreck, a good introductory first dive of the day. Visibility is not as good as some other wrecks but at 15 to 20 metres, very good for what most divers are used to back home. I spent about 28 minutes on the wreck and had to do seven minutes decompression at three metres.
6 November 1997
Photos by Shaun Reynolds taken March 2013.
|The starboard prop of the IJN Fumitzuki|
Hailstorm over Truk Lagoon by Klaus Lindemann
WII Wrecks of the Kwajalein and Truk Lagoon by Dan E. Bailey
IJN Submarine Tender HEIAN MARU: Tabular Record of Movement