This ship really is a mega-pleasure to dive in so many ways and it is very famous too... so famous in fact that it's even possible to buy an "Airfix" type model kit of her - I managed to get one mail ordered to me from America although I haven't built it yet twelve months on - I'm a bit too ham fisted these days so Tracy is going to give it a go instead!!! The down side to the Akitsushima is that she is a pig to get any decent photographs on, in or around due to relatively poor visibility externally, and the extreme darkness when you are inside her. That said the excitement of swimming through this ship is intense because she is tight and the corridors meander every which way. Numerous bomb damage holes in the hull allow sun light through but due to the depth of the wreck the intense shafts of light are always green giving an amazing contrast to the darkness. In places the "wall" alongside you will be buckled and twisted with huge holes in the steel. It takes you a while to realise why and then the penny will drop. You are actually looking at the floor because the wreck lies on it's port side, and the torn steel shows where an American bomb has entered through the hull of the ship and then detonated below the floor of the deck level you are swimming along bursting the steel deck upwards into your level. Imagine the horror of being a sailor or airman trapped inside the ship with bombs detonating all around you, waiting for the one that will come just that bit too close.

Built narrow and sharp like a destroyer, but long at 118 metres, she was clearly meant to be fast. Her diesel engines are enormous - they take up most of the engine room space and leave very little room for you to swim through - and the very choice of that form of propulsion rather than the more common coal or oil fired steam turbines of the time shows that responsiveness and huge power were clearly required. Akitsushima was in effect the eyes of the Japanese fleet. She carried a huge Kawanishi flying boat which in terms of size was very similar to our own Short Sunderland and if you are interested in such things you may read the technical data on the flying boat and see a full illustration by clicking the small photograph above right. With her speed Akitsushima could run ahead of the rest of the fleet and fly her Kawanishi off to reconnoitre as far as 1000 miles further still. The name Akitsushima was given to several ships throughout the years much as the British navy has had several Ark Royals right back to the time of Henry VIII. There was actually a cruiser with the name Akitsushima too. This seaplane tender with such an illustrious name was built in 1939 and launched in 1940 and was actually supposed to have been one of three with larger and smaller sister ships, but I cannot find any record of whether they were actually built. She was initially attacked at Truk Lagoon during Operation Hailstorm but she crept away under cover of darkness and was repaired in Manila before moving down to Coron Bay where she ultimately met her end. Akitsushima, Irako and the two submarine chasers are the fighting ship contingent sunk during the attacks, all the other ships in and around the islands were supply freighters. However although the Irako was a Japanese navy ship she was not actually a true fighting ship because her purpose was to bring supplies and food and prepare it for the soldiers landed at a beach head whilst sitting off shore. Given then that the two gunboats were not ships by virtue of their size this actually means that the Akitsushima has the distinction of being the only true fighting ship sunk in Coron Bay.

Despite the fact that she was sunk during an intensive bombing attack by several waves of American aircraft she is still remarkably intact. Although the damage to her is extensive it is abundantly clear that MOST of the bombs that actually fell on target punched holes in her steel plate and caused immense internal disruption but without ultimately cause her demise. At the stern of the ship though it is immediately obvious what did eventually sink her. A huge rent in the deck allows easy entry to the winch room of the ship and the deck, the hull and the keel are so badly torn that it's a wonder the stern did not actually drop off, especially in view of the weight of the crane and the huge winch reels below the deck. The artist's impression of the wreck now which you can see to the left captures it fairly well. A bomb has clearly penetrated her at this point and exploded, perhaps taking up fuel or munitions situated in this area, and caused catastrophic damage which she could never have survived. It is likely that the flying boat was on the deck at the time however the explosion clearly totalled the lightly built aircraft because nothing remains of it apart from one small fragment of an engine cowling about 18 inches long.

The winches are quite something to behold, after all the weight of the flying boat must have been appreciable, and so it needed serious gear to lift it out of the water and swing it back across onto the deck. There are two huge geared drums with the cable still in place heading off towards the crane tower above the deck. The crane itself is enormous and as can be seen on the old photograph at the top of the page it comprised a tower and an arm. The tower lies straight out from the ship across the seabed and it is most likely that it's weight acted as a lever and pulled the Akitsushima over almost upside down as she sank before the crane would have impacted with the seabed below and partially righted her so that she finished up lying on her port side. The crane was obviously very sturdily built as it shows no deformation despite the ship's chaotic demise. Beneath the crane a large shoal of batfish have made their home and they welcome the diver as he or she approaches the wreck entry point adjacent to the triple barrelled AA gun installation. Within the ship it is possible to swim into the magazine and two or three shells, which I estimate at 5" calibre or thereabouts, have fallen out of the ammunition lift and are scattered about the room. One still lies in the silt half in and half out of the spiral lift mechanism. A further "must-see" area is the diesel engine control room. A narrow shaft drops down into the depths of the ship - in reality a transverse corridor - at the bottom of which numerous control gauges are to be found, some with their glass still intact. Cables run the length of the ships corridors and terminate in a switch room on contact bus bars on the bulkheads and in places porcelain insulators can still be seen carrying their high tension cables.

So all in all then the Imperial Japanese Navy Ship Akitsushima is one hell of a dive and must be one of our top ten wrecks worldwide. Given that the Taiei Maru and the Kyokuzan Maru are also in our top ten then that should give you some idea of why Coron is a must dive place for any serious wreckie! We first dived her in January 2007 however we returned in the July of the same year and got some far better photographs within the wreck, so hopefully you will enjoy these now as much as we enjoyed taking them.