Transcription
The largest aircraft carrier ever built lasted 17 hours. 17 hours from the moment it left port to the moment it hit the bottom of the ocean. It never fired a single shot in anger. It never carried a single aircraft into battle. It never even finished being built. And the single most extraordinary thing about this ship is not how it was lost. It is that nobody has ever found it. The Shinano is still missing.
Now, I have to be honest. When I first started researching this, I assumed someone must have found it by now. A 72,000 ton super carrier does not just disappear. But, as it turns out, it did. And the reasons why it has never been found are just as extraordinary as the story of how it sank in the first place. To understand why nobody has ever found the Shinano, you first need to understand what it actually was and why Japan built it in complete secrecy.
The Shinano started life as the third of the Yamato class battleships, the same class as the Yamato and the Mousashi, the largest and most heavily armed battleships ever constructed. If you have watched those videos on this channel, you already know what that means. If you have not, the short version is that these ships were built in complete secrecy, displaced nearly 72,000 tons, and carried the largest naval weapons ever mounted on any warship.
The Shinano was laid down in May 1940 at the Yokosuka Naval Arsenal in Tokyo Bay. The same enormous hole, the same extraordinary specifications as the Yamato and Mousashi. But in June 1942, everything changed. Japan lost four of its best aircraft carriers at the Battle of Midway in a single day. The carriers were irreplaceable. The Navy needed a solution, and the Shinano, still under construction, still a battleship at that point, was the biggest hull available. The order came to convert the Shinano from a battleship into an aircraft carrier, not a conventional carrier, something different.
The plan was for the Shinano to act as a support carrier, a floating base that could resupply other carriers with spare aircraft, fuel, and ammunition during battle. At 72,000 tons, the Shinano would be the largest carrier ever built. The armored flight deck could withstand the largest bombs the Americans could drop. The Shinano was supposed to be, in the words of the Japanese Naval Command, an unsinkable floating fortress.
The construction took years. The secrecy was extraordinary. No photographs were taken during the build. Workers signed secrecy oaths with serious punishment up to and including death for anyone who revealed what was being built. The Shinano was the only major warship built in the 20th century that was never officially photographed during construction. When the Americans finally discovered the carrier existed after the war, their naval intelligence officers were astonished. They had not known it was being built. A captured Japanese aviator had told them in 1943 that a third Yamato class ship was being converted to a carrier, but American intelligence had dismissed the report as unreliable. I double checked this when I found it. The Americans did not know the largest carrier ever built existed until after the war was over.
By late November 1944, the Shinano was commissioned, but nowhere near finished. The watertight doors throughout the ship had not been fully installed. Pumps were missing in critical locations. The crew of approximately 2,500 men was inexperienced. Many had never served on a warship before. The ship's chief constructor, Fukuda, specifically requested a delay to the sailing date to allow critical systems to be completed. His request was denied. The reason for the rush was American bombing raids. B29 Superfortress bombers had begun flying over the Yokasuka area. If the Shinano was still in the dockyard when the raids intensified, the carrier could be destroyed before ever sailing. The decision was made to move the Shinano immediately to Kuray Naval Base, roughly 300 m away, where the fitting out could be completed in safety. The carrier would sail through the night. Three destroyers would escort her.
At 6:00 in the evening on November the 28th, 1944, the Shinano left Tokyo Bay on her maiden voyage. Yard workers were still on board, still working. Everything I have told you so far is just the setup. Because what happened on the night of November 28th is where this story gets genuinely difficult to believe.
3 hours after leaving port, the Shinano's lookouts detected radar emissions from an American submarine. The carrier began zigzagging to evade. The American submarine was the USS Archerfish, commanded by Commander Joseph Enight. The Archer Fish had been assigned to lifeguard duties for B29 bombing raids on Tokyo, but the raids had been cancelled that day, leaving the submarine with nothing to do but patrol. When the archer fish picked up the Shinano on radar, the crew had no idea what they were tracking. The contact was enormous, far larger than anything they had seen before. Enright gave chase.
The Shinano could have outrun the archer fish easily. The carrier was faster, but Captain Toshio Abe made a fatal decision. Believing he was being followed by an entire wolf pack of American submarines rather than a single boat, Abe kept zigzagging. The zigzagging repeatedly brought the Shinano back across the archer fish's path. For hours, the chase continued. The archer fish could not quite get into position. The Shinano could not quite shake the submarine. At this point, any sensible commander would have simply increased speed and outrun the threat. The Shinano was faster. She could have been gone in minutes, but Abe did not do that.
At 3:15 in the morning on November the 29th, Captain Ape changed direction one more time and inadvertently presented the entire broadside of the Shinano directly to the Archer Fish at close range. Enright fired six torpedoes. Four of them struck the carrier. At this point, it should have been over. Four torpedoes into the largest carrier ever built. Any other ship in the world would have been in immediate trouble. But Captain Abe was confident. The Shinanana was the most heavily armored carrier ever built. Abe ordered full speed maintained to outrun any follow-up attack. This was the second fatal error. Maintaining full speed drove water through the torpedo holes faster than the damage control teams could handle. And because the watertight doors had not been installed, flooding spread from compartment to compartment completely unchecked. Any other ship would have had a chance. The Shinano had none.
By dawn, the carrier was listing badly. Abe ordered the destroyers to take the Shinano in tow toward the nearest Cape for beaching. The tow cables snapped under the weight of the flooding ship. By 10:00 in the morning, the list had reached 30°. The order was given to abandoned ship. At 10:57 in the morning on November 29th, just 17 hours after leaving Tokyo Bay, the largest aircraft carrier ever built capsized and sank. 1,435 of the approximately 2,500 people aboard were lost, including Captain Abe, who went down with the ship. 1,080 survived.
The USS Archerish returned to Guam. When Enright reported what he had sunk, the Navy did not believe him. He was initially credited with sinking a cruiser, later upgraded to a 28,000 ton escort carrier. It was not until after the war ended that the full truth emerged. Enright had sunk a 72,000 ton super carrier on its first voyage. The archer fish received the presidential unit citation. Enight was awarded the Navy Cross. The Japanese Navy classified the loss of the Shinano as a state secret. The survivors were quarantined for months to prevent the news leaking to the public. The ship that was supposed to be an unsinkable floating fortress had lasted 17 hours.
Here is the part that nobody talks about. The Shinano sank in a known location off the Pacific coast of Japan in waters patrolled by both sides in 1944. 80 years later, nobody has ever gone back to find it. Not because they have not tried, because Japan will not let them. Robert Ballard, the man who found the Titanic, the Bismar, and the USS Yorktown, wanted to search for the Shinano. He approached the Japanese government for permission. Japan refused even though the wreck lies outside Japanese territorial waters. The reasons were never fully explained.
And here is the other problem, the depth. The Shinano sank off the Pacific coast of Japan southeast of the ISU Peninsula. Some estimates suggest the wreck lies at over 6,000 m below the surface. That is deeper than the Titanic and deeper than almost any known shipwreck in the world. If those estimates are correct, the Shinano is essentially unreachable with any technology that currently exists. The wreck that everyone knows is down there. Nobody can reach it, and the one country that might be able to find it will not give permission to try.
The Yamato was found in 1985. The Mousashi was found in 2015 after an 8-year search by Paul Allen. The Shinano remains missing. Still somewhere in the dark at the bottom of the Pacific. With over 1,000 men still inside, nobody has found it. Nobody has been allowed to look properly. And with a possible depth of over 6,000 m, even if permission were granted tomorrow, the technology to reach it barely exists. Three ships, three fates, two found, one still missing.