Wrecks of Truk

As we said elsewhere, every diver longs to dive the legendary wrecks of Truk Lagoon. This is considered the big leagues of world-class SCUBA diving. Many people have spent their professional careers studying the history of the place and the many shipwrecks here.

The pictures you see below were taken by relatively inexpensive Canon Digital Elph cameras with an external strobe. We saw many divers here with camera equipment that cost more than our boat. Alas, supporting a boat precludes us from such investments.

There are many websites devoted to Truk Lagoon and numerous books on the subject, so we won't attempt to describe it in detail. This underwater museum was established by the U.S. Navy in Feb 17-18, 1944 in a series of carrier airstrikes called "Operation Hailstone". It resulted in the downing of over 200 Japanese aircraft and the sinking of up to 60 ships in the lagoon. Most of the ships anchored in Truk when the attack came were armed transports and support vessels. This was in part because the admiral here became concerned that an attack was imminent and ordered most warships to leave prior to Feb 17th. Therefore, most all of the ships below will have "Maru" in the name, which signifies a merchant ship. We might have thought diving on warship wrecks would be more interesting, but the ships in Truk are safer to penetrate and the cargo holds are often full of interesting stuff. The only warship we visited, the Fumizuki, had hatches and passageways too narrow for easy penetration and it was therefore not allowed. The one known submarine here, the I-169, is also off-limits.

Here's an example, the forward hold of the Sankisan Maru, which is full of machine-gun ammunition. People often write messages with bullets, which you can see in the upper left.

This is probably hard to make out, but it's a truck chassis covered in coral. Note the tires and radiator in the foreground. This is a typical Truk truck.

This is tower of coral built on a mast ("kingpost", actually).

This is a hatch on the Shinkoku Maru, a fleet oiler that participated in the attacks on Pearl Harbor and Midway. Note the artifacts lying around, including a shoe, doorknob, etc.

This is the operating table in the bridge area. Note the human leg and arm bones. Most such items have been posed there by the dive guides. Vera felt like it was desecrating a grave site.

This is a rather common artifact and resembles a bedpan (washbasin?). The markings typically indicate which steamship line the porcelain belonged to. Most of the transports here were civilian passenger and cargo ships until requisitioned by the Imperial Navy.

Here's one of the 3 ship's telegraphs on the bridge of the huge tanker. Note the "zig-zag clam", actually an oyster.

This is a coral-encrusted deck gun on the Kansho Maru. In case you wonder why everything has a blue tint, this is caused by the filtering effect of the ocean. Most of the wrecks here are fairly deep and difficult to shoot w/o lots of artificial light.

If you look hard, you will see the ships telegraph, binnacle and wheel on the bridge of the Nippo Maru, one of the deeper wrecks at 120+ ft.

If you look real hard, you will see a Japanese tank, still resting on the foredeck. Getting decent lighting at these depths is a challenge.

What the hell is this? It's a Japanese 105mm howitzer, with the barrel pointing left and the wheels toward the right.

This is a "Zero" fighter plane, upside-down with the engine to the lower right. It was taking off from Eten airfield when shot down.

Here our little mermaid floats above the remains of a "Betty" bomber, which crashed near Eten Island.

For those of you who are growing tired of corroded metal, here's a grouper hiding in a ventilator drain. Much of the beauty of the wrecks comes from the coral that encrusts them. This is on the Yamagiri Maru.

And what's this? It's an 18" naval shell intended for the Japanese super battleship Yamato or Musashi. The shadow is caused by the camera housing.

A long-dead navigation light on the bridge of Rio de Janeiro Maru, covered with small reef fish.

Here's a still-life of sorts including teacups and beer bottles. It's also the last picture taken by our trusty Canon SD500 camera, which succumbed shortly thereafter to seawater poisoning due to a leaky housing. It was mailed to the Factory Service Center in Illinois but its fate remains to be determined. We miss it greatly as the only decent underwater camera we had. Most pictures on this page were shot with an older camera that doesn't work with the external strobe properly, hence the shadows.

What's this? The propellers on the end of a torpedo in the hold of the sub-tender Heian Maru. This ship was responsible for most submarine maintenance in the South Seas area.

And this? The viewing end of a periscope - note the fold-down handle on the right side. There is a stack of these 50' long spare periscopes in a passageway but most pictures of them are very dark.

If you look carefully you will see the name of the ship (Heian) in Roman letters with the Japanese characters above.

Here the admiral poses with our favorite guide and skipper combo on the docks of the Blue Lagoon Resort. That's Rio on the left, Gladwin on the right.

We're sure many eyes have glazed over by now. However, if you ever wondered just what is in Truk Lagoon that causes thousands of divers to spend thousands apiece to come here for a week, perhaps this might help. If you don't get it, you don't understand divers, which is OK, too.

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