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The Japanese aircraft carrier Unryū (雲龍, Cloud Dragon) was the lead ship of her class of fleet aircraft carriers built for the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) during World War II. She was commissioned in mid-1944, but fuel and aircrew shortages limited her use to Japanese waters. The impending American invasion of Luzon caused the IJN to order her to transport aircraft and supplies to the Philippines in December. The ship was torpedoed and sunk by the American submarine USS Redfish in the East China Sea during the voyage.
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One of the biggest differences between American and Japanese crews was the Americans' almost superhuman damage control skills. More than one Japanese carrier was lost because of poor damage control. By contrast, look at the miracle of the USS Franklin.
Even better was Yorktown. The Japanese carriers thought they sunk her three times; twice in one day. She was being readied for towing to Pearl when a sub torpedoed her and the attending destroyer for the kill.
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I spent 25 years in the USN, retiring in 2014. Damage control is still an integral part of the USN with every crewmember on the ship being trained in firefighting and all other aspects of damage control. If your ship is damaged there in no where to run. You either fix it or you go down, it is that simple.
@@retirednavy8720I spent over a year as DCPO for FOX Division on the USS LAWRENCE DDG-4 in 1984-85
The IJN also was using volatile ships fuel.
The willingness of the Japanese to kamikaze for almost any reason is just about the biggest case of self sabotage in history.
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I checked with my wife, who is from Japan. The correct pronunciation for the IJN destroyer Shigure is "shee-goo-ray", said quickly.🙂
Ah darn, appreciate the feedback! Wish I had a resource like at the time when making it 😂 Have a fantastic weekend :)
@n4lra1 HAI ! = shark in 🇫🇮. Read the Hara book in FINNISH just as soon as it was translated to our language in 1977. I was just a juvenile. But probably had spent my previous life in either or both sides of the Pac War. YAMATO DAMASHII = HAKKAA PÄÄLLE 🇫🇮
Incorrect
@@sulevisydanmaa9981 Most Americans get a surprise when they order Taco at a Japanese restaurant. The TACO we are most familiar with is the Mexican Taco which is small folded cornmeal pancake stuffed with some meat and vegetables. Taco is octopus in Japanese.🙂
@@n4lra1 Take care in Korea. If you offer salsa to your friend who doesn't know Mexican food, s/he may think you're serving diarrhoea.
After Midway, the war was lost.
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The war was lost on 12/7/1941
@@TheRobdarling Agree.
@@TheRobdarling Well stated and likely true knowing what we now know.
The Japanese aggression was doomed when the US stopped supplying fuel to them.
Matsu class destroyers were sort of akin to destroyer escorts. Compared to fleet destroyers, they were less heavily armed with guns, a bit smaller, slower (but faster than a surfaced US submarine), and equipped for anti-submarine and escort work. Their 5"/40 DP guns didn't have the kind of director needed for high angle AA use, and while a lot of 25 mm cannon were carried, these were not very effective for AA.
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I always look forward to HH's quality videos.
As always greatly appreciate your support and kind words! Have a fantastic weekend :)
The Unryu makes a excellent coral reef.
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Cover photo is Hiryu at Midway. Unryu's island (bridge) was on the starboard (right) side of the ship. The only ship of comparable size with her island on the port (left) side was Hiryu. The side of the ship is determined by standing on the deck, facing the bow; right is starboard, left is port.
Akagi had her island on the port side.
@@gimmeshelter2151 Yes, but this is Hiryu. Akagi was almost twice the tonnage, and looked very different.
Keep those Americans confused as often as possible with the inconsistent island location on aircraft carriers and some had none.
@@WilliamMurphy-uv9pm Yeppers! None of their cvls had an island.
@@user-pb2vo4pt3t You seem to know a lot of carriers. You are likely kidding and already know that an island on a carrier was, I believe, a raised bridge superstucture usually on one side or the other of the flight deck and extending up a few stories high. If you were not kidding, go back and look at the pretty pictures of their carriers in the video itself. Cvls, your term, I assume were the smaller, "baby" aircraft carriers. Just a guess. Many of those Japanese carriers had no island. Why, I don't know. Enlightenment, please.
Japans biggest mistake was not training enough pilots. They limited the amount they trained even though thousands tried to be pilots!
The kami kaze plan pretty much limited pilot numbers as did the Mariana's turkey shoot, they squandered what they had.
In 1900, Japan didn't have any university that could train engineers - gear designers, gear builders, i-beam designs, etc. They had no shipyards capable of working on metal-hulled ships. Those would appearing in 1910 and only in the '20s was Japan producing a few steel hulled ships. Coal-fire steel plants were still overwhelmed by demand. When Pearl Harbor was attacked, Japan's civilian shipping needs were over 9-million tons but they only had 2 million. They rented the other 7 million tons of shipping from the USA, Britain and the Dutch. All three of their enemies as of December 7th. "We'll confiscate those, then" was their idea, and they never did. With military demands, they never produced even a million ship-tons for civilian use, and only 'commandeered' a bit over 1 mil. This is why Japan was starving - they did it themselves.
Their training philosophy and lack of aircraft and scarcity of fuel made that impossible
best video this week
Excellent history!!
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@1:11 the photo shows ryujo not ryuho ryujo was sunk two years earlier in the battle of the eastern Solomon’s
I think I've heard of this carrier in Japanese secret planes and how the carrier was sunk by a USS SUB, thus thwarting their experimental aircrafts at sea.
Indeed! Those aircraft are part of the reason she went down
@@HiddenHistoryYT It was promos for helicopters on her deck.
Its always astonishing how long a 5 to 8 symbol name expands to when translated. But I guess that the names of American vessels were equally odd to Japanese speakers.
No way, someone with understanding in the KZhead comments?! Greatly appreciate you watching and have a fantastic week :)
@@HiddenHistoryYT I try to only be ignorant and stupid 5 times per month, and its too early to use another one already
They completely understood the US Battleship and Cruiser naming conventions. The States and Cities approach was very similar to the Japanese Battleship and Carrier name conventions. Which were named for places in Japan. (Yamato meant “The whole of Japan” and was basically the same idea as the “USS America”). Submarine names being fish made complete sense to them. They kind of liked that. But The US Carrier naming conventions however drove them nuts. The US’s habit of naming new Carriers after ones that had been sunk, sometimes just months or weeks later drove Japanese Naval intelligence insane. Why was the Yorktown back? How was the Yorktown back? And Lexington! And naming Carriers after famous American battles was fine for Saratoga and Lexington. But naming them for Japanese losses while the war was going on, and getting them to sea was just rubbing their noses in it. And then there was USS Shangri La. Which drove them round the bend. Shangri La is a fictional city in Asia from the 1939 James Hilton novel Lost Horizon. But in the context of WW2, in April 1942 a flight of American B25 Land Based Medium Bombers were launched from the aircraft carrier USS Hornet, escorted by Enterprise, and bombed Tokyo. The first foreign attack to hit Japanese soil in over 1000 years. When US President Roosevelt announced the attack to the American people that night, he declared the bombers had launched from “Shangri La”. The US would keep quiet about the true means of the attack until the 2 Carriers were safely away from Japan. So President Roosevelt had declared Shangri La was used to attack Japan. And now 2 years later Japanese Intelligence sources were reporting that this made up nonsense name was once again moving around the Pacific and bombing Japanese targets. They never quite grasped that USS Shangri La was named for the Doolittle Raid.
The loss was not "lamented universally". I imagine not a lot of lamenting happened on Redfish.
You used pictures of carrier Ryujo for carrier Ryuho. Ryuho survived the war while Ryujo was sunk in 1942 at the Battle of the Eastern Solomons.
_Unryu_ is probably rhe most un-dragon name ever... 😉
lol Thanks for watching and have a great week :)
Well done documentary. Well researched
Greatly appreciate it :) Have a fantastic weekend
@@HiddenHistoryYT keep making those great videos
Except for using wrong pictures !
@@gowdsake7103 he EXPLAINED that. … actual photos of those vessels haven’t been found or don’t exist
I wonder if the US could have beat the IJN had the Japanese invested in submarines, aircraft and aircraft carriers instead of their super-battleships? I wonder if nostalgia plays a role in those kinds of decisions. I remember this story as a sub movie from the 1950's.
After Midway it’s just a matter of (shorter) time. Japan needed a crash program of carrier construction and pilot training. Not being free to conduct carrier work ups due to USN submarine activity made even this Hail Mary impossible.
Adm Ozawa called off carrier-landing training after more than half of the trainees crashed on first attempts. That's why these carriers were emptied - Ozawa calculated he should save all pilots to be land-based kamikazes, instead.
Weren't some of these giant carriers originally giant BB hulls? Wasn't some of the Montana class hulls used for CVs instead? I remember reading it or seeing something about that in a doco somewhere. That would be a very interesting video. Hulls that started life as BBs etc and ended their careers as CVs.
The only US Carriers built on Battleship, well technically Battlecruiser hulls were CV-2 Lexington and CV-3 Saratoga. Lexington was lost at Coral Sea, Saratoga fought the entire war. Their Japanese counterparts were Akagi (Battle Cruiser hull) and Kaga (Battleship). These 4 were all converted due to a loophole of the Washington Naval treaty that allowed a certain tonnage of under construction ships to be converted to carriers, rather than being scrapped. The Montana’s relationship to carriers is a little more subtle. No steel was ever laid for the Montana’s. In 1942 Congress approved both the Montana class Battleships and the Midway class carriers. At the time the US only had 3 graving docks big enough to build such monstrous ships. Estimates said each Montana would need 7 years to be built. Whereas the Midways could be finished in just under 3 years. That meant the Montana’s would be unlikely to see service in the war. And the Navy was hesitant at tying up their biggest shipyards for 7 years. The result was the Midway’s were ordered to be built first. The contract for the Montana’s was still on the books when the war ended (just as the first three Midway’s were arriving.) As the US had a surplus of barely used Battleships they saw no need for the Montana’s and the contract was cancelled. As were the next batch of 2 Midway’s. The Midway follow up Carrier the monstrous United States was scrapped in the slipway in the late 40’s due to how fast carriers were evolving. These would be the last Straight Deck carriers. Development had already begun on the USS Forrestal, the first modern purpose built Super Carrier. The British had 4 Battlecruiser conversion Carriers as well. (Also artifacts of the Washington Naval treaty) Only one of which survived the war. HMS Eagle, and the three Courageous Class carriers. Courageous, Glorious and Furious. Only Furious survived the war. Mostly by stint of being the oldest and least combat capable, she was the designated training carrier and frequent plane ferry. The only other major conversion was the Shinano. Which was a monstrous “utility carrier” built on the hull of the incomplete third Yamato Battleship. The fact that Japan did not plan to use her as a fleet carrier, and instead intended her to be a mobile warehouse of spare aircraft and repair facility for the fleet carriers tells you that she was an awful carrier conversion. There’s not a lot of info on her. And she was sunk 10 days after she was launched, while being moved to a different shipyard. Like Unryu she was also carrying a load of Ohka “Baka Bombs” in her hanger when she went down.
@@andrewtaylor940 Wow! Thank you for that interesting information. That is fascinating. I knew they were out there, I just had no idea who, when and where, and my memory failed me. I hope someone makes a video on all these 'planned as one thing but necessity decided otherwise' boats. Its an insight how needs change as fast as a situation does....and how you work a gigantic multi year project around that.
@@VincentNajger1 Actually all of those carrier conversions, except the Shinano, happened in the 1920’s. The needs there was the signing of the Washington Naval Treaty, that sought to limit the ongoing naval arms race, by restricting ship tonnage and types. Other than Shinano most “needs” type conversions that occurred during or in the run up to the war involved building carriers on merchant hulls. What we know as the Escort Carriers. A British idea that the US Navy took and ran with. Cheap slow quick to build carriers to be used to close the mid Atlantic Gap from submarines, ferry aircraft and support landings without tying up the fleet carriers. The Japanese also created a number of “Half Deck Carriers” on Cruisers, such as the badly damaged Mogami. But people often misunderstand what those were. Japanese Doctrine was to avoid using Carrier aircraft for scouting. They didn’t want to weaken their offensive strike. Instead scouting was to be done by the float planes from the Carriers escorting cruisers. The half deck carrier cruisers just sacrificed the rear turrets to instead carry a much larger contingent of scout float planes.
@andrewtaylor940 Thank-you for taking me back to my grade-school library, 6th grade. Won't say how long ago that was, but I could've called Joe Foss or David McCampbell on the phone, if it had occurred to me.
It was written in the stars from the get-go that The Allies *must* emerge victorious. Thank you, and thank God for The Greatest Generation and our storied leaders!
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Don't forget that America dropped two "Atomic bombs" on Japan. Those two Atomic bombs forced Japan to surrender. Unfortunately Japan forced America to drop the second Atomic bomb...which forced Japan to surrender. It's sad that they forced America to drop the second Atomic bomb.
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I wouldn't say forced. We had a choice, although I would not have wanted to be the POTUS making that choice. The choice to drop the second bomb was the lesser of the two evils. First, invade mainland Japan, which would cost up to a 2 million deaths, both civilian and allied troops. The first Atomic bomb was dropped on Aug 6, 1945. The Soviets declared war on Japan, Aug 8, 1945. Japan was being strangled from two fronts, the Americans from the sea, air, the Soviets in Manchuria. The second bomb dropped on Aug 9, 1945. Japans Air power was reduced to almost nothing as planes, pilots, fuel was unavailable. In the end, America did not want the USSR to have any influence or territory of Japan. All these things went into the decision to drop the second bomb. Japan surrendered Aug 15, 1945 and this kept the USSR out of Japan. We avoided what happened to Germany post WW2.
why didn’t captain Konami try saving the ship by ordering up up down down left right left right B A Start
Hilarious!
Stupid & disrespectful comment! Ciao, L (Veteran)
"Un-rye-yoo." Try to pronounce this--and other names--properly. Your content is good! C'mon, guy!
I have seen it written these are AI voices. I just know that, if these are intelligent, why can't they learn?!!
All saved crew members likely lived with the embarrassment for the rest of their lives and many ended those lives by ritual or simple suicide far too early.
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@WilliamMurphy-uv9pm - Not necessarily on the suicide thing.
The narrator makes ut sound like the only person the the sub was the Captain
What are aircraft carriers for? Transportation of course, everything is fine.
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He fired 6 fish, but 3 missed 1 hit so where are the other 2?
Still going? lol
Duds, pretty common
Still circling; just in case.
@@GLGolden55 Yes early on, too many hit targets with no consequences. How the US Navy did not know how poor their torpedoes were before the war was inexcusable. Took a long time to even recognize the problem thus delaying the fix for a very long time
@@WilliamMurphy-uv9pm FDR was facing a divided country recovering from the Depression, with the Lindbergh-fronted American First faction refusing to engage, and Ford and other industrialists doing business in Germany. The Navy was not allowed to prepare, so we and the Brits were basically using WW1 era tech while Japan and Germany were advancing theirs. If no Pearl Harbor, who knows what would have happened?
14:38 what's this clip from?
Midway movie that came out a few years ago
@@HiddenHistoryYT thanks looks like a good movie.haven't seen it yet.
@@311Bob I enjoy it, definitely worth a watch!
云龙的覆灭
Yeah, nothing like those Critical Past watermarks to really spice up a presentation.
Not my watermark
@@HiddenHistoryYT Obviously. But the decision to use those clips was yours.
I was a, was a kamikaze pilot They gave me a plane, I couldn't fly it home. Taught how to take off, I don't know how to land. They say it doesn't matter and I just cannot understand
Thanks for watching and have a great week :)
Good song. Hoodoo Gurus from about 1984. FWIW, I'm a Stoneage Romeo.
Was Capt. McGregor put on a Court Martial hearing for endangering his sub and crew by lingering around to photograph the sinking?
Capt. McKay of the USS Indianapolis was tried for not calling “abandon ship” in a timely manner.
Capt. McKay was found guilty and he committed suicide years later. KWM
Some animated maps would have been helpful.
Ok I will note that for the future! Thanks for watching and have a great week :)
Not a bad video...but a tad too sympathetic to the Japanese cause for my liking.
Then why don't you make your own video(s)... for your liking? Ciao, L
The writing on the wall would never convince the malevolent Japanese Mindset to acquiesce ..... and it cost hundreds of thousands of Japanese Lives - Military as well as civilians and ours .... the culture and conceit would be disastrous !!! jj
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Why is the word "tragedy" being used multiple times? Swap "tragedy" out & swap "victory" in.
Japan Toyota
Japan Mitbousouki
Japan Klappasaki
Engaño, not Engano.
Horrible AI voice. Rambling and disjointed script. Video probably used w/o attribution. The historical issues are noted by others. AI doesn't substitute for humans sometimes...
These really are awful. Pronunciation of the Japanese names is particularly uneducated, but when they can't say "Combined" properly, well... all hope is given up.
Kim Jong Un?
Friend of yours or just name dropping?
Lol
USA 🇺🇸
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