3. The crew of Zuikaku salute as the flag is lowered on the listing carrier after a...

The crew of Zuikaku salute as the flag is lowered on the listing carrier after an airstrike, and she ceases to be the flagship of the Imperial Japanese Navy. 25 October, 1944 [740x529]

On the flight deck aft, the men waited in supernatural calm as the chiefs and officers made their head count, even though explosions continued to rock the ship and the flight deck was now starting to slant perceptibly downwards. In fact, at that very moment the seas were swallowing the forecastle and rising up to the level of the flight deck itself. As the bow settled, wreckage and bombs and burning planes in the hangar began to slide and bump forward. It was then that total catastrophe, even greater than that already in progress, struck. Either it was touched off by one of the fires, or was set off by tumbling as the ship nosed forward, but at 1408 an aerial bomb on the hangar deck forward exploded. Immediately the volatile gases that had been accumulating below were ignited, and the Shokaku was rent by an ominous grumble deep down inside. This was followed by a truly devastating cacophony of "four terrific explosions" followed by several smaller ones as the forward bomb and torpedo magazines were touched off. In a prolonged convulsion of three minutes the Shokaku literally began to blow apart at the seams. The men gathered aft were caught completely off-guard--they had assumed they had several minutes to evacuate; in reality they now had only seconds. They were sent tumbling and sliding down the flight deck as Shokaku's shattered bow plunged under the waves. Water surged over and across the flight deck and poured in a torrent through the open No.1 elevator into the hangar. The inrush yanked the stricken carrier downward, causing her fantail to rear terrifyingly and suddenly into the sky. Screaming and frantically trying to grab anything to hold onto, the mass of humanity on Shokaku's flight deck aft slid down the incline to their deaths and a "fiery hell" as they fell headlong into the open and blazing No.3 elevator into the cavernous inferno that had been the hangar. Survivors already in the water were horrified and the sight of the white-clad mass streaming down to incineration in the elevator pit would remain with them for the rest of their lives. The blazing carrier's stern continued to rise, till it was nearly vertical, and in a scene reminiscent of the sinking of the Titanic, then corkscrewed downwards with a "groaning roar" and collapsed into the deep, disappearing amid churning seas, fire and smoke. Bobbing among the wreckage littered waters the scattered patches of survivors began "to sing Shokaku's song with blood tears". The time was scarcely twelve past two----only two minutes had elapsed since the induced explosion.

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