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If you like ships then here's a quick exploration reportette with a difference. I'm not sure if you can class this particular exploration as an "urb-ex" or not but I figured that a destroyer in Birkenhead docks isn't so different, albeit a tad dryer! 
The spiel...
Imperial Japanese Navy Ship (IJNS) Irako was a beach head supply and support ship designed to feed, cloth and re-supply Japanese soldiers after they had made a landing on enemy territory. As a result she carried little in the way of armaments beyond anti aircraft guns but had a mass of refridgerated compartments internally to store food together with a huge kitchen and an equally huge laundry.
On our pre-dive brief we were told to look out for the food mixers so we went in imagining that we would find a few Moulinex-esque kitchen worktop machines dotted about - wrong! These things looked like hobby size concrete mixers. The laundry was equally interesting, no industrial size washing machines here, just big, tiled tubs and huge mangles for ringing the clothes out after they had been hand washed.
The highlight of this dive has to be the engine room which you enter by descending to the stern in 42 meters of rather murky water (there's a lot of commercial pearl farms in the area resulting in heavy silting of the water) and then swimming along inside the prop shaft for fully half the length of the ship. Once in the engine room it is possible to see spanners in racks on the walls amongst the bomb damage. A little further in to the ship and you can enter the engineering workshop via a big steel door which is only held back by a piece of wire! Inside there is a lathe and a pillar drill but best of all, right by the steel stock cage, an engineer's mug still sits on a table despite the ship sinking
On September 24th. 1944 at 0900, 24 Curtiss SB2C Helldiver dive bombers - BELOW - supported by 96 Grumman F6F Hellcat fighters, attacked the Japanese ships sitting in Coron Bay. Irako's poor AA armament and her inabaility to manouvre meant she was soon on her way to the bottom.
Diving Irako is a major experience but it is not for the faint hearted. The entire dive is carried out inside the wreck due to the strong current which sweeps her almost all the time. She is thick with silt and touching down will result in an almost instant "brown out", most disconcerting as we can both attest! Given her depth it is imperative that the diver uses twin cylinder rigs with an appropriate gas mix for the target depth, and a long in water decompression period literally hanging on the line like washing in a stiff breeze is inevitable - in our case almost an hour of deco before we dared surface.
Was it worth it? We thought so but why don't you take a look at our pix and see for yourself.
Descending to the wreck in murky, green water!
The visibility was attrocious. Here we are about to enter the prop shaft directly behind the rudder.
As I had the camera I got to go first. I'm not sure whether I was happy or not!
That piece of slightly suspect string is all you have to rely upon over and above your sense of touch if the visibility kicks up.
The wait before anyone else appeared through the final sealing gland into the engine room seamed to be an age when in reality it was a matter of seconds. This is TJ, my wife and exploration partner.
A tunnel leads up to the upper decks but it is too narrow to swim through with a rig on your back.
The silt you can see here covers everything and one touch causes an instant brown cloud which completely knocks out your vision.
Spanners in a rack on the engine room wall.
These catwalks were overhead before the bombing.
The door she is swimming through now is only held open by a piece of wire!
Beyond the door is the engineering workshop. here is the lathe.
...and a silhouetted pillar drill.
Here's that pillar drill a little clearer now.
The steel stock cage.
...and the engineer's mug still sits there 63 years after she sank!
We are in the laundry now and this is just one of the mangles used to squeeze the water out of the soldier's uniforms after washing them.
...and here's where they were washed. Not quite what you would have expected perhaps!
The murky green light is coming down through an open stairwell overhead but it's still more than 110 feet to the surface, even if you could go up without the luxury of having to stop on the way to prevent the certainty of getting the bends!
We are in the emergency steering flat now and yes that is a pushbike hanging up on the wall.
This is the emergency helm which could be used if the bridge was put out of action.
We are in what remains of the bridge now and almost at the end of the dive.
Time to leave the wreck and begin the long journey back up to the surface!
I hope this was something a bit different for a change and that you have enjoyed it. Thanks for looking.
The spiel...
Imperial Japanese Navy Ship (IJNS) Irako was a beach head supply and support ship designed to feed, cloth and re-supply Japanese soldiers after they had made a landing on enemy territory. As a result she carried little in the way of armaments beyond anti aircraft guns but had a mass of refridgerated compartments internally to store food together with a huge kitchen and an equally huge laundry.
On our pre-dive brief we were told to look out for the food mixers so we went in imagining that we would find a few Moulinex-esque kitchen worktop machines dotted about - wrong! These things looked like hobby size concrete mixers. The laundry was equally interesting, no industrial size washing machines here, just big, tiled tubs and huge mangles for ringing the clothes out after they had been hand washed.
The highlight of this dive has to be the engine room which you enter by descending to the stern in 42 meters of rather murky water (there's a lot of commercial pearl farms in the area resulting in heavy silting of the water) and then swimming along inside the prop shaft for fully half the length of the ship. Once in the engine room it is possible to see spanners in racks on the walls amongst the bomb damage. A little further in to the ship and you can enter the engineering workshop via a big steel door which is only held back by a piece of wire! Inside there is a lathe and a pillar drill but best of all, right by the steel stock cage, an engineer's mug still sits on a table despite the ship sinking
On September 24th. 1944 at 0900, 24 Curtiss SB2C Helldiver dive bombers - BELOW - supported by 96 Grumman F6F Hellcat fighters, attacked the Japanese ships sitting in Coron Bay. Irako's poor AA armament and her inabaility to manouvre meant she was soon on her way to the bottom.
Diving Irako is a major experience but it is not for the faint hearted. The entire dive is carried out inside the wreck due to the strong current which sweeps her almost all the time. She is thick with silt and touching down will result in an almost instant "brown out", most disconcerting as we can both attest! Given her depth it is imperative that the diver uses twin cylinder rigs with an appropriate gas mix for the target depth, and a long in water decompression period literally hanging on the line like washing in a stiff breeze is inevitable - in our case almost an hour of deco before we dared surface.
Was it worth it? We thought so but why don't you take a look at our pix and see for yourself.
Piccies...
Descending to the wreck in murky, green water!
The visibility was attrocious. Here we are about to enter the prop shaft directly behind the rudder.
As I had the camera I got to go first. I'm not sure whether I was happy or not!
That piece of slightly suspect string is all you have to rely upon over and above your sense of touch if the visibility kicks up.
The wait before anyone else appeared through the final sealing gland into the engine room seamed to be an age when in reality it was a matter of seconds. This is TJ, my wife and exploration partner.
A tunnel leads up to the upper decks but it is too narrow to swim through with a rig on your back.
The silt you can see here covers everything and one touch causes an instant brown cloud which completely knocks out your vision.
Spanners in a rack on the engine room wall.
These catwalks were overhead before the bombing.
The door she is swimming through now is only held open by a piece of wire!
Beyond the door is the engineering workshop. here is the lathe.
...and a silhouetted pillar drill.
Here's that pillar drill a little clearer now.
The steel stock cage.
...and the engineer's mug still sits there 63 years after she sank!
We are in the laundry now and this is just one of the mangles used to squeeze the water out of the soldier's uniforms after washing them.
...and here's where they were washed. Not quite what you would have expected perhaps!
The murky green light is coming down through an open stairwell overhead but it's still more than 110 feet to the surface, even if you could go up without the luxury of having to stop on the way to prevent the certainty of getting the bends!
We are in the emergency steering flat now and yes that is a pushbike hanging up on the wall.
This is the emergency helm which could be used if the bridge was put out of action.
We are in what remains of the bridge now and almost at the end of the dive.
Time to leave the wreck and begin the long journey back up to the surface!
I hope this was something a bit different for a change and that you have enjoyed it. Thanks for looking.
