# IJNS Irako wreck site. Palawan.



## TeeJF (May 31, 2012)

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.*

*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. *​


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## Seahorse (May 31, 2012)

Ummm. I'm dithering about pitting this.

On one hand, Krela has been having a crackdown on making sure everything is derelict buildings, rather than vehicles, crash sites etc

On the other hand, I really love this.


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## the kwan (May 31, 2012)

Really enjoyed this. wonder if the engineer wants his mug back...dont like the sound of hanging on a line for an hour to decompress but obviously worth it...thanks for posting this up.


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## flyboys90 (May 31, 2012)

Absolutely brillant photos,thanks for showing them.


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## TeeJF (May 31, 2012)

Seahorse said:


> Ummm. I'm dithering about pitting this.
> 
> On one hand, Krela has been having a crackdown on making sure everything is derelict buildings, rather than vehicles, crash sites etc
> 
> On the other hand, I really love this.



Thanks for your kind comments and of course at the end of the day it's your shout mate! 

It's wierd, I wouldn't have considered posting wreck dive pix until the webmaster of a respected Dutch urbex site asked me to! I suppose it's not a car grave yard but the thing is, where do you draw the line??? We've had a ship in a dry dock and I seem to recall a train grave yard several times plus umpteen aeroplanes! 

Anyhow you must do as you see fit, I'm not the boss. 

PS... yeah, the deco was an absolute bitch. It wasn't as bad as at Bikini Atoll where we were hanging on a trap breathing surface demand 70% Nitrox to accelerate and still racking up an hour plus deco each dive, but the trouble with this one was the fact that our deco gas was our bottom mix (twinset plus extra side slung deco bottle inside a wreck = no way Jose) so deco was only 25% faster than with straight air and it really was blowing a veritable hooley for the entire duration. If you put your head up into the current it would start to pull at your mask and cause it to leak!


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## krela (May 31, 2012)

Things get missed mostly because only a couple of the mods actually do any moderation any more. It's something I'm going to address in the next week or so with a shake up of the moderation team.

I'll let this one go primarily because it's not like pikeys can nick any of it, nor are people likely to be able to visit it themselves.


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## TeeJF (May 31, 2012)

krela said:


> I'll let this one go primarily because it's not like pikeys can nick any of it



I wouldn't put it past them! have you ever seen how a Philippino diving pykey operates when he is scavenging a wreck? They have a boat, sometimes not much bigger than a rowing boat, and a garage compressor with a petrol engine. Then the poor "salavage divers" all jump in with a length of garden hose between their teeth and down they go without the luxury even of aproper mask half the time. To ease the bends which they get practically every dive they just have a drink at the surface and then sit still (not quite as daft as it sounds) and after an hour or three they resume, pain or not. Most are dead by 30. But despite all these problems they still managed to remove the prop and most of the none ferrous off Irako donkey's years ago. SCUBA is a complete luxury to them and mixed gas the likes of which we take for granted now in tech diving circles is positively unheard of. 

They're all bonkers!


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## krela (May 31, 2012)

Yep the filipinos are a bit on the crazy side.


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## UE-OMJ (May 31, 2012)

TeeJF said:


> *...and the engineer's mug still sits there 63 years after she sank!*




Thats just amazing, how did it manage to stay put through the violence of the sinking!! 

Please dont pit this, it's unusual, but it's still an awesome derelict place. And I doubt we're suddenly going to be over-run with shipwreck posts now...


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## onthebusescrazy (May 31, 2012)

Brillant Pictures And A Brillant Find Loving The Cup but what is that next to the cup is it a biscuit or a coaster . Thank You


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## muppet (May 31, 2012)

i enjoyed that thank you . loved the pushbike


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## Soviet (May 31, 2012)

Really enjoyed this - TeeJF you guys must have nerves of steel swimming along the propeller shaft!

Really very interesting and unusual. Glad you decided not to remove it.


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## jonney (May 31, 2012)

that viz is cracking compared to what I'm used to in the North sea lol... Cracking pics looks like a great dive, I've toyed with the idea of getting a housing for my camera on numerous occasions but have never got round to it yet. Thanks for sharing


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## Oyster (May 31, 2012)

Jacques Cousteau remains one of my all time heroes, I could never get to see what you have photographed had you not bothered to post up so thank you.


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## TeeJF (May 31, 2012)

UE-OMJ said:


> Thats just amazing, how did it manage to stay put through the violence of the sinking!!



The majority of the bomb damage on Irako disrupted the innards of the ship around the bridge area (and the engine room and interveneing decks below the bridge) but many of the superstructure breachs in the hull weren't massive if what we saw has any bearing - for example the engine room was a mass of twisted metal but there were no breachs in the hull in that area or we would have seen day light from the sides of the ship. The only day light we could see was in splits in the deck above us whilst we were in the engine room. the engineering workshop is completely dark and completely undamaged so it would appear that the bombs hitting her didn't damage that sector of the ship despite it being quite close to the engine room. I suppose boilers and the like would absorb a lot of the blast.

Given that she's badly on fire and taking on water and the crew can't control the blaze and are therefore unable to get to where they need to be to close down the holes in her hull then they would have to abandon ship and she would then probably drift and eventually sink fairly slowly. The seabed over most of Coron Bay is only 44 to 50 metres so she didn't have time to turn turtle - that's why she is almost upright. Her position also points to her having drifted - she's in an approach channel between islands, precisely why she has such a stinking current ripping over her. If she settled slowly in that fashion I suspect her demise would have been quite gentle, she could even have been stern down sitting on the seabed before her bows went under. 

Of course some passing diver could have picked the mug up off the floor and put it there too!  But it wasn't any of us and judging by the undisturbed silt it's been there for quite some time!!!

Another of the wrecks from the same raid, the famous IJNS Akitsushima, was split almost in half by a huge explosion in her stern and she sank on her side in a matter of seconds. It's very obvious after a few dives on her that several of the bombs which hit her went in through the side of the hull and then exploded upwards through the decks or outwards through the opposite side. And yet despite how much more traumatic her demise was she is still in very good condition, stern excepted - or she was the last time we dived her. But the damage you see on Akitsu is quite different to that on the Irako.

The point here is, it depends greatly on how a ship is attacked as to the damage the bombs do. If it is literally dive bombed from directly above then the bomb penetrates and continues downwards through the wreck until either the explosion or some chunk of extremely substantial metal stops it. If the bomb has gone sufficiently far down into the ship the resulting explosion will tear a huge hole in the hull well below the water line with catastrophic results. But if the attack is mounted in a shallower dive and the bomb is lobbed rather than dropped directly then the damage inflicted is usually above or on the water line depending upon the penetration depth before explosion. My best guess looking at Akitsu is that she was attacked in a shallow dive from across the bay and it's only the one major explosion ripping her stern apart so drastically that makes Akitsu so radically different to Irako. Akitsu would also have been somewhat weakened because she had been badly knocked about during the raids on Truk and had not long before been repaired in Manila having limped away under cover of darkness from Truk. 

Another factor is that both wrecks lie a fair distance out into the bay unlike say the Tangat Island wreck which is almost against the shore. Sheltering close in to a land mass makes a shallow appraoch more difficult as all available AA will face the open direction and a vertical dive is always more difficult to achieve accurately in comparison to a shallow dive or a torpedo attack where the target is by definition much bigger because it's side on!

So... I dunno is the answer!


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## UE-OMJ (May 31, 2012)

Even if the sinking was VERY slow, surely a mug would have floated away rather than just sit there an fill up with water. Ok, I'm over thinking this  I'd just love to know, these little things make it all the more interesting for me though.

***runs off to the sink to try and float a mug....


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## dangerous dave (May 31, 2012)

whats the bets that a rating was having a prank and glued the chef engineers cup to the work bench


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## UEP-Wales (May 31, 2012)

Another great report! 

Thanks for posting these


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## UrbanX (May 31, 2012)

This has to be a first. Although I'm not into wrecks, it's such a proper explore, with the mug, sink and pushbike! 
Trust you two to do the most unusual ones!


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## night crawler (May 31, 2012)

Great report as ever I just love seeing your dive reports having done some myself though never in such exotic places. Looking at the wreck I can't help but feel for the poor souls who lost their lives enemy or not must have been an spooky experience swimming through the ship.


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## Mike L (May 31, 2012)

As a relatively inexperienced PADI Advanced diver with almost 100 dives logged, including a few minor wrecks, I am amazed by this thread TeeJF. I have seen videos of the Truk wrecks but this is something in a different league!
Depth apart, diving in poor viz with constant silt problems AND accessing via the prop tunnel is some serious dive. And despite all this you still manage to get some great photos. THEN a long deco in a strong current (I have made 'safety stops' on a shot line in strong currents, tiring, and I know what you mean about mask dragging).
I do wonder sometimes if I have the brass gonads for tech diving, but I do know I currently don't have the cash!
Great report, I hope this and any similar ones don't get binned.

Mike


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## TeeJF (Jun 1, 2012)

UE-OMJ said:


> Even if the sinking was VERY slow, surely a mug would have floated away rather than just sit there an fill up with water. Ok, I'm over thinking this  I'd just love to know, these little things make it all the more interesting for me though.
> 
> ***runs off to the sink to try and float a mug....



Maybe it was already full with coffee... ergo it wouldn't float. Ha! You never thought of that one did ya! 

Or maybe the table was really sticky with spilt sugary coffee because the engineer's mother used to complain at him endlessly when he was a kid and that turned him into some sort of anti-cleaning up revolutionary? 

Whilst we are on the subject of nifty bits and bobs found on ship wrecks how about this... 







*Signaller's bugle, USS Saratoga, Bikini Atoll, 2006.*

and...






Siebe Gorman Standard Divers helmet. USS Saratoga, Bikini Atoll, 2006. 

Stuff like this is uber rare but there's loads of it in Bikini Atoll simply because it's all radioactive and can't be taken out of the water. As I understand it the emission is alpha particles only which decay to nothing within microns distance of the irradiated item and hence you are completely shielded by the water. And if I got that wrong that might explain the pain in my pods and the way they glow in the dark...


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## TeeJF (Jun 1, 2012)

Mike L said:


> I have seen videos of the Truk wrecks but this is something in a different league!
> 
> I do wonder sometimes if I have the brass gonads for tech diving
> 
> ...



Gee Mike, thanks for that. Regarding tech diving, to be honest the hardest part is staying in touch when your mind starts to wander with narcosis. We both struggle a lot with early onset narcs - I once took my valve out at 54 metres in Bikini Atoll because I couldn't work out why it tasted metallic - so we took the tech diving route in order to be able to dive mixed gas and avoid narcosis. We both got a gas blenders ticket too which means we can mix our own gases so with a J of helium at considerably less than 4 or 5 Trimix fills it's a serious saving. And it's amazing to get down to 60 metres and feel no worse than at 26! From tech diving OC we moved to CC rebreathers which I love to bits but sadly TJ doesn't get on with hers, mainly because she's small and it's a huge rig, especially when you bung a 10 bail out on a side harness. But no, I'd urge you to at least get your Advanced Nitrox ticket ASAP and then perhaps take one of the tech intros. A twinset gives you huge flexibility.



night crawler said:


> must have been an spooky experience swimming through the ship.



Thank you.  It didn't seem overly spooky, but then we were so keyed up with it being a fairly unforgiving dive we weren't thinking much other than the check drills every few seconds! Spooky was swimming through the car deck of a RORO that sunk off Cyprus. The ship lay on it's side and so up was a long way up but down was equally as far away too! Below you was blackness unless you shone your torch down at which point all you could see was a huge jumble of cars and lorries. And the only light other than ourt torches was the way in rapidly receding behind us with every fin stroke whilst the "light at the end of the tunnel", a deck access doorway in the bows seemed to get no bigger!


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## jongriff (Jun 1, 2012)

Loved this report! very interesting & well photographed.

Come on man you can't ditch this!!


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## Ninja Kitten (Jun 1, 2012)

AHHHH this is just fab!! i miss didving sooo much .. brings back some great memories...and of course this is derelict...its just under the water..amazing...and congrats on your new MOD bagde..i will now bombard you with rediculous questions...to raise the old blood pressure


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## UE-OMJ (Jun 1, 2012)

TeeJF said:


> Maybe it was already full with coffee... ergo it wouldn't float. Ha! You never thought of that one did ya!



No, I really didnt think of that  and probably the right answer too.


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## TeeJF (Jun 4, 2012)

Ninja Kitten said:


> congrats on your new MOD bagde..i will now bombard you with rediculous questions...to raise the old blood pressure



Ahhhhh you 'ikkle b*gg*r Bex!  Thank you for that!


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## TeeJF (Jun 4, 2012)

UE-OMJ said:


> No, I really didnt think of that  and probably the right answer too.



So by association if everyone on the Titanic had drunk sufficient coffee they'd not have fallen off when the stern reared up and would still be standing around on the decks admiring the fish!


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## heeftmeer (Jun 12, 2012)

Really amazing report. Nice details like the divershelmet. You must feel lucky with such a find


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## TeeJF (Jun 12, 2012)

heeftmeer said:


> Really amazing report. Nice details like the divershelmet. You must feel lucky with such a find



Thank you. 

I would have felt extremely lucky had I been able to bring the helmet up but the trouble is, it's highly radioactive! Apparently it's safe to touch it underwater because stuff like that emits alpha particles that decay in fractions of a fraction of a millimeter after leaving the source but out of water they become dangerous.

But there was a much more mundane reason why the helmet didn't go into my luggage... you are absolutely banned from bringing anything to the surface in Bikini Atoll and you are diving with a guide at all times anyway. 

So I was VERY frustrated!

How's the big urb-ex get together coming along?


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## glass (Jun 12, 2012)

I get soooo jealous of some people on here. Great work!


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