Japanese aircraft carrier Shinano (1944): Wreck Map & Facts

Name	Japanese aircraft carrier Shinano	Wikidata label
Year lost	1944	Wikidata P793 significant event, point-in-time qualifier
Era	Second World War	derived from year
Ship type	aircraft carrier	Wikidata P31 instance of
Cause of loss	War action	Keyword match in English Wikipedia lead sentence
Nationality / flag	Empire of Japan	Wikidata P8047 country of registry
Operator	Imperial Japanese Navy	Wikidata P137 operator
Conflict	World War II	Wikidata P607 conflict
Sea / ocean	Philippine Sea	Natural Earth marine areas (public domain), point-in-polygon
Nearest coast	Honshu	Natural Earth (public domain); approx. 118 km from land
Position	33.1167, 137.0667	Wikidata P625 coordinate location (CC0)

About the wreck

Shinano (Japanese: 信濃; named after the ancient Shinano Province) was an aircraft carrier built by the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) during World War II, the largest such built up to that time. Laid down in May 1940 as the third of the Yamato-class battleships, Shinano's partially complete hull was ordered to be converted to an aircraft carrier following Japan's disastrous loss of four of its original six fleet carriers at the Battle of Midway in mid-1942. The advanced state of her construction prevented her conversion into a fleet carrier, so the IJN decided to convert her into a carrier that supported other carriers.

Her conversion was still not finished in November 1944 when she was ordered to sail from the Yokosuka Naval Arsenal to Kure Naval Base to complete fitting out and transfer a load of 50 Yokosuka MXY7 Ohka rocket-propelled kamikaze flying bombs. She was sunk en route, 10 days after commissioning, on 29 November 1944, by four torpedoes from the U.S. Navy submarine Archerfish. Over a thousand sailors and civilians were rescued and 1,435 were lost, including her captain. She remains the largest ship ever sunk by a submarine.

Location

Recorded position: 33.1167, 137.0667 (Wikidata P625 coordinate location (CC0); may be approximate)
Sea / ocean: Philippine Sea
Nearest coast: Honshu

Wreck positions on this site are for interest only and are not for navigation. Many wrecks are war graves or legally protected: never disturb human remains or remove artefacts, and check local law before diving.

OpenStreetMap

Text adapted from the Wikipedia article Japanese aircraft carrier Shinano (revision 1380750151), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes: excerpted from the article lead section; condensed by selecting paragraphs; citations and formatting removed. No text added. This excerpt is available under the same licence.