This is an older wreck found by Petrel, they announced the discovery on May 4th, 2019 but had located the wreck on February 25th.
Furutaka was the lead ship of the first class of heavy (A Class) cruisers in the Japanese Navy, laid down on December 5th, 1924. These ships went through major refits in the late 1930s, producing the ships that saw service in WWII. As-built they had six single 7.9-inch guns for the main battery, four 76.2 mm/40 AA guns, and six twin 24-inch torpedo tubes.
When refitted the main battery was replaced with three twin 8''/50 turrets, four 4.7 inch AA guns, eight 25mm AA guns, and two quadruple 24-inch torpedo tubes.
By accounts, these were well-liked ships, capable sea boats, and were built more solidly than later IJN cruisers which suffered from top-heaviness and general overloading. Furutaka was the first Japanese warship to use armor plating as part of the structure and had a sloping stern to further reduce displacement.
The final configuration of Furutaka can be seen below.
Furutaka's end came on October 11th, 1942 at the Battle of Cape Esperance. A Japanese force under the command of Aritomo Goto, with three heavy cruisers (Furutaka, Aoba, and Kinugasa) and two destroyers (Fubuki and Hatsuyuki) were tasked with bombarding the American positions in the area of Ironbottom Sound. An American force under Admiral Norman Scott, with two heavy cruisers (San Fransisco and Salt Lake City), two light cruisers (Boise and Helena), and five destroyers (Farenholt, Duncan, Laffey, Buchanan, McCalla) were sent to block any attempt by the IJN to attack into the sound.
Due to mistrust in the reports from his RADAR equipped ships, Admiral Scott allowed the range to close to a terrifying 5,000 yards before he opened fire on the Japanese line shortly after 2235. The Americans were arrayed in a line and were able to bring their entire main batteries to bear on the Japanese.
Aoba, the Japanese flagship, was badly hit and Admiral Goto was mortally wounded in the first few minutes of the battle. Furutaka's captain Araki Tsutau turned his ship to starboard to try and engage the USS Salt Lake City.
Furutaka took many heavy hits for this, and the USS Duncan fired a pair of torpedos at the cruiser that failed to connect. All told, reports indicate that around 90 shells struck Furutaka, jamming the Number III turret in place and starting several fires that provided easy points of aim for the Americans.
Reportedly, at 2354 a torpedo struck the port side and flooded the forward engine room aft of the funnels. Furutaka went dead in the water at 0040 on the 12th, the battle flag was lowered, and the order was given to abandon ship. She finally sank stern-first at 0228 with the loss of 33 men killed and 225 counted missing. Captain Araki and 517 survivors were rescued from the waters of Ironbottom Sound by the Hatsuyuki, Murakumo, and Shirayuki. 115 other crewmen were taken prisoner by American forces.
Furutaka currently lies about 4,600 feet (1400 meters) below the surface, northwest of Savo Island.
The Wreck
The bow of the ship has been broken off and is resting next to the main wreck. The Imperial Seal of Japan, a chrysanthemum can still be seen on the very end of the bow. These were features of Japanese warships that were larger than destroyers and were made of teak wood covered with gold, and are the personal seal of the Emperor of Japan, dating to 1183 A.D. and is still in use today.
The below photo is of the seal on the bow of Takao, another heavy cruiser in the IJN.
The broken end of the bow section, somewhere in front of Turret I, but without enough information to say for sure where exactly the break occurred. Unlike for Maya, there aren't as many nice drawings of Furutaka to use for reference on the internal arrangements.
This damage does not look to be the result of a torpedo strike since there doesn't appear to be signs of a ruptured-in hull, rather this would be the result of the ship breaking up as it sank from internal forces from flooding or from the impact on the seabed.
Turret I is mostly intact, these are the same 20.3 cm guns that were carried by the Takao class. Based on what can be seen, it looks like the break in the bow started very close to this turret. Unfortunately, it's unclear if the turret is trained out still or if it had been returned to a neutral position before Furutaka sank.
Turret II, on the other hand, has been horribly mangled by the punishment Furutaka suffered at Cape Esperance. This damage wasn't mentioned in reports of the battle that I've seen, so the damage might have been the result of decay underwater or from detonations that happened after the sinking.
The very thin plating is apparent from these photos, the turrets only had one inch of protection and another inch of sun-shielding spaced by about 8 inches from the rest of the turret.
The bridge structure is detached and is resting about 2,000 feet (600 meters) away from the rest of the wreck. There is extensive damage but a few features can be pointed out, this looks to be the starboard side of the bridge tower looking 'up'. The open area on the top of the structure looks to be an open hatch on the weather deck level. The platform supported by a single post towards the bottom is a base for a small rangefinder, probably for navigation (M15 in the drawing below). Below is a drawing from a model kit, showing a good profile of the bridge tower.
The large round structure towards the right of the photo is the base of a much larger rangefinder that can be seen more clearly below (M14 in the drawing above).
This is a fire control rangefinder, probably a 4.5-meter type, but the details of Japanese fire control systems are hard to come by so a more specific identification is outside my ability.
This is a view of a different part of the bridge structure, this looks to be the rear of the tower. There is another rangefinder on the left side, though it's protective shield has been lost from battle damage or to the ravages of rust and decay. In this area were platforms for spotting and searchlights, but with how much damage there is it's hard to identify what parts are what.
This is the remains of a rangefinder, probably the rearmost rangefinder located just behind the funnels and ahead of the catapult.
This is an older AA weapon, the 12 cm/45 10th Year Type dual-purpose gun. Furutaka had four of these weapons, and they also seem to have lost the gun shields that can be seen in photographs of the cruiser, such as the one below of Furutaka on speed trials in late 1939.
This searchlight tower is located between the two funnels and had a twin 25 mm AA mount on each side of it. The top photo is from the port side, as is the lowermost photo, since the windows on the platform were in the stern direction.
Furutaka had two sets of quadruple torpedo tubes, one set on each beam, only the port side launcher remains on the ship. The launcher used to have a protective box over it, a few remains of which can be seen in the top photo on the sides. A more complete launcher and box will be seen later.
Japanese cruisers and destroyers carried reloads for their torpedo tubes, contained in another protective box closer to the bow of the ship. This gave Furutaka the ability to fire a total of 16 torpedoes before she would have to return to port to fully restock. Overhead is a crane that was used to move the torpedoes during reloading, and on the right is the opening to the torpedo maintenance area.
The starboard side torpedo storage, showing the stowed Type 93 'Long Lance' torpedoes, or rather what is left of them. This shows that the torpedoes were stored with the noses towards the stern of the ship.
Looking from the starboard side to see the torpedo maintenance area. The Type 93 was powered by compressed oxygen, and like all pieces of complex machinery at sea, they needed regular maintenance. Interestingly, two of the trollies used to maneuver the torpedoes are still in place on the deck.
This is the starboard side torpedo launcher, with its mostly intact protective box.
Plenty of damage is evident on the port side, the eight-inch shells from the Salt Lake City could have penetrated the 3'' belt on Furutaka out to more than 29,000 yards, but at the 5,000 yard range of the battle, the shells could have penetrated through more than ten inches of armor. No armor on Furutaka could have protected her against the firepower from the American warships.
What is interesting is how much of the glass is still intact, despite being right next to major holes from shellfire.
Number III turret at the stern, possibly trained out to port as it was reported that shellfire jammed it in place. With the deterioration of the wreck, it's probable that the elevation controls in the turret have decayed enough to cause the guns to fully elevate due to the weight of the breech.
On the stern of the Furutaka are some sort of boxes that I am unsure about. They probably aren't for depth charges since there is no way to reload them without removing the box, but other than that I cannot think of a use for them. Also, there aren't any records of Furutaka getting depth charges at any point before she was sunk.
There are also plenty of large shell holes here as well.
The second photo from the top of this section is an octopus with its eggs.
A faint character can be seen on the stern. This is a Hiragana character, one of three alphabets used in Japan, and all three were used to write the names of warships in different contexts. The official names were written in Kanji, the names written on the sides of ships like destroyers were Katakana (read right to left with an older style of vowels), and the names on the sterns were Hiragana. The four Hiragana characters of Furutaka's name are shown below.
ふるたか
An anchor at the stern, possibly on the starboard side of the stern based on the apparent curve of the hull.
One of Furutaka's four screws, each screw was driven by four geared steam turbines which were driven by ten oil-fired boilers, giving Furutaka a top speed of 33 knots (38 MPH).
Sources:
http://combinedfleet.com/furuta_t.htm
http://www.steelnavy.com/Furutaka.htm
https://ww2db.com/ship_spec.php?ship_id=C46
http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNJAP_Main.php
http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNJAP_8-50_3ns.php
http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNJAP_47-45_10ns.php
http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNJAP_25mm-60_mg.php
http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WTJAP_WWII.php#61_cm_%2824%22%29_Torpedoes
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