Kaga 加賀 was a Japanese aircraft carrier that was in service from 1928 to 1942. It was originally designed as a Tosa-Class battlecruiser, but construction as such was not finished due to the signing of the Washington Naval Treaty in 1922. In 1928, the incomplete hull was repurposed and used to build an aircraft carrier.
Kaga had an overall length of 238.5 meters, a beam of 31.67 meters, a draft of 7.92 meters, a maximum speed of 28 knots, and a range of 12,000 miles at 15 knots. It had a complement of approximately 1,700 personnel and 90 aircraft.
Kaga took part in several operations during World War II, including the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1942, the Battle of Rabaul on January 20, 1942, and the Battle of Midway from June 4-7, 1942. On the morning of June 4, 1942, twenty-five Douglas SBD Dauntlesses from the USS Enterprise bombarded Kaga, landing at least four bomb hits. Two bombs struck elevators on the forward and aft sections of the upper hangar; another struck the island and destroyed the bridge. The final bomb struck at amidships and penetrated the flight decks, causing a series of explosions from the 80,000 lbs of munitions. Later that day, the IJN destroyer Hagikaze scuttled Kaga with two torpedoes, sinking the carrier.
In 1999, part of Kaga was located during a mapping survey conducted by Nauticos Corp. and the U.S. Naval Oceanographic Office to search for the aircraft carriers lost at Midway. Twenty years later, the main part of the wreckage was located during a mapping survey of the Battle of Midway site conducted by Vulcan, Inc. in partnership with the U.S. Navy History and Heritage Command. On September 12, 2023, Ocean Exploration Trust and partners surveyed Kaga using remotely operated vehicle (ROV) Atalanta during the Ala ‘Aumoana Kai Uli expedition on Exploration Vessel Nautilus, which was funded by NOAA Ocean Exploration via the Ocean Exploration Cooperative Institute. At the time, Kaga was intact, but disarticulated, and embedded in seafloor sediment. Extensive damage was noted on the remaining deck levels. Off the starboard side of the wreck site is a debris field with possible remnants of one of the three flight decks.
Ocean Exploration Trust collected 17 hours of ROV dive footage of Kaga. The footage was exported into 20,946 images using VLC Player and color corrected in Photoshop. Nine individual models were made (port side (3), stern (1), bow (1), starboard side (1), and debris field off the starboard side of the site (3)) and then stitched together in Rhinoceros 8 and uploaded to Construkted Reality.
The full annotated video of this dive can be viewed on SeaTube.
Site Name: Kaga
Type: UCH
UCH Vessel Date Built: March 31, 1928
UCH Vessel Date Sank: June 4, 1942
Hull Material: Steel
Official Number: N/A
Expedition Number: NA154
Expedition Name: Ala ‘Aumoana Kai Uli
ROV Dive Number: T1003
ROV Dive Date: September 12, 2023
Location: Hawai‘i
Depth: 5 kilometers
Length: 238.5 meters
Width: 31.7 meters
ROV Used: Atalanta
Camera Information: Insite Pacific Mini-Zeus HD
Video or Stills: Video
Number of Images Used/Format: 20,946/JPG
Image Alignment Percentage: 92%
Number of Tie Points: 2,802,068
Link to Raw Video Footage: Link to come
Time to Complete: 78
Orthomosaic Views Available: No
Images Available: Yes
Animations Available: Yes
Available File Exports/Location/POC: archaeology.oceanexploration@noaa.gov
Link to NOAA Ocean Exploration Project Page: https://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/news/oer-updates/2023/midway.html
Software: Agisoft Metashape Professional Version 2.1.0, Rhinoceros 8
Developer: Raymond Phipps, NOAA Ocean Exploration explorer-in-training, May 28, 2024.
Credit: Model courtesy of Ocean Exploration Trust/NOAA Ocean Exploration/Ocean Exploration Trust, Ala ‘Aumoana Kai Uli expedition.
