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(2008-02-24)
EXPEDITION 'JOB 74': Kevin Denlay (FI 98) recently carried Explorers Club Flag #118 on a hull survey expedition entitled Expedition 'Job 74' to the wrecks of the battleship HMS Prince of Wales and the battle cruiser HMS Repulse. Both British ships were sunk, with substantial loss of life, by Japanese aircraft in the South China Sea off the east coast of Malaysia on December 10, 1941, just days after the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. Notably, they were the first capital ships to be sunk solely by air attack whilst underway at sea and fully prepared for action and their dramatic sinking heralded the end of the battleship era and the ensuing ascendancy of 'air power'.
Over the subsequent years since their sinking there has been much conjecture and debate as to exactly how many torpedoes actually hit the two ships, from the overly optimistic claims of the Japanese air crews, to the more moderate and generally accepted reports of the British survivors themselves. The expedition's main intent was to settle these discrepancies by surveying the exterior (hulls) of both vessels - using video cameras to record/confirm the results – as both ships now rest upside down - or almost upside down in Repulse's case - allowing access to almost their entire hulls. (Repulse rests in 54 meters and Prince of Wales in 68 meters.) What the expedition subsequently found was that not only did both ships have actually less torpedo hits than was generally accepted in the historical record, but there was also previously unreported damage as well. As far as can be ascertained this was the first time that these discrepancies have been positively determined.
Given the depth of the dives, the time each diver spent 'inwater' on each dive (usually between one and a half to three hours total 'run time') and the multi dive/day nature of the dive operations, the expedition also had a 'medical' aspect to it. Hyperbaric physician Dr Andrew Fock from The Alfred Hospital in Melbourne conducted and recorded daily tests on all divers for symptoms of Pulmonary Oxygen Toxicity and Hyperoxyia Induced Myopia, both possible side effects that can be attributed to the high levels of oxygen that the divers were exposed to during the course of the expedition, as all divers on the expedition were using Closed Circuit Rebreather diving apparatuses and also using 100% oxygen for decompression purposes from 6m on up.
A summary report of the expedition with details of the actual survey results, etc, has been filed at the Explorers Club headquarters in New York and will soon be displayed as a PDF file on the clubs main website on the Flag Expeditions/Flag Reports page.
It can be found at http://www.explorers.org/expeditions/reports/Flag_Reports_PDF/Expedition%20Job_74_web_version.pdf
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