IJN
Kuma Class
Light Cruiser

Sinking History
On January 11, 1944 Lieutenant Commander Bennington, commanding British submarine HMS Tally-Ho, which was operating out of Ceylon (Sri Lanka) sited Kuma while only her masts were visible on the horizon. Kuma, the lead ship of the Kuma Class of light cruisers had just left the relative safety of Penang Harbour and was putting to sea for a second day of anti-submarine ‘exercises’, accompanied by a F1M2 Pete and the destroyer Uranami. Little did she realize that the exercise was about to become the real thing.

At 0913 in the morning Tally-ho was in an attack position and fired a spread of seven torpedoes at her unsuspecting quarry. After what seemed an eternity for the submarines crew, two enormous explosions were finally heard “…in rapid succession like violent reverberating metallic hammer blows.” Mortally wounded Kuma sank by the stern, with the loss of 138 lives, while Tally-ho made good her escape.

Shipwreck
Sixty years later, on the evening of 12th March 2004, while on an exploratory expedition in the northern Malacca Strait off Penang, MV Empress imaged a large wreck on her side scan sonar and anchored just off the site overnight. Only a skeleton crew was on board at the time as it was just prior to a regular wreck diving charter that was scheduled for the following week, and Empress had been intent on finding some new wrecks beforehand to add to the upcoming itinerary. It looked like the searching had paid off! The next day, in perfect surface conditions, but relatively poor visibility, Vidar Skoglie, Phil Yeutter and Kevin Denlay dove the new wreck site. However, it wasn’t until the second dive that day that the wreck was positively identified as Kuma, her port waist 5.5” gun abaft the bridge and the location of her forward torpedoes tubes just behind it that, without doubt, confirmed the wrecks identity.

Several more dives were done on Kuma during Kevin’s charter the following week and the wreck further explored. She lies on her starboard side, in 46m/151ft of water approximately sixteen nautical miles west of the island of Penang, Malaysia, missing about twenty or so meters of her stern, the wreck apparently ending abruptly in line with her port outboard propeller. Interestingly, she is over ten nautical miles from the sinking position given by Tally-Ho and almost sixty-three nautical miles from the position given for Kuma after the war by JANAC (Joint Army Navy Assessment Committee).

Along with Kuma, Empress found several new wreck sites on the exploratory expedition and, added to the Japanese heavy cruiser Haguro and the modern cruise liner Sun Vista that are also in the vicinity make for some very exciting diving.

References
Thanks to Kevin Denlay for this profile and information

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