NO WAY!!! There's apparently a Japanese A6M "Zero" Fighter Plane at the bottom of the ocean near Pulau Aur / Dayang. Also known to the Americans as "Zeke".WTF??? This is the first time I heard about it.
Apparently it was discovered in 1991 but was looted by divers and an operator towed it away.
Some tech divers are going down to check it out and see whether they can find it again.
Unreal!
Check out the details here
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=8576326420#/event.php?eid=32365919608
(UPDATE: Good grief - apparently there's also a Japanese submarine and a B-29 Super Fortress bomber.
http://www.imagethief.com/articles/diving_malaysia_2002.html
Photos were taken from Michael McFadyen's site. Not related to this dive.
This was quite interesting - but at the same time - skeptical.
12 comments:
well, yes there is such a wreck there. One of my friends has dive the wreck before but that was a long time back. No one quite knew it existed because they don't know its exact location. It's not the only one, I've dived a tiny wreck just off Dayang Jetty and I believe there are a few others scattered around. In fact, on land, there's a plane wreck lying in the forested area of aur island.
were they kamikaze planes?
funny, the words "mitsubishi" and "zero" hardly come together anymore because of these planes.
Hmmm... a kamikaze? Considering the location, probably not. Most likely it crashed in 1942 during the Battle for Malaya, considering the location of Pulau Aur. The Japanese had bases in Vietnam and Thailand, quite likely the A6M "Zero" was heading back and crashed landed near the island. Maybe one day someone will find his remains at Aur. lol.
btw, the A6M was designed not as a kamikaze but as an aircraft carrier fighter plane. When it came out in 1941 it was the best carrier plane in the world. Only towards the end of the war, 1944 - 1945 and most of their trained crew were dead, did they turn the A6M as well as a lot of other planes into kamikazes.
i don't think you would build planes for kamikazes but was wondering if in this case it was used in a kamikaze.
A Japanese student explained that kamikaze was a term samurais used to retain their honour, and "kamikaze" literally translates as "to slice the stomach"
During WW2, the Japanese actually did build planes specifically designed for suicide bombing. Called cherry bossums, they were powered by rockets and could reach speeds over 500km/h. The term - kamikaze - means "divine wind" coined when a typhoon wiped out the Mongolian invasion fleet destined for Japan. The Japanese suicide bombers adopted that name because of that relevance. Sepukku or Harikiri refers to the idea of disembowling yourself to save your honor. Silly buggers - they lost a lot of good men that way. Braver to fight it out than to commit suicide.
Hmm... it would be interesting to dive the Japanese fighter plane wreck - how deep is it? Never heard of it before actually.
Their "seppuku" is very closely related to their honor-bound system.
It is actually quite touching and admirable in a sense.
I read it in a couple of books anyway, it might be misleading but still..
that's so weird that they would think in that way.
where I live in Japan is still very "country" and most of the roads are stupidly winding. We in Japan often joke that there is no such thing as a shortcut.
The roads are winding so as to slow down the shoguns when they go on their round. Probably the s hoguns went on their rounds very often, because common sense would have taught me to build straightf roads and find other ways (such as brothels) to stop them on their way.
and... my bad!! you're right! I got the wrong word there. to slice the stomach is to commit seppuku or harikiri.
It must be the way their culture and mind works - the indirect method usually works best in a culture which places a high premium on "face". Its so peculiar that in a country filled with some of the most intelligent and hardest working people around - they can't get over that and have more common sense.
no they don't. it's the source of many misunderstandings between foreign workers and the locals.
in fact they value "face" over so many things it eludes me even as an Asian. Things could have been done alot more efficiently.
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