At 35 metres I pass what looks like a telegraph pole and realise it’s the top of the mast. Then the deck and bridge start to materialise beneath me, and I feel the quickening sensation that always comes when I’m diving a wreck. As I touch the deck, my computer reads 50 metres, the deepest I’ve ever dived. But this is the San Francisco Maru in Truk Lagoon, for which it’s worth breaking your limits.

Joining my buddy, we check gauges and fin towards the stern. Three armoured tanks stand in closed rank, as if out on patrol, their snub-nosed gun barrels pointing up aggressively. Behind the buckled bridge are torn metal plates and struts protruding like broken bones, scars from the bomb blast that sent this vessel down along with the arsenal she carried.

Dropping through the open lattice framework into the hold we find stacks of torpedoes, shells, cooking pots and plates. War is, after all, a personal event. I check my air gauge: it’s time to go. Diving on normal air, you don’t get to spend long at these depths, but long enough to get a sense of the trauma.

I re-emerge into the gently lapping waves and dazzling sunshine of Truk Lagoon, a clutch of tiny tropical palm-fringed atolls in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It could be paradise if the rest of the world would just leave it alone.

For the San Francisco Maru and her crew are far from being alone down there on the seabed — these waters are the graveyard for scores of vessels and men. After the dive we visit one of the islands. A faint path leads from the rickety mooring through palm trees to a scruff y settlement. Some 40 000 locals are scattered amongst the dozen major islands in the lagoon, living in dilapidated colonial houses they can’t be bothered to fix, subsisting on rainwater and freshly-caught fish.

Truk’s torrid past

They’re an easy-going, fatalistic, big-boned bunch, and thankfully very friendly, at least till they’ve had a few drinks, when they’re prone to going berserk. Exchanging timid greetings with the inquisitive crowd that come out to inspect us, we pass through the village and out the other side, following a steep, slippery path that climbs up through tangled jungle.

A large field gun commands the top of the hill, its barrel directed out across the lagoon. It’s one of many rusting mementoes of Truk’s torrid past. Having first been colonised by Germany, in 1914 Truk Lagoon was seized by the Japanese, who transformed it into a heavily fortified naval base.

Come the Second World War, the Japanese this time sided with Germany. However, they ignored Hitler’s proposal for a joint campaign against Russia, and instead launched a pre-emptive strike on the United States, bombing the American fleet at Pearl Harbour in December 1941.

It was an ambitious, sneaky and initially successful move, but ultimately a fatal one. For once the US had got over the shock, it set about to revenge the attack, and in late 1943 a huge armada of battleships and aircraft carriers sailed for the Pacific.

The job of neutralising Japan’s naval base at Truk was given to Task Force 58 and Rear Admiral Marc Mitscher, who looked wiry and worn like a Las Vegas crooner, but was tough and loved by his men. With the lagoon armed to the hilt with shore batteries, sea mines and suicide submarines, Mitscher opted instead for a massive aerial assault, code-named Operation Hailstone, and positioned his fleet of aircraft carriers 140 kilometres east of Truk.

‘Killer’ Kane and his ‘Grim Reapers’

On 16 February 1944, the early morning tropical calm in the lagoon was shattered as the first wave of F6F Hellcat fighters screamed in. They came in fast, flying in loose formations as they ran the gauntlet of anti-aircraft flak. Led by Lt Commander ‘Killer’ Kane and his ‘Grim Reapers’ of Fighting Ten Squadron, their task was to neutralise the Japanese air force before the torpedo and dive bombers arrived.

Ironically, after being on constant alert for over a week, the Japanese pilots had just been stood down, with many of them having retired to billets on other islands. As they frantically returned to the airfield, the Americans seized control of the skies, shooting up the defenceless planes on the tarmac or as they taxied along the runway, while the few Japanese pilots who did manage to get airborne made easy prey for the grim reapers.

Then the bombers arrived: Avenger torpedo planes coming in low and fast beneath the canopy of flak and Dauntless dive bombers plunging out of the sky in steep sickening dives, releasing their bombs only a hundred metres above their targets before pulling out sharply. Having sensed an attack was coming, the Japanese admiral had already sent two aircraft carriers and several battleships out of the lagoon, but there were still scores of military vessels and supply ships crammed in the harbour, stationary, with nowhere to hide.

Under a constant rain of bombs and torpedoes, the lagoon resonated with huge explosions and vessels slipped beneath the surface, hissing steam and belching smoke. The American planes came back that afternoon and again the next morning, and with each attack the Japanese defence weakened further.

In the course of two days, 45 Japanese vessels were sunk and a further 27 damaged, with over 250 Japanese planes downed or destroyed on the ground. In exchange, the US lost only 25 planes and 29 aircrew.

We head out for our afternoon dive. The wind races across the lagoon, whipping up the sea and sending grey clouds scudding over the atolls. This is trade wind season, when afternoons turn squally and the lagoon quickly becomes a more sombre, sinister place.

This submarine is full of ghosts…

Now it’s much easier to imagine the young Japanese sailors on their wounded ships, nervously scanning the sky and listening out for the hornet drone of returning American bombers. Approaching the dive site, we stagger around the small bucking craft in our weight belts and fins, clumsily wriggling into jackets and tanks. Once the skipper’s killed the engine I exit as fast as I can, rolling backwards off the boat.

Initially I’m caught by the swell and tossed back to the surface. But as I deflate my jacket and force my way down, the surge subsides and I’m back once more in the still, silent world. The submarine is at 40 metres, laid out on the seabed like a cigar. Swimming along the slender craft I spot a gang of sharks circling nearby. Though there are several of us down here, you can quickly feel alone.

A hatch door lies flung open, inviting me in. But I stay outside. This submarine is full of ghosts.

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