Unidentified CV footage on youtube

I found this footage on youtube while searching for footage of Akagi:

YouTube - The end of the Japanese aircraft carrier Akagi

I had understood that all of the footage of Akagi at Midway had gone down with the ship. And several shots clearly are not Akagi. Which brings me to my question: Can anyone identify this footage?

There are at least five distinct film clips shown:

I. An aerial shot of a burning ship, which appears as though it might well be a CV.

II. One or perhaps two shots showing burning aircraft on the flight deck of a carrier.

III. A very brief shot of crewmembers fighting fires on the hanger deck of a carrier.

IV. A shot of the port side of a heavily burning carrier.

V. A shot of the starboard side of a heavily burning carrier.

The first shot is perhaps two seconds in length. In it you can see a ship proceeding from the bottom left of the frame to the top right. The wake is quite pronounced and the ship appears to be underway at high speed. (I'm guessing that it's making better than twenty knots, given that the photographs I've seen with wakes like that are all depicting fast warships making evasive maneuvers.) Almost no detail of the ship is visible, but the outline looks a bit blocky, and there might be a hint of a bow protruding from the blockiness, as though it were perhaps the bow of a carrier visible a bit forward of the flight deck.

You can also see a plume of smoke extending to port of the ship beyond the edge of the frame. This may be nothing more than the ships own exhaust gasses. Additionally, at the beginning of the clip you can see what appears to be the splash from a very near miss just off the port fantail. A second explosion occurs directly astern of the ship, but rather farther aft. Both develop and begin to subside through the frame. I can't be certain if they are splashes or explosions. They appear close to the ship, but don't seem to emanate from it, but they develop in a manner more complex than I would expect from a simple splash, as though there might be secondary explosions contributing to their shape.

The second segment shows several aircraft fairly clearly and at least one of them is quite clearly an F6F Hellcat. (You can see it if you go frame by frame between about seconds three and four. You can see the "beard" intake at the bottom of the cowling, the wide track of the landing gear, the three .50 cals in the starboard wing, and even the very slender typical American three blade propeller.) Given the intensity of the fire on deck I'm forced to conclude it must be one of only two instances: either U.S.S. Princeton or U.S.S. Franklin. None of the photographs I've seen of the flight deck fires aboard Enterprise, Saratoga, or Intrepid looked anywhere near so widespread or out of control. Further, the presence of F6Fs would seem to rule out any of the CVEs of Taffy 3. (Which I believe were still operating F4F/FM types due to their limited speed and deck length.)

The third segment shows firefighting on the hanger deck. The viewer seems to be on the flight deck looking down through an elevator opening. A large piece of what appears to be debris is obscuring part of the view. It angles across the bottom of the frame towards the viewers right. I'm not certain what it is, but given that it is large and flat I would guess that it is part or all of the elevator, but blown far out of plum by an explosion of some kind. The fire here seems much more controlled than in the second segment. It's difficult to make out much, as the area is dark, perhaps because the view shows primarily the dark deck and none of the lighter bulkheads or overhead structure. If there are any aircraft in the frame I cannot clearly make them out against the background.

The fourth segment shows what I believe to be the port side of a burning aircraft carrier as seen from an escorting vessel. The island is entirely obscured by shadow and smoke, however what I presume to be the bow of the ship is visible towards the left. It is an open bow, as on most U.S. and Japanese carrier designs. The flight deck extends far enough forward that I would tend to guess this is either an Essex or Yorktown class carrier. It's not as high above the bow as most Japanese carriers, and the leading edge is further forward than American light or escort carrier designs. The smoke is relatively light, and much of it is white, suggesting that a great deal of it is in fact steam and not smoke at all, and also suggesting that the fires are primarily under control. She appears to be making headway, as there are periodic splashes around the bow and she seems to be moving against the waves rather than with them.

The final segment appears to show the starboard side of a very heavily burning aircraft carrier. The smoke is quite dark, suggesting that the fires are not as yet under control. (Assuming of course that they will ever be, which I cannot say with any certainty.) The smoke obscures all but the outline of the flight deck and the tinniest part of what I assume is the bow. From time to time the outline of what I take to be the stern is also visible. It's more difficult for me to tell in this shot whether the ship is underway. In fact, it is more difficult to even say with certainty which side of the ship is visible.

Now here's my limited analysis of what I see:

I tend to guess that pieces of footage stitched together were shot together unless there's good reason to believe otherwise. (Okham's razor and all that.) But in this case it seems quite clear from vantage point that at least three, and more probably four discreet cameramen contributed footage. (One in the aircraft. One on the carrier. And at least one on an escort, perhaps two since there seem to be two different perspectives, making it likely that two different escorting ships contributed footage of the same event, or two different events are depicted.)

The likeliest scenario seems to me that the U.S. Navy compiled several different shots of the same event, though I have no reason to believe this other than the circumstantial evidence presented and the fairly consistent film quality. The fire on Princeton fills most of the criteria, but if the first shot is Princeton then she is still underway and thus not as yet significantly crippled by the fires that would ultimately sink her. Particularly telling is the absence of any other vessels in this shot. Whatever ship it is, nothing has come alongside to assist and escorts came to the aid of both Franklin and Princeton fairly quickly. Further, I doubt that U.S. Navy photographers would have gotten footage of either ship from an aircraft while the attack was still ongoing, and the ship is either underway or was very very recently, thus I assume that the photographer is hostile to the carrier. So I would guess that the carrier depicted, if carrier it is, is Japanese: perhaps Zuiho at Cape Enganyo.

The second shot is clearly that of an American carrier, and given the intensity of the deck fire, I'm going to guess that this is most probably Franklin. Whatever else it is, it seems very unlikely that this ship is the same as depicted in the first shot, though it is still possible. (As perhaps a documentarian after the fact used both Japanese and American footage of the same event. Though given the very common instance of clearly different stock footage used to depict similar but disparate events I've no good reason to believe this to be true. Thus the simplest explanation seems to me to be that these are different ships.)

The third shot could be Franklin, but the elevator opening seems relatively intact, and given the number and intensity of explosions and the degree of distortion that her flight deck underwent, I'm going to guess that it is not. Further, I would think there would be more debris visible were this Franklin. I'm much less sure about what ship this is, though I suspect that it's American, as structure surrounding the elevator opening matches closely with what I've seen in photographs of Enterprise. (Sort of inverse hatch combing with a mechanism to automatically raise and lower guard rails attached to the inside.) I presume the elevators of the Essex class to be similar, as they were an outgrowth of the Yorktown design. So this could be almost anything, though it does clearly differ from the one photograph I've seen of Saratoga's elevator in use. She did not appear to have what I'm calling the inverse hatch combing. The edge of the opening on Sara is relatively thin and appears to be nothing more than the deck itself.

It's harder from me to draw conclusions about the final two segements. The first seems likely to be American, but beyond that I can't say much. The fire seems under control, in spite of the amount of smoke. But there were many U.S. carriers of nearly all classes that experienced serious fires and survived them. It's clearly not Sara, and I suspect it's either a Yorktown or an Essex, but that leaves a lot of territory. And even that assumption could be wrong if the perspective is leading me astray.

So little is visible in the final segment that I won't even presume to guess, beyond saying that it looks quite serious.

Anyone care to answer or critique or correct my analysis? I'm finding this to be an interesting exercise, and I'd very much enjoy anything anyone else has to say.

Sincerely,
David

 

I would suggest posting this question at: Tullys Port • Index page or J-aircraft Forums - Index because the participants in those threads are extremely knowledgeable on the IJN.

 

I think you are right about the F6F identification.

The final footage is probably from two different ships, there is a break at around second 12 the ship before it looks like Lexington to me while after second 13 (where you see a railing in the foreground) it may actually be Akagi.

 

My take -

I. An aerial shot of a burning ship, which appears as though it might well be a CV.

Doesn’t look like a CV me to my poor tired eyes. The attack shown does not conform to what we know about the strike made by Dick Best, Bud Kroeger, and Fred Weber; they were driving the only SBDs that attacked Akagi

II. One or perhaps two shots showing burning aircraft on the flight deck of a carrier.

III. A very brief shot of crewmembers fighting fires on the hanger deck of a carrier.

These two segments, yes, with F6Fs, are obviously from a US carrier. The second of these two looks like it may be USS Princeton, looks vaguely like photos I’ve seen of her damage (before she went up).

IV. A shot of the port side of a heavily burning carrier.

This appears to be an Essex class carrier.

V. A shot of the starboard side of a heavily burning carrier.

This looks, also, to be USS Princeton.

Looks like someone just spliced together enough ambiguous pieces to try to pass something off as the Akagi. Kind of screwed the pooch with the F6F view.

 

Thanks to both of you, TiredOldSoldier and R_Leonard. Both got me thinking. I agree with RL that most of the footage does indeed look similar to photography of Princeton after she was hit. And RL, the very first bit is the only segment I'm not at all sure is a carrier. I may just be falling into a juxtaposition trap, though it does look rather boxy, as a carrier would from that altitude. Hard to say really.

TOS got me thinking about the last two segments, and particularly the second to the last. While I'm not quite ready to give up on the idea that the bow appears to be open, ruling out Lex or Sara, I do think I see why you came to that conclusion. There seems to be a pronounced horizontal line appearing in the smoke, like the top of a heavy stack. I wonder if it's Hornet. The ship in the photo appears to be listing to port, as Hornet was. While the stack on the Essex class wasn't nearly so heavy, the Yorkies did have a fairly massive stack. So I'll go ahead and guess Hornet at Santa Cruz.

In the last segment, I'd originally thought that was the stern but it doesn't really match up with any US carrier's stern. Could be the bow of an Independence, though. Especially if she were down a bit by the bow. Alternately, I guess that could be the Birmingham's stern jutting past Princeton's. I've found a few photos where from a distance you couldn't quite tell there was another ship alongside, but rather it just looked like a distorted silhouette of an Independence.

Anyway, thank you all. This has certainly been interesting. Will have to poke around a little further and see what might be seen.

Sincerely,
David