Qualla: Operation RY

Operation RY: Introduction

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. On the afternoon of 11 May 1942, off the western shore of Buka Island in what was then Japanese-held Bougainville, Rear Admiral Shima Kiyohide watched his flagship sink. The minelayer Okinoshima had been torpedoed at 04:52 that morning by the American submarine USS S-42, and despite the best efforts of her sister ships, she capsized under tow at 06:40 in St. George's Channel. Shima transferred his flag to the destroyer Yuzuki and pushed on. He was commanding Operation RY, Imperial Japan's plan to take Nauru and Ocean Island for their phosphate, and he had already lost his flagship and a repair ship, and now, as his reconnaissance aircraft reported, two American aircraft carriers were steaming toward him with no air cover of his own. Four days later, Tokyo cancelled the whole thing.

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Image: Public domain

Operation RY: Rocks Worth Taking

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. Nauru and Ocean Island, known to its own people as Banaba, are tiny specks in the central Pacific, but they sat on top of phosphate deposits of extraordinary richness, the guano of millions of years of seabirds, laid down in concentrations that could be scraped up with a shovel a...

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Image: Public domain

Operation RY: The Setup from Rabaul

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. On 11 May 1942, just three days after Operation MO against Port Moresby had been turned back at the Battle of the Coral Sea, the invasion force departed Rabaul on New Britain. Shima commanded the near force from the minelayer Okinoshima, with destroyers and transports carrying Sp...

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Image: Public domain

Operation RY: The Bluff That Worked

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. Kirk hit Okinoshima with four torpedoes just before 05:00. The escorts depth-charged the area for six hours and drove S-42 off, damaged but alive. Okinoshima capsized at 06:40. That should have been the worst of it. Then, as the rest of the force pressed on toward Nauru, a Japane...

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Image: Public domain

Operation RY: The Second Try, Unopposed

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. After the disaster at Midway in early June, the Japanese finally returned to Operation RY with less ambition and less opposition. A small force left the great anchorage at Truk on 26 August 1942. It consisted of a cruiser, five destroyers including Yuzuki which had carried Shima'...

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Image: Public domain

Operation RY: A Sinking Off Buka

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. The lasting artefact of Operation RY is the wreck of Okinoshima, somewhere on the floor of St. George's Channel southwest of Buka. She was a purpose-built minelayer, not a warship of the first rank, and her loss barely registered in a war about to erupt into the much larger battl...

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Image: Public domain