''Sakura Maru'' (''Japanese:''櫻丸) was a merchant

oil tanker An oil tanker, also known as a petroleum tanker, is a ship designed for the bulk transport of oil or its products. There are two basic types of oil tankers: crude tankers and product tankers. Crude tankers move large quantities of unrefined crud ...

assigned to the

Imperial Japanese Army The was the official ground-based armed force of the Empire of Japan from 1868 to 1945. It was controlled by the Imperial Japanese Army General Staff Office and the Ministry of the Army, both of which were nominally subordinate to the Emperor o ...

during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

. The ship was constructed in Japan in 1943 and completed in 1944. On 10 July 1945, the ship was sunk in a

torpedo A modern torpedo is an underwater ranged weapon launched above or below the water surface, self-propelled towards a target, and with an explosive warhead designed to detonate either on contact with or in proximity to the target. Historically, su ...

attack.

History

It was laid down at yard number 301 on 9 September 1943 at the

Shimonoseki is a city located in Yamaguchi Prefecture, Japan. With a population of 265,684, it is the largest city in Yamaguchi Prefecture and the fifth-largest city in the Chūgoku region. It is located at the southwestern tip of Honshu facing the Tsushim ...

shipyard of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. for the benefit of the Petroleum Trading Co., Ltd. (石油共販株式會社), and given identification number 51179. It was launched on 30 December 1943 and completed 15 March 1944. On 29 July 1944, it was chartered by the

to serve as an oil tanker; it was never commissioned and remained in private ownership.

Fate

On 10 July 1945, she was torpedoed and sunk by the USS ''Hammerhead'' in the

Gulf of Thailand The Gulf of Thailand, also known as the Gulf of Siam, is a shallow inlet in the southwestern South China Sea, bounded between the southwestern shores of the Indochinese Peninsula and the northern half of the Malay Peninsula. It is around in l ...

(at ). Fellow tanker ''Nanmei Maru No. 5'' was also sunk.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sakura Maru (1943) 1943 ships Ships of the Imperial Japanese Army Ships sunk by American submarines Ships built by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries