22/10/2026
The third and final photo of the Imperial Japanese Navy aircraft carrier Shinano. She is captured in the upper right of this photograph of the facilities at Yokosuka.
Towards the end of 1944, the United States Army Air Forces was making preparations to change its bombing campaign against Japan to coincide with the bombers now being based at the established Pacific island airfields. To support this new bombing campaign, the Army Air Force wanted to conduct extensive reconnaissance flights over Japan to map industrial, military, and infrastructure targets.
On 30 October 1944, two F-13s arrived at Saipan to support this effort. The F-13 was a dedicated reconnaissance version of the B-19 Superfortress, equipped with several high-powered cameras. Though the air crews had just completed a 30-hour flight from California, they asked to be dispatched as soon as possible. This was primarily due to the fact that their reconnaissance flight would be the first over the Japanese mainland since the Doolittle Raid in 1942.
On 1 November 1944, one of the F-13s took off on this mission. The mission lasted 14 hours and took the F-13 over large swaths of Japan. Though Japanese fighters attempted to intercept the F-13, they could not approach the aircraft's altitude of 32,000' (9,800m), and the aircraft was able to continue its flight unimpeded. The cameras snapped over 7,000 photographs as it traveled between its various target sites.
One of the target areas was the Yokosuka Naval Arsenal. While passing over Yokosuka, the F-13 inadvertently captured the Japanese carrier Shinano as she was anchored off the Yokosuka Arsenal. This photograph would become one of the three known photographs of Shinano that survived.
The reconnaissance flight would end up being one of the factors that ultimately doomed Shinano. The Imperial Japanese Navy, alarmed by the appearance of the aircraft, ordered that Shinano depart for Kure ahead of schedule. This expedited departure forced her to leave before much of her construction was completed. Shinano departed without much of her damage control equipment installed or functional. This meant that when she left, she was a prime target for the submarine USS Archerfish. The torpedoes that struck Shinano did substantially more damage than would be typical, leading to Shinano's loss.
