A US reconnaissance team has managed to locate the sunken wreck of a US Navy destroyer shot down by the Japanese army during WWII.
The wreck is considered the deepest ever found.
USS Samuel B Roberts sank during the Battle of Samar in the Philippine Sea in October 1944. She is 6,895 meters underground, she.
Texas financier and adventurer Victor Vescovo discovered the damaged but largely intact “Sammy B” using his own submarine on the high seas.
The ship is famous for its heroic last stand against the Japanese.
Image: BBC
A ‘hero’ defender
Outnumbered and outgunned, the USS Samuel B Roberts was able to keep out and intercept several enemy ships before sinking.
Of the 224 crew members, 89 lost their lives. The remaining 120 survived, holding onto the lifeboats for more than 50 hours.
Vescovo, who is also a US Navy reserve, said it was an extraordinary honor to locate the ship, and in doing so had the opportunity to retell her heroic story.
“We like to say that the steel doesn’t lie and the remains of these ships are the last witnesses of these battles,” he told BBC News.
Image: US Navy
“Sammy B took the Japanese heavy cruisers at very close range and fired so fast that they ran out of ammunition – even fired smoke grenades and flares and kept firing, just to set the Japanese ships on fire. An act of extraordinary heroism. Those men fought to the death side by side. “
‘Traces of war’
In the images captured by the submarine, called the Limiting Factor, it is possible to see the structure of the hull, gun and tubes for torpedoes.
Sammy B has Japanese bullet holes and there is evidence of a powerful blow in the ass.
Image: Caladan Oceanic/EYOS Expeditions
Because of its corrugated appearance, it appears to be the bow of the ship that directly impacts the seafloor.
To get an idea of the depth of the boat’s location, 98% of the ocean beds are less than 6,000 meters deep.
Only a few places in the great tectonic trenches reach deeper than this plateau.
The Battle of Samar, part of the Leyte Gulf War, was a violent event in contemporary history. The conflict eventually resulted in the withdrawal of Imperial Japanese forces.
Several ships were lost in the depths of the ocean.
Last year, Vescovo managed to locate the destroyer USS Johnston at a depth of 6,460 meters.
Image: Caladan Oceanic/EYOS Expeditions
other debris
It is possible that there are others deeper than Sammy B or Johnston.
“There are two more American ships missing: the USS Gambier Bay (aircraft carrier) and the USS Hoel (destroyer),” says Kelvin Murray of EYOS, the company that organized and managed the Vescovo expedition.
“We have historical records showing where they could sink. We searched Gambier Bay, but this detective work and this type of offshore operation has never been done before. The research behind it is to reduce the size of this ‘haystack’. But there is a certain amount of luck involved.”
Vescovo was the first person to visit the deepest points of the planet’s five oceans.
He also climbed the highest peaks of seven continents and recently went into space aboard the rocket and capsule system New Shepard developed by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
‘This text was originally published at https://www.bbc.com/portuguese/internacional-61945224.‘
source: Noticias
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