BLAST FROM THE PAST
Sunken remains of famed WWII Destroyer USS Johnston buried 4 MILES under sea hailed as ‘deepest shipwreck ever found’
THE twisted remains of a US warship sunk by the Japanese during a brutal WWII skirmish have been found at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.
The wreckage of the USS Johnston, discovered more than 20,000 feet below the surface, has been hailed as the deepest ever found.
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Eerie footage of the wreck off the coast of the Philippines was posted to Facebook this week by US experts.
Johnston, a small "tincan" destroyer, took on a massive fleet of Japanese battleships in October 1944 during the Battle of Samar.
After a bruising three-hour fight, in which Johnston sank "destroyer after destroyer", according to the US Navy, the vessel succumbed to the onslaught.
Of the 327 US naval personnel aboard the USS Johnston, just 141 survived.
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Now, 75 years after the ship sank, the wreckage has finally been found beneath the Philippine Sea.
Experts aboard research vessel Petrel, owned by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, released video of the eviscerated hull lying on the ocean floor.
"There is no hull structure intact that we can find. This wreck is completely decimated, it is just debris," the crew said on Wednesday.
Experts said they believed the wreck was the Johnston, a member of the famous "Taffy 3" unit which steamed into battle against Japanese warships.
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The plucky group was attempting to protect US troops fighting on the beaches at nearby Leyte.
It's possible the wreckage is from another ship, the USS Hoel, which also sank during the Battle of Samar. The Johnston was the last US ship to go down.
"This wreck is either the Johnston or the Hoel," the Petrel team said.
"It is in the southern part of where the battle took place and this is one of the reasons why we believe this is the Johnston, because she sank later, after Hoel did."
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The wreck was found using remotely-operated vehicles 20,406ft below the surface, equivalent to 64 Big Ben towers stood atop one another.
It's the deepest wreck ever found, trumping the previous holder, a German vessel found at 18,904ft, according to the Guinness World Records.
The Battle of Samar was part of a wider Pacific skirmish known as the Battle of Leyte Gulf, considered the largest naval combat in history.
The Imperial Japanese Navy rallied nearly all of its major naval vessels in the fight in a bid to protect the islands of Southeast Asia from US invasion.
The Battle of Leyte Gulf - key facts
Here's what you need to know...
- The Battle of Leyte Gulf took place in October 1944 and is widely considered the largest naval conflict of all time
- It was fought between the US Navy (with help from the Australian Royal Navy) and Imperial Japanese Navy
- The battle spanned over more than 100,000 square miles of sea
- It involved more than 800 ships and 1,800 aircraft
- Some of the largest battleships ever built fought and sank during the conflict
- The battle also featured the first organised kamikaze attack by the Japanese
- The Japanese lost 12,500 naval soldiers while the Allied forces suffered around 2,800 casualties
Thanks to the work of some clever Japanese decoys, which pulled away Navy ships with heavy firepower, a fleet of seven light vessels was left to defend a large patch of the gulf.
When a huge fleet of 23 Imperial Japanese ships appeared on the horizon, USS Johnston Commander Ernest Evans bravely barrelled into battle.
"This is going to be a fighting ship," Evans said at Johnston’s commissioning in Seattle in 1943, according to the Naval History and Heritage Command.
"I intend to go in harm’s way, and anyone who doesn’t want to go along had better get off right now."
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Despite its size, Johnston and handful of other light vessels wrecked "destroyer after destroyer", according to the US Navy.
The Japanese eventually overcame the Allied group, and sunk the Johnston after a grisly three-hour battle.
Confused and bloodied by the conflict, the Japanese then retreated, allowing troops at Leyte to continue fighting.
The Battle of Samar is widely considered one of the greatest last stands in military history.
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