Hawaii.- A crew of historians and deep-sea explorers engaged in the search for World War II ships found a second Japanese aircraft carrier sunk during the historic Battle of Midway.
A review of sonar data captured on Sunday shows what could be the Japanese aircraft carrier Akagi or Soryu, about 5,490 meters deep in the Pacific Ocean, more than 2,090 kilometers northwest of Pearl Harbor, said the director of underwater operations of Vulcan Inc., Rob Kraft.
For the location of the ship, the researchers used an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) equipped with sonar. The device spent all night underwater collecting data, and the image of a warship appeared in the first set of readings on Sunday morning.
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To confirm the identity of the ship, the team will deploy the AUV for a new eight-hour mission, during which it will capture high-resolution sonar images of the place that will allow researchers to measure the ship and confirm what it is. The initial readings were with sonar captures of lower resolution.
The finding occurred a week after the discovery of another Japanese aircraft carrier, the Kaga.
Source: AP
“We read about the battles, we know what happened. But when you see these wrecks on the seabed and all that, you give yourself a little idea of the true price of war, ”said Frank Thomspon, historian of the Naval History and Heritage Command in Washington D.C., who is aboard the Petrel. "You see the damage that these things suffered, and it is a lesson in humility to watch the videos of these ships, because they are tombs of war."
The sonar images of the Kaga reveal that the bow of the aircraft carrier hit the seabed at high speed, spreading debris and creating a crater similar to that of an explosion. The front of the ship is buried in mud and sediments after sinking to a dive about 4.8 kilometers (3 miles) deep.
Illustrative Source: Pixabay
The American bombs that hit the Kaga caused a huge fire that left it charred, but the ship is practically complete. Its canyons, some of them intact, still peek over the sides.
Until now, only one of the seven ships sunk during the battle at sea and in the air of June 1942 – five Japanese and two Americans – had been located.
