Underwater archaeologists have found the wrecks of three warships involved in the Japanese occupation of Alaska’s remote Aleutian Islands in World War II – an almost overlooked conflict sometimes called the “forgotten battle” by historians.
The remains of the ships – two Japanese freighters and the US cable ship SS Dellwood, which laid submarine cables during the war – were discovered last month during an expedition to Attu Island, at the westernmost tip of the Aleutians.
Japanese ships were sunk by American aircraft bombs after Japanese troops occupied the island in June 1942, approximately six months after the attack on Pearl Harborand the American ship was sunk about a month after the Japanese invasion had been defeated almost a year later, during efforts to reinforce the island’s defenses.
“The original [Japanese] the idea was to turn the Attu into an “invincible aircraft carrier” for attacks on other American sites, the naval archaeologist and co-director of the project Dominic Bush said Live Science.
“But as things started to change in the Pacific, they were abandoned by the Imperial command and basically told to hold out as long as they could — basically, die with honor,” added Bush, who was a doctoral student at Carolina Eastern. University (ECU) at the time of the expedition and is now a researcher for the non-profit archaeological organization Discovery ships.
Related: 30 incredible sunken wrecks from World War I and World War II
image 1 e 4
Battle of Attu
Attu and the nearby Aleutian island of Kiska were the only parts of North America occupied and occupied by a foreign enemy during World War II, although Japanese warplanes also bombed other Aleutian islands. In response, the United States spent nearly a year bombing the Japanese there with fighter jets and eventually drove the Japanese out with a force of nearly 35,000 American and Canadian soldiers.
The final stages of the invasion included Battle of Attuwhich claimed the lives of 2,351 Japanese and 549 Allied troops in May 1943.
Bush and his colleagues at ECU – including the project’s co-director, marine archaeologist and historian Jason Raupp — had spent years researching the Aleutian island wreck and was able to locate all three during a two-week expedition in July.
The researchers teamed up with several strategic partners, including the Japanese World Scan Projectwhich scans environmental and archaeological sites with drones and other robots to uncover as much as they can about the ruins.
“No one had documented these ruins before,” Raupp told Live Science. “So we went out there and looked … and since we had about four years of research and preparation, it made identification easier when we found them.”
image 1 e 3
Advanced sonar
Wreck hunters searched the area aboard a former crab fishing vessel – the Norseman II – which has been converted into a scientific research vessel and is equipped with a remotely operated underwater vehicle that has taken video of the sunken ships. The wreckage was found by a sonar array towed behind the research vessel; the group carried equipment for an advanced type of sonar called “synthetic aperture” sonar, which uses reflections of sound pulses to locate objects underwater.
Raupp explained that the system combines new hardware and advanced software processing techniques to create three-dimensional scans of the seabed at much greater distances and with much higher resolution than previous sonar systems.
“This allows for increased efficiency of a survey because you are able to cover massive parts of the seabed at a high level of resolution,” he said. “It would take us weeks to achieve the same result using standard sonar.”
The wreckage of the Dellwood and one of the Japanese cargo ships, the Kotohira Maru, were found offshore at a depth of about 300 feet (90 meters), and the wreckage of the other Japanese cargo ship, the Cheribon Maru, was found in shallow water near the shore. .
Bush said the damage seen on the wrecks of two Japanese cargo ships confirmed reports of their sinking by US warplane bombs.
The sunken US ship was laying cables for a new air base built there after the invasion when it hit an unexplored underwater tip, Bush said, and researchers had also found evidence that anti-submarine nets had been used to protect Attu’s main port. from the attacks. by Japanese submarines.
