I think Japan still would have invaded the Soviet Union though, if the Second Sino-Japanese War continued (the oil embargo only really happened once they invaded Indochina).
Other than that I agree with you. That would be curious alternate reality.
Wreck of the Musashi found
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Did anyone see that they have found the wreck of the Musashi, sister ship to the Yamato? She was hit by 17 bombs and 19 torpedoes and sank at the Battle of Leyte Gulf on 24th October 1944, with the loss of over 1000 crew. Remarkably half the crew survived. she weighed over 70000 tons and was 862 ft long. Her maximum speed was 27 knots. Like her sister ship, she was armed with 9 18 inch guns.
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Wow, I had not heard this news. Thanks for the news.
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I hadn’t heard either. This is quite a piece of news!
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Thanks for the heads up Wittman! How deep was it?
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Allen said that his superyacht, the MY Octopus, had found the wreck in the Sibuyan Sea in the central Philippines, at a depth of around 1,000 meters (3281 feet).
Found this in an article this morning.
It would seem, however, that the wreck has not yet been confirmed as the Musashi. Although, most believe it is a 90% certainty.
Let us hope so, eh! -
Whoa! That’s a TOTAL TRIP!
I imagine there will be a documentary when it’s all said and done. WAY COOL!
Yea what else could be that big? :)
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Yea what else could be that big?
Depends if it’s all in one piece or not. If the hull broke apart when the ship sank, it might complicate identification. There was a PBS documentary a few years ago (I think it was called Sinking the Supership) about a submarine expedition to the site where wreckage of the Yamato had tentatively been identified some years earlier. The submarine carried a prepared measuring stick in one of its robotic claws; the stick was precisely the diameter (1 meter?) of the gold chrysanthemum crest which was known to be mounted on the bow of Yamato. When the sub found the bow and measured its crest (a decoration found only on major Japanese warships, and varying in size from ship to ship), the diameter matched exactly.
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Wow… just saw this today. You guys are ahead of the curve.
I hate reading these articles on anything but a technical or historical website, since they tend to misrepresent things or be inaccurate. Sometimes just small things (like the headline for the article above reading: “WWII BATTLESHIP FOUND: Team Spent 8 Years Hunting 73-ton Wreckage.” but still annoying.
Honestly, I did some looking about discovered shipwrecks a while back and for some reason forgot that Musashi had not been located. She has to be the largest naval wreck not yet discovered, I would imagine. I would have thought it would been easier to locate her given the known area of the sinking.
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@CWO:
Yea what else could be that big?
Depends if it’s all in one piece or not. If the hull broke apart when the ship sank, it might complicate identification. There was a PBS documentary a few years ago (I think it was called Sinking the Supership) about a submarine expedition to the site where wreckage of the Yamato had tentatively been identified some years earlier. The submarine carried a prepared measuring stick in one of its robotic claws; the stick was precisely the diameter (1 meter?) of the gold chrysanthemum crest which was known to be mounted on the bow of Yamato. When the sub found the bow and measured its crest (a decoration found only on major Japanese warships, and varying in size from ship to ship), the diameter matched exactly.
Ha! I taped that show. Exactly right.
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Thanks Hoffman. I hoped someone would put up a link. I tried, in vain. Can’t do the simplest things.
He announced it on Twitter first, which is why I got to see it so early. I only follow WW2 and other Military History people. I see lots of pics of tanks. Heaven! -
“WWII BATTLESHIP FOUND: Team Spent 8 Years Hunting 73-ton Wreckage.”
Ouch. I’ve heard of pocket battleships, but this is ridiculous.
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@CWO:
“WWII BATTLESHIP FOUND: Team Spent 8 Years Hunting 73-ton Wreckage.”
Ouch. I’ve heard of pocket battleships, but this is ridiculous.
Yeah, granted this was the headline to click on, but it is blatantly wrong to begin with. I saw the silhouette of Yamato/Musashi and thought to myself, “What, did they find a piece of it?”
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I saw the silhouette of Yamato/Musashi and thought to myself, “What, did they find a piece of it?”
73 tons works out to be 50% of the weight of one of Musashi’s 147-ton 18-inch guns (of which the ship carried nine). In other words, one-half of just one main gun, without even counting the weight of the turret that housed it. I think that a complete 3-gun turret assembly on the Yamato class weighed as much as an entire destroyer.
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Paul Allen’s website has video footage and still images available (see below). The two features shown which look like definitive fingerprints of the ship are the bow (where the crest-mounting location can be seen) and the opening of one of the main turret barbettes (whose diameter I assume the explorers measured, since that would be the obvious way to nail down the identification).
http://www.paulallen.com/Interests/Exploration/Key-Initiatives/Musashi-Expedition
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Cool! Thanks CWO!
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