Wreck of the Musashi found

[barney]

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? :)

[CWO Marc]

@barney:

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.

[LHoffman]

http://www.foxnews.com/science/2015/03/04/microsoft-co-founder-claims-to-have-located-wreckage-japanese-wwii-battleship/

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.

[LHoffman]

@CWO:

@barney:

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.

[Witt]

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!

[CWO Marc]

@LHoffman:

“WWII BATTLESHIP FOUND: Team Spent 8 Years Hunting 73-ton Wreckage.”

Ouch.  I’ve heard of pocket battleships, but this is ridiculous.

[LHoffman]

@CWO:

@LHoffman:

“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?”

[CWO Marc]

@LHoffman:

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.

[CWO Marc]

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

http://www.paulallen.com/Galleries/Musashi-Discovery

[barney]

Cool! Thanks CWO!