Japanese WWII battleship HIJMS Musashi
In March 2015, almost 70 years after the end of World War Two, the sunken Japanese battleship Musashi has been located in the Sibuyan Sea off the coast of the Philippines. Researchers believe they have located the ship after identifying a type 89 gun turret, which was a feature of the Musashi – one of the biggest battleships ever built.
The Japanese ship was the second of the country’s Yamato-class ships, which were built by the Japanese Imperial Navy and were the heaviest and most powerfully armed ships of World War Two.
The Musashi was sunk in a battle with US forces towards the end of 1944.
P-40 Kittyhawk And Pilot
After more than seven decades, the body of a missing RAF pilot was discovered in the Egyptian desert. In 1942, an RAF pilot was reported missing when he failed to return to his base. He was flying Curtiss Kittyhawk fighter, and it was said that the aircraft crashed in the desert. It was initially believed that Flight Sgt. Copping’s fighter aircraft was shot down by Luftwaffe near the Libya-Egypt border. However, it was later revealed that Copping got lost in a massive sandstorm, and after flying disoriented over featureless desert Sgt. Copping’s plane crashed.
A group of Polish Oil workers discovered Copping’s Curtiss in 2012. They quickly reported to the authorities, who found a partially destroyed aircraft along with a parachute. This meant that Sgt. Copping somehow survived the crash and attempted to make it on foot. They also concluded that Copping was killed by the smoldering heat of the desert and not by the Luftwaffe.
The Independence (CVL 22) was one of 90 ships assigned to Operation Crossroads, the atomic bomb tests conducted at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands. It was scuttled in 1951. Little was known about its use after the tests.
The location of the shipwreck was found last year and researchers began comparing sonar images of the wreck with the declassified documents to determine the vessel had been used as a radiological laboratory and nuclear waste receptacle from 1946 to 1950.
One of the first vessels to be converted to a light aircraft carrier following the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Independence operated in the central and western Pacific from November 1943 through to August 1945. After the war, it was assigned to Operation Crossroads as part of a fleet positioned within about 1700 feet of the “ground zero” blast from the bomb tests carried out to examine the effects of shock waves, heat, and radiation.
Twenty-one ships sunk during the tests, but the Independence survived, although it was heavily damaged when it returned to the U.S. Two precisely placed torpedoes, close to the keel and away from where extra waste was stored, sank the ship in January 1951.