Billionaire deep-sea explorer and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen made an incredible discovery on March 2nd, 2015 when his team identified the remains of the Musashi, Japan’s biggest battleship ever built. The monumental find was made in the Sibuyan Sea, of the Philippines’ coast, marking this day down in history for naval history.
The hunt for the Musashi began over a decade ago by poring over primary sources that located four possible sinking positions: the official Japanese and U.S. Navy positions, a log entry from a Japanese destroyer, and a survivor’s drawing. Now, combining the accounts with a mass of navigational clues, a team led by David Mearns of Bluewater Recoveries has narrowed the search area down to 360 square nautical miles.
Initial attempts with side-scan sonar were foiled by snagging fishing lines. The team next turned to an MBES to create a bathymetric map of the area. But both MBES and traditional side-scan sonar proved unusable over such difficult terrain, dominated by a vast volcanic ridge with depths that ranged from 500 to more than 6,560 feet. An AUV provided the answer, running a consistent sonar survey over the rough terrain.
It was this advanced technology that a team finally used to locate the wreck, operating from his luxury yacht and exploration vessel, the Octopus, on behalf of Paul Allen. Allen announced the discovery on Twitter with photographs of the rusting, coral-encrusted bow of the Musashi, bearing the chrysanthemum crest of the Japanese imperial family. Other pictures included one of the ship’s gigantic anchors and a valve covered in heavy encrustation, with a caption to the approximately 1,023 crew members who lost their lives.
The Musashi, together with its sister ship Yamato, was the largest and most powerful armed warship ever launched in history, both being battleships of the Yamato class. Commissioned in November 1940, it was 263 meters long, 73,000 tons fully laden, and had an overall speed of 27 knots. The armament of nine 46cm cannons mounted on board were the largest caliber guns ever fitted on any warship. These guns could fire armor-piercing shells of 1,460kg to a maximum range of 26 miles.
It might seem that with all this power, there could be no chink in this monster’s armor, but surprisingly, the Musashi was very weak against air attacks. On 24 October 1944, during the Battle of Leyte Gulf, it was sighted by a U.S. plane, after which relentless air attacks were launched upon it. At the end of that day, the Musashi had received 37 direct hits from torpedoes and bombs, causing her to list heavily. Ordered to abandon ship by Captain Toshihiro Noguchi, the last crew ordered off the vessel did so at 7:30 PM, with the Musashi sinking shortly afterward. There were 2,399 crew members in all but just 1,376 survived.
The Battle of Leyte Gulf was a campaign combined by American and Australian forces against the Japanese navy and is widely believed to be the largest naval battle of World War II and probably in world history. No wonder it eluded discovery, having had so many eyewitness accounts of the wreck, until Allen’s find.
It was an honor to be able to find the Musashi and to be able to pay homage to the bravery of her crew, said Paul Allen, who has invested a fraction of his $17.5 billion fortune in deep-sea and space exploration. Their discovery not only enriches our knowledge of World War II naval history but also underscores human pursuits of knowledge and exploration relentlessly.