Found, the world’s biggest battleship... 3,000ft down
THE resting place of the largest battleship ever built remained a mystery after it was sunk in 1944 during the biggest sea battle in history.
That is until Microsoft billionaire Paul Allen took an interest.
He revealed yesterday that after an eight-year search, his remotecontrolled submarine has found the wreck of the Imperial Japanese Navy’s Musashi in 3,280ft of water.
Along with its sister ship, Yamato, the 73,000 ton vessel was the heaviest and most powerfully armed battleship ever built.
Bearing nine huge 18in guns, the 862ft Musashi was designed to take on several enemy battleships at once – offsetting Japan’s disadvantage in fleet numbers against the US. It even had seven seaplanes on board, which took off with the aid of deck-mounted catapults.
But it was a sitting duck for American torpedo planes and dive bombers during the four-day Battle of Leyte Gulf in the Philippines. Hit an estimated 36 times by bombs and torpedos, the Musashi sank.
Of the crew of 2,399, only 1,376 survived. Captain Toshihira Inoguchi chose to go down with his ship. Mr Allen, who co-founded Microsoft in 1975, is a keen underwater explorer with a passion for military ships and planes.
He used the remote submarine from his superyacht Octopus – once the world’s largest private yacht, which also has a passenger submersible on board.
Yesterday, he tweeted how the Musashi was pinpointed at the bottom of the Sibuyan Sea in the Philippines, adding: ‘ RIP crew of Musashi, approximately 1,023 lost.’ He also posted photos on the internet taken by the submersible that show relics such as a huge anchor, gun turret and a wheel on an engine room valve from the Musashi, which was almost the length of the Houses of Parliament.
During the hunt for the ship, Mr Allen’s researchers analysed war and maritime records from four countries. Using a hi-tech survey of the ocean floor, they were able to narrow down Musashi’s likely rest- ing place, and the submersible was able to find part of the wreck on only its third dive.
Mr Allen, who is reportedly worth £11.5billion, said: ‘The Musashi is truly an engineering marvel and, as an engineer at heart, I have a deep appreciation for the technology and the effort that went into its construction.’
He added that his research staff were ‘mindful of the responsibility related to the wreckage of the Musashi as a war grave and intend to work with the Japanese government to ensure the site is treated respectfully and in accordance with Japanese traditions’.
Manuel Luis Quezon III, the Philippines’ presidential communications undersecretary, said that if verified, the wreck would be of huge historical importance, likening it to the discovery of the Titanic.
Mr Quezon, whose grandfather was president of the Philippines during the Japanese occupation in the Second World War, added: ‘This would be like finding the Titanic, because of the status of the ship and the interest in the ship.’