Commentary
Obviously, they are not going to declassify the location of the MH-370's wreckages any time soon.
Proof, it took 72 years for the US military to finally disclose to the public the location of the wreckage of the USS Indianapolis — the ship that delivered components crucial to “Little Boy” the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima !!
Wreck of U.S. cruiser that delivered vital parts for Hiroshima A-bomb found after seven-decade search
Aug 20, 2017
Lost to the depths of the Pacific Ocean 72 years ago after being sunk by Japanese torpedoes, the wreckage of the USS Indianapolis — the ship that delivered components crucial to “Little Boy,” the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima — has been located.
A team of researchers led by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen announced the discovery of the World War II cruiser at a depth of more than 5,500 meters (18,000 feet) on Saturday.
The Indianapolis was torpedoed in the final days of the war by an Imperial Japanese Navy submarine in the early hours of July 30, 1945.
The ship sank in just 12 minutes, making it nearly impossible to send a distress signal or deploy much of its lifesaving equipment. The Indianapolis had at the time just completed a secret mission to a U.S. base on the island of Tinian to deliver parts for the atomic bomb used on Hiroshima that would ultimately help end the war in the Pacific, according to the Naval History and Heritage Command in Washington. Tinian was the take-off point for the Enola Gay’s mission to bomb Hiroshima in August 1945.
Although around 800 of the ship’s 1,196 sailors and marines survived the sinking, scores succumbed to exposure, dehydration, drowning and shark attacks during their four to five days in the water. Just 316 survived one of the most tragic maritime disasters in U.S. naval history, and 22 remain alive today.
Movies and documentaries, including last year’s “USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage,” starring Nicolas Cage, have recounted the crew’s time at sea. The vessel’s sinking was also was a plot point in the Steven Spielberg smash-hit film “Jaws,” with the fictitious Indianapolis survivor Captain Quint recounting the terror he felt waiting to be rescued as sharks swarmed the waters.
Although others had previously attempted to find the Indianapolis, Allen’s team was aided by new information about the wreckage’s presumed location. Using research that had identified a naval landing craft that recorded a sighting of Indianapolis hours before it was torpedoed, the team developed a new position and estimated a 1,554-sq.-km (600-sq.-mile) search area.
The wreck was located by the expedition crew of Allen-owned Research Vessel (R/V) Petrel, which employs state-of-the-art subsea equipment capable of diving to 6,000 meters. The Indianapolis remains the property of the U.S. Navy and its location will remain confidential and restricted by the navy.
The 13-person expedition team on the R/V Petrel is in the process of surveying the full site and will conduct a live tour of the wreckage in the next few weeks. An Allen-led expedition also resulted in the discovery of the Japanese battleship Musashi in March 2015.
“For more than two decades I’ve been working with the survivors. To a man, they have longed for the day when their ship would be found, solving their final mystery,” said retired Capt. William Toti, spokesperson for the survivors of the Indianapolis, according to Allen’s website. “They all know this is now a war memorial, and are grateful for the respect and dignity that Paul Allen and his team have paid to one of the most tangible manifestations of the pain and sacrifice of our World War II veterans.”
The navy said it has plans to honor the 22 survivors, as well as the families of all those who served on the ship.
“I’m very happy that they found it. It’s been a long 72 years coming,” Indianapolis survivor Arthur Leenerman, 93, of Mahomet, Illinois, told WTTV-TV.
▲ The World War II cruiser USS Indianapolis, which was sunk by Japanese torpedoes on July 30, 1945, is seen at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, in 1937.
▲ An image shot from a remotely operated underwater vehicle shows a spare parts box from the USS Indianapolis lying on the floor of the Pacific Ocean.
▲ An image shot from a remotely operated underwater vehicle shows the bottom of an anchor marked 'U.S. Navy' and 'Norfolk Navy Yard.'
▲ What appears to be the painted hull number '35' appears in this image shot by a remotely operated underwater vehicle. Based on the curvature of the hull section, this seems to be the port side of the ship.
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2...red-hiroshima-bomb-components-found-72-years/
Commentary
Only speculations here: no signs of concretion, life forms and associated natural secretions of sea life, even after 72 years...maybe the ship contained radioactive material, thus the secrecy from the US military!
Which would be consistent with the other (un)known US military radioactive cover-up, the one of the World War II-era Imperial Japanese Navy mega-submarine, the I-400, nuclear powered(?) aircraft carrying submarine (SSCVN).
I-400: Largest diesel submarine ever built, found off of Barbers Point, Aug 2013
A World War II-era Imperial Japanese Navy mega-submarine, the I-400, lost since 1946 when it was intentionally scuttled by U.S. forces after its capture, has been discovered in more than 2,300 feet of water off the southwest coast of O‘ahu. The discovery resolves a decades-old Cold War mystery of just where the lost submarine lay, and recalls a different era as one war ended and a new, undeclared conflict emerged.
Longer than a football field at 400 feet, the I-400 was known as a “Sen-Toku” class submarine—the largest submarine ever built until the introduction of nuclear-powered subs in the 1960s. With a range of 37,500 miles, the I-400 and its sister ship, the I-401, were able to travel one and a half times around the world without refueling, a capability that, to this day, has never been matched by any other diesel-electric submarine.
The new discovery of the I-400 was led by veteran undersea explorer Terry Kerby, Hawaiʻi Undersea Research Laboratory (HURL) operations director and chief submarine pilot. Since 1992, HURL has used its manned submersibles Pisces IV and Pisces V to hunt for submarines and other submerged cultural resources as part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) maritime heritage research effort.
Heritage properties like historic wreck sites are non-renewable resources possessing unique information about the past. This discovery was part of a series of dives funded by a grant from NOAA’s Office of Exploration and Research and the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa’s School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST). Working with Steven Price of HURL, Kerby has researched the subject of lost submarines off O‘ahu for decades. On these recent dives, Kerby was joined by two NOAA archaeologists with experience in documenting World War II vessels and submarines, Drs. James Delgado and Hans Van Tilburg.
“The I-400 has been on our ‘to-find’ list for some time. It was the first of its kind of only three built, so it is a unique and very historic submarine,” said Kerby. “Finding it where we did was totally unexpected. All our research pointed to it being further out to sea. The multi-beam anomalies that appear on a bottom survey chart can be anything from wrecks to rocks—you don’t know until you go there. Jim and Hans and I knew we were approaching what looked like a large wreck on our sonar. It was a thrill when the view of a giant submarine appeared out of the darkness.”
The I-400 and the I-401 aircraft-carrying submarines held up to three folding-wing float-plane bombers that could be launched by catapult just minutes after the submarines surfaced. Each aircraft could carry a powerful 1,800-pound bomb to attack the U.S. mainland. But neither was ever used for its designed purpose, their missions curtailed by the end of armed conflict in the Pacific.
“The innovation of air strike capability from long-range submarines represented a tactical change in submarine doctrine,” said Delgado, director of NOAA’s Maritime Heritage Program, within the Office of National Marine Sanctuaries, Washington, D.C. “The large I-400, with its extended range and ability to launch three M6A1 Seiran strike aircraft, was clearly an important step in the evolution of submarine design.”
Up until the Sen-Toku’s day, submarines had been almost exclusively dedicated to sinking surface ships (and other submarines) by stealth attack from under water.
“The I-400 is technologically significant due to the design features associated with its large watertight hangar,” Delgado said. “Following World War II, submarine experimentation and design changes would continue in this direction, eventually leading to ballistic missile launching capabilities for U.S. submarines at the advent of the nuclear era.”
At the end of WWII, the U.S. Navy captured five Japanese subs, including the I-400, and brought them to Pearl Harbor for inspection. When the Soviet Union demanded access to the submarines in 1946 under the terms of the treaty that ended the war, the U.S. Navy sank the subs off the coast of Oʻahu and claimed to have no information on their precise location. The goal was to keep their advanced technology out of Soviet hands during the opening chapters of the Cold War. HURL has now successfully located four of these five lost submarines.
The HURL crew identified the wreck site by carefully combing through side-scan sonar and multi-beam sonar data to identify anomalies on a deep sea floor littered with rocky outcrops and other debris. The wreck was positively identified as the I-400 based on features including its aircraft launch ramp, deck crane, torpedo tube configuration, and stern running lights. The remains of the submarine’s aircraft hangar and conning tower appear to have been separated from the wreck, perhaps in the blunt trauma of the three U.S. Navy torpedo blasts that sunk the ship in 1946.
The I-400 was discovered in August 2013 and is being announced today after NOAA has reviewed its findings with the U.S. state department and Japanese government officials.
“These historic properties in the Hawaiian Islands recall the critical events and sacrifices of World War II in the Pacific, a period which greatly affected both Japan and the United States and shaped the Pacific region as we now know it,” said Van Tilburg, maritime heritage coordinator for NOAA in the Pacific Islands region. “Our ability to interpret these unique weapons of the past and jointly understand our shared history is a mark of our progress from animosity to reconciliation. That is the most important lesson that the site of the I-400 can provide today.”
▲ 写真で見る”変態兵器” 伊400型
▲ 写真で見る”変態兵器” 伊400型
http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/HURL/gallery/archaeology/I-400.html
Commentary
These two vessels would be featured prominently in the Japanese 2005 fictional movie ローレライ (暴风女神, Lorelei: The Witch of the Pacific Ocean), directed by Shinji Higuchi and Cellin Gluck.
Coicidence? I think not!
The secret technologies of the Japanese submarine I-400, probably nuclear propulsion, is replaced in the movie by the smaller I-507, in fact a Surcouf French submarine cruiser, and carrying another mini sub for extra sensory perception mind-control technology.
Plot
The makers of "Lorelei," beginning with Harutoshi Fukui, who wrote the best-selling novel on which the film is based, finesse inconvenient historical facts by an up-front resort to "what if" fantasy. The starring sub, the I-507, is a gift of the dying Nazi empire to the Japanese Navy in the closing days of the war. This sleek behemoth is equipped with imaging technology that is far in advance of the era's primitive sonar -- and is pure manga-esque invention.
The mission, as revealed by grim-visaged Chief of Staff Asakura (Shinichi Tsutsumi) after the A-bomb attack on Hiroshima, is to intercept U.S. ships carrying more such weapons to Tinian Island, the base for B-29 bombing runs to Japan. This, of course, is complete fiction, as is the man charged with the mission, Commander Masami (Yakusho Koji) -- a brilliant destroyer of enemy ships relieved of his command when he opposed the navy's increasing reliance on suicide tactics. Given a last chance to redeem himself, he is burning with zeal, but is ignorant of the various secrets the I-507 carries on board.
Once at sea, Lt. Takasu (Ken Ishiguro), the owlish technician in charge of the imaging system, refuses to tell Masami what it is or how it works. Masami also discovers that two crew members belong to the "kaiten" suicide corps. He has no idea why they are there -- and neither, for the moment, do they.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Navy is tracking the I-507 with more than usual interest. What, Masami wonders, is going on here? Enough to say that a sweet-voiced teenage girl (Yu Kashi) is part of the master plan and that one of the minisub pilots (Satoshi Tsumabuki) becomes her protector -- and something more.
Cast
Starring
Koji Yakusho - Masami Shin'ichi
Satoshi Tsumabuki - Yukito Origasa
Toshiro Yanagiba - Kizaki Toshiro
Yu Kashii - Paula Atsuko Ebner
Shin'ichi Tsutsumi - Asakura Ryokitsu
Ken Ishiguro - Narumi Takasu
Isao Hashizume - Sadamoto Nishimiya
Masato Ibu - Eitaro Narazaki
Takaya Kamikawa - Man
Kreva - Shunpei Komatsu
Jun Kunimura - Matoi Tokioka
Takehiko Ono - Shichigoro Iwamura
Shugo Oshinari
Ryuta Sato - Kikuo Kiyonaga
Pierre Taki - Tokutaro Taguchi
Yoshiyuki Tomino - Ouwada
Shingo Tsurumi - Sankichi Oominato
Masaomi Hiraga - Kodai Morimoto
Sawako Agawa - Keiko Nishinomiya
Junichi Gamou - Signal Corpsman Owada
Makoto Awane
Hiroki Ebata
Hajime Inoue
Yuji Yoshimasu
Hiroshi Okochi
Masahiro Noguchi
Tomoya Nanami
▲ Lorelei: The Witch of the Pacific Ocean, 2005 movie
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0406941/
http://movie.douban.com/subject/1419955/