In an interesting development, a team of divers has discovered the wreck of a US submarine which they believe was lost 77 years ago in South East Asia. As the news of the discovery has now surfaced, historians believe that this lost submarine will be capable of shedding light on some unknown World War II tale.
More Details of the Finding
From October 2019 to March 2020, divers made six dives to the ocean depths, and have successfully taken photographs of the wrecked submarine. They have now handed over these photographs to the United States Naval History and Heritage Command to determine whether this wrecked submarine is the USS Grenadier, one of 52 American submarines lost during the war.
According to the divers who were part of this mission, the wreck lies almost 82 meters underwater, near the Strait of Malacca, almost 92 kilometers south of Phuket, Thailand.
The diving team comprised of international members, and they are Jean Luc Rivoire (Singapore), Benoit Laborie (France), Lance Horowitz (Australia), and Ben Reymenants (Belgium).
Interestingly, Reymenants was one of the divers who was a part of the mission that rescued a dozen boys and their soccer coach who got trapped in a cave in northern Thailand a couple of years ago.
"And so we went back looking for clues, nameplate, but we couldn't find any of those. And in the end, we took very precise measurements of the submarine and compared those with the naval records. And they're exactly, as per the drawings, the exact same size. So we're pretty confident that it is the USS Grenadier," said Horowitz, Associated Press reports.
USS Grenadier
USS Grenadier was a US submarine that had a weight of 1,475 tonnes and a length of 307-ft. During World War Two, Japanese aircraft bombed this submarine and pushed it to the depths of the ocean. Even though 76 members in the submarine survived the bombing, they were soon captured by the Japanese forces.
In the prison, the American submarine crew members apparently faced brutal torture for more than two years. Four members of the crew could not survive the ordeal and they died in the Japanese prison camp.
"When you read the book of the survivors, that was, you know, quite an ordeal they went through and to know where she finally lies and rests, I'm sure it's very satisfying for them and their families to be able to have some closure," added Horowitz.
Dr Robert Neyland, of Navy command's Underwater Archaeology Branch, revealed that it will take more than two months to determine whether the discovered submarine is USS Grenadier.
