Vanessa shares the rediscovery of the USS Grayback.
An American submarine, the U.S.S. Grayback, sunk eighty years ago during World War 2 was found offshore of Okinawa, Japan. The ship sank February 27, 1944 being reported to have been struck by a 500 pound bomb by a Nakajima B5N carrier-based bomber. The ship sank immediately leaving no survivors. Finding the ship led to complications as the radio record stated coordinates for the wreckage that did not match the 1949 Navy history by a hundred miles.
The wreckage of this ship has been hidden for 75 years due to just one errant digit. An undersea explorer Tim Taylor was intrigued by the mystery of the missing ship and set out to find it. With his team, they sent a drone down into the deep Okinawa waters to search for it. A third of the way down, the drone reported a malfunction so they sent down another underwater vehicle steered manually with better cameras. In a few hours, they saw the U.S.S. Grayback through the cameras and were conflicted with feelings of relief and remorse for the lives lost. Mr. Taylor stated according to The New York Times. “We were elated… But it’s also sobering, because we just found eighty men.”
February 27, 1944 was a sorrowful day. Though the discovery is difficult because it resurfaces a painful memory in American history, it provides peace and healing as well now that the mystery has finally been solved.