In a naval battle with the Japanese Navy, the US warship “USS Samuel B Roberts” sinks off the Philippine coast. That was in 1944 – the destroyer has been missing ever since. Now specialists find the wreck and set a record.
At a depth of almost 7,000 meters, researchers have discovered the wreck of a US warship that sunk off the Philippine coast during World War II. The wreck of the “USS Samuel B Roberts” is the deepest wreck ever found, according to the US company Caladan Oceanic. For comparison: The wreck of the “Titanic” lies at a depth of about 4000 meters.
The US Navy destroyer sank on October 5, 1944 in a naval battle with the Japanese Navy off the Philippine island of Samar. The Philippines was then a US colony and the US Navy fought against the Japanese occupiers. The battered hull of the ship, also known as “Sammy B”, has now been filmed, photographed and examined by a manned submersible on several dives, as the Texan company announced. You can see, among other things, the torpedo launcher and the gun mount of the ship.
“At 6895 meters deep it is now the deepest shipwreck ever found and surveyed,” tweeted Caladan Oceanic founder Victor Vescovo, who piloted the submersible. “This little ship took on the best of the Japanese Navy and fought them to the end.” The Battle of Samar was part of the larger naval battle of Leyte, in which the Japanese Navy fought the US Navy for days to repel an Allied invasion of the Philippines. The Sammy B was one of four US ships sunk on October 25, 1944. 89 of the 224 crew members died.
So far, the “USS Johnston”, lying at a depth of almost 6500 meters, was considered the deepest shipwreck ever found in the world. It had also been achieved by Vescovo’s team in 2021. The research team had recently also searched for the wreck of the “USS Gambier Bay”, which is suspected to be more than 7,000 meters deep, but in vain.
