8. HIJMS Musashi Japanese Battleship
It was almost 7 decades following the end of the Second World War in March of 2015 that the Musashi Japanese battleship that had been sunk was finally found in the Sibuyam Sea which is by the coast of the Philippines. The researchers were confident that they managed to discover this ship after they managed to identify a type 89 gunner turret on the wreckage which was one of the standout features of the Musashi which had been at the time up there with the largest battleships that had ever been created.
This ship was part of the exclusive Yamato class of ships that the Japanese navy had as they were constructed by the Japanese Imperial Navy and in terms of ships during the Second World War, these were the most heavily armed and most powerful ships in existence on either side of the divide. It was near the end of 1944 that the United States managed to sink the Musashi after they hit it with a total of 19 torpedoes, as well as receiving a further 17 bomb hits from American aircraft on the 24th of October 1944 in the midst of the Battle of the Leyte Gulf.
Approximately half of the ship’s crew were subsequently rescued and it was the co-founder of Microsoft Paul Allen who managed to find the wreckage in 2015 alongside a team of researchers he had been working with. There had been other plans over the years involving the wreckage. There were multinational commemorations that took place every year in order to honor those who had fallen in the battle, beginning in the year 2006.
In 2008, there were talks in Japan of locating the remains of the Musashi, which at that time had not been rediscovered. They were of the belief that the ship had sunk completely in a single piece, so they were thinking about “re-floating” it, having it towed to an island that was close by and then turning it into a war museum. This, of course, would be a fascinating idea if it had come to fruition. However, as mentioned, when the wreckage was discovered in 2015, it was in scattered remains so this plan could not be realized.