Posted on 07/08/2025 9:49:27 AM PDT by Red Badger
A mysterious object spotted on the South Pacific seafloor has been identified as the bow of a torpedoed World War II ship that famously sailed thousands of miles backwards to avoid sinking, historians say.
The nearly 100-foot long section of the USS New Orleans was found Sunday, July 6, by the Ocean Exploration Trust as it searched the seafloor near Guadalcanal with a remotely operated vehicle.
A positive identification was made with the help of paint fragments still clinging to the hull, along with an engraved anchor, the trust reported.
The bow, which fell to a depth of 2,214 feet, had been unaccounted for since Nov. 30, 1942, when a Japanese torpedo detonated the ship’s forward magazines during the Battle of Tassafaronga, the National WWII Museum reports.
The impact killed 182 men and left the USS New Orleans struggling to stay afloat, but the crew refused to give up, the museum says.
What happened next counts as an “improbable story,” the trust says.
To avoid the ship sinking, sailors “jury-rigged a bow of coconut logs” brought from shore, then sailed “backward to the United States for permanent repairs,” the trust reports.
(Excerpt) Read more at military.com ...
Heck, they could not have cut the first set of coconut logs down without an environmental impact report.
(Good thing no fuel oil was ever leaking in those days.)
“Fat Electrician?”
If I’m doing it right, it’s a YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/@UnderwhelmingPodcast
Dad’s squadron used Bondo on a supersonic jet...
Eat.
Yep, I’ve seen the bondo trick.
At the operational level they gotta do what they gotta do to meet mission expectations.
Yep. But that didn’t mean they had to tell the pilot before the supersonic test flight...
That’s cool to know. Thank you.
The first two years would have been taken up by making sure the repair teams were "equitable" and looked "like America."
The team of scientists and explorers aboard Exploration Vessel Nautilus located and imaged the bow blown off the World War II heavy cruiser USS New Orleans for the first time on July 6, 2025. Using Ocean Exploration Trust's ROVs to investigate a target found during seafloor mapping operations by University of New Hampshire's uncrewed surface vessel DriX, the team found the bow resting at ~675 meters deep in the Solomon Islands' Iron Bottom Sound and reilluminated this improbable story.
During the November 1942 Battle of Tassafaronga, offshore of Guadalcanal, USS New Orleans was hit by a Japanese 'Long Lance' torpedo, catastrophically detonating the forward magazines and tearing off nearly one-third of the ship, including the bow. The explosion killed over 180 crew. Bow-less and flooding, New Orleans was heroically saved by crew members, who stayed at their posts and saved their ship but not themselves, receiving three posthumous Navy Crosses. The ship limped back to the nearby harbor, where, using coconut logs, the crew was able to stabilize New Orleans well enough to sail backward to the United States for permanent repairs.
Over eighty years later, the team imaged the site with onboard archaeologists and experts from all former combatant nations contributing via livestreaming telepresence. Together, this team spotted details in the ship's structure, painting, and anchor to positively identify the wreckage as New Orleans.
Led by OET President and famed explorer Dr. Robert Ballard, the Maritime Archaeology of Guadalcanal expedition, exploring historically significant shipwrecks in the Iron Bottom Sound is supported by NOAA Ocean Exploration via the Ocean Exploration Cooperative Institute. This exploration is made possible by the expertise, support, and collaboration of many partners, including NOAA Ocean Exploration, U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command, Solomon Islands government, the University of New Hampshire Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping/Joint Hydrographic Center, University of Rhode Island, and Japanese, Australian, and New Zealand colleagues.Severed Bow of USS New Orleans Discovered in Iron Bottom Sound
Nautilus Live | 7:20
EVNautilus | 623K subscribers | 69,813 views | July 8, 2025
"100-foot long section of the USS New Orleans" - the bow, not the stern
IIRC, that is a picture showing the temporary bow?
Yes...
Mispoke...😎
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