Scientists have confirmed that wreckage discovered on the seafloor off the Philippines are the stays of the USS Ommaney Bay, an plane service that was destroyed in World Conflict II lower than a 12 months after it sailed out of San Diego Bay on its second deployment.
A Japanese kamikaze airplane struck the Casablanca-class service on Jan. 4, 1945, within the Sulu Sea, igniting huge fires and setting off munitions, killing almost 95 crew members. The injury was so dangerous the Navy scuttled the ship.
The attainable stays of Ommaney Bay had been reported to the Naval Historical past and Heritage Command in Washington, D.C., in 2019 by Vulcan, an underwater analysis and conservation firm.
The command stated on Tuesday that its underwater archaeology department confirmed that the wreckage is that of Ommaney Bay, a 512-foot, steam engine powered ship that was lower than half the scale of right now’s nuclear powered plane carriers.
” Ommaney Bay is the ultimate resting place of American Sailors who made the final word sacrifice in protection of their nation,” the command’s director, Samuel J. Cox, stated in a press release.
“This discovery permits the households of these misplaced some quantity of closure and provides us all one other likelihood to recollect and honor their service to our nation.”
Ommaney Bay, a so-called escort service, was constructed by Kaiser Shipbuilding in Vancouver, Wash., and went into service in spring 1944, transporting troops and plane from Oakland to Brisbane, Australia.
The ship then traveled to San Diego the place it underwent coaching drills and repairs. On June 10, Ommaney Bay headed for the western Pacific, the place it carried out air cowl and strikes throughout the invasion of the Palau Islands. The ship additionally participated within the Battle of Leyte Gulf, which crippled a lot of the Japanese fleet, serving to the U.S. win the battle.
Ommaney Bay’s service got here to a tragic finish the next January when it was hit by the kamikaze airplane not removed from Mindanao, historians say.
This story initially appeared in San Diego Union-Tribune.
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