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The wreckage website of a World Warfare II U.S. Navy escort service was recognized July 10 by the Naval Historical past and Heritage Command’s Underwater Archaeology department, bringing a semblance of closure to the crew of a ship that dipped beneath the waves 78 years in the past.
The USS Ommaney Bay (CVE 79) was transiting the Sulu Sea close to the Philippines on the night of Jan. 4, 1945, when it got here underneath assault by a twin-engine plane flown by a Japanese kamikaze pilot.
The ship’s skipper, Capt. Howard L. Younger, had simply opted to put in additional guards on deck as an additional precautionary measure in opposition to such assaults — however the effort proved futile.
The incoming plane, which no sailors noticed till it was too late, slammed into the Casablanca-class escort service’s starboard aspect, erupting its two hooked up bombs and igniting a conflagration on the ship’s flight deck, the place a slew of plane that had not but been degassed had been assembled.
“The second bomb exploded near the starboard aspect after rupturing the hearth primary on the second deck and passing by way of the hanger deck,” the NHHC release acknowledged.
Different ships rushed to drag alongside the “Massive O” and help with the fires however had been shortly crushed again by the searing warmth. Because the gasoline- and bomb-fueled inferno unfold, an much more dire situation arose — the ship’s torpedo warheads may explode.
At 5:45 p.m., 45 minutes after the aircraft tore into the service, the order to scuttle the Ommaney Bay was issued by Vice Adm. Jesse B. Oldendorf to the adjoining Fletcher-class destroyer USS Burns.
Joe Cooper, a sailor aboard the Ommaney Bay, recalled desperately awaiting rescue in the water after abandoning ship.
“There was sharks. Appeared like males had been climbing on one another’s shoulders to get out of the water,” Cooper advised the Veterans Historical past Museum of the Carolinas. “I remembered from Guadalcanal, we noticed a submarine’s periscope. We fired a torpedo. I run again there and noticed oil slicks. It was a cargo ship and sunk it. It was our first submarine. I’d seen males get pulled underneath by sharks and ate up at Guadalcanal. After Guadalcanal, they advised us, ‘If you happen to ever hit the water, don’t kick or nothing, as a result of the sharks will come after you.’
“Within the water, I stayed nonetheless and some sharks simply glided by me. No ships got here to help us as a result of the sunshine service Princeton had been broken when it went alongside the Birmingham when it was bombed, in order that they stayed away from us. So that they allow us to burn.”
Round 8 p.m. the USS Burns fired a single torpedo on the unsalvageable escort service, sending the hulking, broiling ship under the floor for good. Of her 800-strong crew, 95 had been misplaced.
A crew working alongside NHHC personnel positioned the ship utilizing “a mixture of survey info offered by the Sea Scan Survey staff and video footage offered by the DPT Scuba dive staff,” in accordance with the discharge. “This info was correlated with location knowledge for the wreck website” gathered in 2019.
“Ommaney Bay is the ultimate resting place of American Sailors who made the last word sacrifice in protection of their nation,” retired admiral and NHHC Director Samuel J. Cox mentioned in a launch saying the situation of the wreckage. “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.”
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