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Posted by Rick E Davis on April 6, 2021, 21:16:41, in reply to "Nope ... The PETREL crew found the aft third of USS JOHNSTON"
I found some additional images taken of USS JOHNSTON's wreck on the Caladan Oceanic Website. The most significant image to me, was a starboard side view of the aft torpedo tube mount and the two waist 20-mm guns on that side. This showed that the the break of the aft 1/3 of the destroyer was aft of the second torpedo mount. Further aft than I thought. It appears a large hit struck between the waist twin 40-mm mounts just below the aft stack. Also, I found elsewhere another version of the bridge image showing more of the damage below the navigation bridge.
... https://caladanoceanic.com/expeditions/samar/gallery/ ...
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R/V PETREL found the debris from the stern section of the USS JOHNSTON (DD-557) that parted from the rest of the wreck. Speculation is that the aft 5-in magazine may have exploded or multiple depth charges from the K-Guns and stern drop tracks ignited. They also found a trough in the sea floor where the rest of the wreck slid down a cliff into much deeper waters. PETREL wasn't able to explore into deeper depths. Parts of that wreck were identified as being from USS JOHNSTON at that time. R/V CALADAN OCEANIC returned to the same location and followed the trough down to the forward 2/3 of the JOHNSTON wreck.
If you look at the images that the R/V CALADAN OCEANIC has released, you can see where the ship broken apart aft of the second stack. Looking at all the videos, you can tell that USS JOHNSTON took a beating and had several fires.
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...must have been the remains of the Hoel. Johnston looks reasonably intact but what the Petrel surveyed was a mess, the fragments of a ship put through a cheese grater. Given that petrel team seems to have found Hoel where they thought Johnston would be, I wonder if this will alter the interpretations of Hoel's and Johnston's ends, their respective movements, and of how the battle progressed...
Johnston: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-56608713
Probable Hoel:
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