WWII submarine found off Alaskan islands almost 80 years after it vanished

A 3D image of the newly discovered bow of the USS Grunion. - Copyright Lost 52 Project

By Laura Geggel, Live Science with NBC News Tech and Science News

Published on 05/08/2019 - 21:23

The bow of the wrecked sub, which disappeared in 1942, was found 2,700 feet below the surface.

Nearly 80 years ago, the USS Grunion submarine sank on its inaugural mission during World War II, taking the lives of 70 sailors with it as it plunged to the bottom of the Pacific. Now, after years of searching, a team looking for WWII-era submarines has found the Grunion's bow about 2,700 feet (820 meters) under the water's surface, off the coast of the Aleutian Islands in Alaska.

Upon finding the long-lost bow, the team used autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) and advanced photogrammetry imaging to create 3D images of the underwater vessel.

"This goes so far past video or still imagery, it truly is the future of recording historical underwater discoveries," ocean explorer Tim Taylor, of the Lost 52 Project, a group searching for the 52 submarines that went missing during WWII, said in a statement. [Photos: WWII Shipwrecks Found Off NC Coast]

Taking these detailed 3D images is useful to science, as "archaeologists and historians [can now] spend months back home performing detailed research," Taylor noted.

The United States commissioned the USS Grunion on April 11, 1942, putting it under the command of Lt. Cmdr. Mannert Abele. The submarine helped the Allied forces from the get-go; when the sub was traveling from the Caribbean to its first posting at Pearl Harbor, it rescued 16 survivors from the USAT (United States Army transport ship) Jack, which had been torpedoed by a German U-boat.

The USS Grunion's first war patrol, however, was also its last. In June 1942, the submarine was sent to the Aleutian Islands. Once in Kiska, Alaska, the sub sank two Japanese patrol boats. Then, on July 30, the USS Grunion was ordered back to Dutch Harbor, Alaska, the naval operating base in the region. Along the way, the Grunion ran into disaster and was never heard from again. The submarine was declared lost on Oct. 5, 1942.

But the Grunion's story didn't end there. In 2006, Abele's three sons — Bruce, Brad and John — began searching for the sub's remains after receiving a tip from "a remarkable Japanese gentleman, Yutaka Iwasaki, and help from numerous other sources" according to the Lost 52 Project. The brothers enlisted in the services of Williamson & Associates, a marine geophysics and ocean engineering firm, as well as a side-scan sonar, a system that can create images of large areas on the ocean floor, which helped them locate the missing submarine.

The submarine's bow was missing, however. In October 2018, the Lost 52 Project searched the vicinity and discovered the bow had slipped down a steep volcanic embankment, about a quarter mile (0.4 kilometers) from the main wreckage, Taylor told CNN.

To give families, the Navy and researchers a glimpse of the submarine, the Lost 52 just released the 3D images. You can see more in the video below.