The last remaining piece of a damaged American ship from World War II has been found.
A team of scientists and explorers discovered the bow of the USS New Orleans off the coast of the Solomon Islands more than 80 years after the Battle of Guadalcanal.
Mark Ballard has been covering this story for The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate and joined Louisiana Considered to share more details.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
KAREN HENDERSON: Can you tell us a bit about the battle where the ship lost its bow? What do we know about this story and how the crew managed to keep part of their sinking ship afloat?
MARK BALLARD: Well, during the time period, there were significant naval battles over Guadalcanal, which was a target for the allies and something that the Japanese did not want to give up. And so, there were a number of battles. And in fact, that little strait where it was found had a number of battles and it's called the Iron Bottom Sound because 1,000 ships and thousands of lives were lost in trying to secure dominance of that particular part of the waters.
This was one of the battles that took place in November 1942. And it was like right in the middle of that big fight. And basically the USS New Orleans was part of a convoy of cruisers, which were, kind of more heavily armed ships that dealt with attacks on the sea more so than protections, for the most part. And the flagship of that particular group was also a cruiser called the USS Minneapolis, which got hit by Japanese torpedoes– two of them–and lost control. So the New Orleans made an abrupt right hand turn, and turned right into a torpedo from the Japanese, shot probably by a submarine. And the torpedo went through the front of the ship and set off a magazine where they had been storing a lot of ammunition and it just blew off about the front third of the ship and killed about 183 people, sailors on the ship who were mostly in the front of the ship at the time and the rest of the crew was able to stop the entire ship from sinking. And then they kind of hobbled away to another Solomon island that was not that far away and were able–they camouflaged the boat, of course–and then they kind of made some repairs and got rid of some of the damaged equipment and put kind of a log stays on the front of it–wooden stays to kind of help stabilize the ship. And then the ship at that point, after about a week of that kind of work, went to Australia.
And in Australia, they fixed it up enough so that the ship could go backwards for the most part to a naval air station in Puget Sound, Washington, where it was totally repaired and reentered the war about five months later and was at a number of significant battles. Well, actually before and after the war, the folks at the National World War II Museum pointed out it was a ship that was involved in almost every significant naval battle in the Pacific Theater during World War II.
HENDERSON: Man, it's a pretty, pretty amazing story. Tell us about the discovery of the bow. How did explorers find this missing bow after all these years?
BALLARD: Well, they have been for some years now basically mapping out where the ships that were sunk during the Battle of Guadalcanal, which was over about a four-month period.
And as I said, there were 1,000 ships and tens of thousands of lives involved. And they've been mapping that out for years now. And then on Sunday, the map found what they thought was the possibility of a bow. And then on Monday, they sent down a remote, submergibles and went over the whole part of what was the bow, and they were able to recognize the writing on the bow and identify it as the USS New Orleans bow.
And go read my story. There is an online connection to the actual identification, the video of the actual identification, which was, it was amazing. And it certainly turned this into what initially I thought would be a small little, you know, isn't that interesting story to something that was like, I just need to look into this a lot more than I did. And so that video is incredible because they were looking at not only the crew that was handling the remote submergible, but it was also fed out to experts around the world who were doing their own research at the same time. And you can see as it happens, where they find the writing on the bow and connected it up to the USS New Orleans.
HENDERSON: You write that the National World War II Museum in New Orleans is planning to use these artifacts to tell this story in an upcoming exhibit. What do you know about what they're planning?
BALLARD: And that was interesting because I think–I may be wrong–but I was under the impression that they didn't know that it had been identified the day before I called them because it just kind of came out that quickly. But they had already been working on an exhibit for the USS New Orleans. It was a major ship at the time. It was in most of the major battles throughout World War II, and it had visited New Orleans a couple of times. And so it's like the city ship, if you will. And they were going to be doing this. They had talked to some of the survivors who are still with us, and they were gathering up artifacts and planned to do an exhibit. They are hoping that it will open for the next year
HENDERSON: What do you think this discovery means, not only for scientists, but perhaps to families who've lost a loved one on that ship?
BALLARD: The Navy, as well as the museum personnel were pointing out that this is not just an artifact on the bottom of the ocean, but also kind of a memorial because that is where so many of those men who died during that battle died because they were on the bow or near the front of the ship. And so they see it also as kind of a memorial for them as well.