Japanese battleship Musashi 1944

About the wreck

Musashi (Japanese: 武蔵; named after the former Japanese province) was one of the Yamato-class battleships built for the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN), beginning in the late 1930s. The Yamato-class ships were the heaviest and most powerfully armed battleships ever constructed, displacing almost 72,000 long tons (73,000 t) fully loaded and armed with nine 460-millimetre (18.1 in) main guns. Their secondary armament consisted of four 155-millimetre (6.1 in) triple-gun turrets formerly used by the Mogami-class cruisers. They were equipped with six or seven floatplanes to conduct reconnaissance.

Commissioned in mid-1942, Musashi was modified to serve as the flagship of the Combined Fleet, and spent the rest of the year working up. The ship was transferred to Truk, Japan's main wartime naval base in the South Pacific theatre, in early 1943 and sortied several times that year with the fleet in unsuccessful searches for American forces. She was used to transfer forces and equipment between Japan and various occupied islands several times in 1944.

Diving & visiting

For over 70 years after her sinking, various attempts were made by shipwreck hunters to locate the wreck of the Japanese battleship, but none succeeded. Musashi, like other Japanese warships, did not have its name on its sides, making it more difficult for divers and shipwreck hunters to find her. A research team sponsored by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen eventually found her after eight years of searching for the wreck, going through various historical records in different countries, and deploying the high-tech yacht Octopus and a remotely operated vehicle to aid in their search.

The discovery of the wreck beneath the surface of the Sibuyan Sea raised issues in the Philippines because the provincial government of Romblon, which has jurisdiction over the shipwreck site, and the Philippine Coast Guard were unaware that Allen and his team had an ongoing expedition in the area, though Governor Eduardo Firmalo publicly welcomed discovery of the ship. In response to the find, the Philippine Coast Guard stated that foreign-owned vessels need clearance from the Philippine Foreign Affairs Department, the Customs Bureau, and the Immigration Bureau before entering Philippine waters.

Although discovering the shipwreck was very important to the Japanese people because of the presence aboard of over 1,000 Japanese sailors' remains, the National Museum of the Philippines stated that…

Text adapted from the Wikipedia article Japanese battleship Musashi (revision 1380750090), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes: excerpted from the article lead section and section(s) “Discovery”, “Preservation and protection”; condensed by selecting paragraphs and trimming at sentence boundaries; citations and formatting removed. No text added. This excerpt is available under the same licence.

Wreck facts from Wikidata (CC0).

Nearby wrecks

• MV Doña Paz 1987 · 66 km

Other wrecks of the World War II

• U-983 1943
• USS Aludra 1943
• USS Beatty 1943
• USS Branch 1943
• USS Deimos 1943
• Akagi Maru 1944
• Fusō 1944
• HMS Bullen 1944
• HMS Dragon 1944
• HMS Isis 1944

All 599 wrecks of the World War II →

Browse more: Asia wrecks · wrecks off Philippines · Second World War

Further reading

• Wikipedia: Japanese battleship Musashi
• Wikidata Q1127368