The wreckage of the Second World War cruiser USS Indianapolis has been found 18,000 feet below the surface of the Pacific Ocean, seven decades after it was torpedoed by the Imperial Japanese Navy submarine.
Paul Allen, who cofounded Microsoft, announced that he and a crew of researchers had finally located wreckage from the USS Indianapolis, which went down on July 30, 1945, in the Philippine Sea 5.5km (3.4 miles) below.
USS Indianapolis was sunk by a Japanese torpedo in the South Pacific in 1945 after it had just completed a secret mission delivering components of the atomic bomb used in Hiroshima that brought an end to the war in the Pacific region.
"To be able to honor the brave men of the USS Indianapolis and their families through the discovery of a ship that played such a significant role in ending World War II is truly humbling," CNN quoted Allen as saying.
"As Americans, we all owe a debt of gratitude to the crew for their courage, persistence and sacrifice in the face of horrendous circumstances. While our search for the rest of the wreckage will continue, I hope everyone connected to this historic ship will feel some measure of closure at this discovery so long in coming."Allen further said.
Most of the ship's 1,196 sailors and Marines survived the sinking, only to succumb to exposure, dehydration, drowning and shark attacks. Only 316 survived, according to the US Navy. Of the survivors, 22 are alive today.
Others have tried to locate the Indianapolis before. The wreck was located by the expedition crew of Allen's Research Vessel Petrel, a 250-foot vessel equipped with state-of-the-art equipment capable of diving to 6,000 meters, or 3 1/2 miles.
Allen has had another search success. In 2015, after an eight-year hunt, his team of researchers found the Japanese battleship Musashi in the Philippines' Sibuyan Sea.