https://www.foxnews.com/science/wwii-shipwreck-discovered-philippine-sea-is-the-deepest-ever-foundUS WWII shipwreck discovered in the Philippine Sea is the deepest ever foundThe deepest sunken shipwreck ever discovered has been found in the Philippine Sea, researchers announced Wednesday.
The wreck of the U.S. World War II destroyer was found resting at a depth of 20,406 feet by experts on the Research Vessel Petrel. Explorers used an undersea drone to locate the mysterious ship, which is believed to be the USS Johnston, a Fletcher-class destroyer sunk during the Battle off Samar, a key action in the Battle of Leyte Gulf in 1944. Eerie footage captured by the drone shows the mangled wreckage of the ship lying on the seabed.
At the Battle off Samar, a task group of several USN escort carriers (slow and small), destroyers, and destroyer escorts (slow and small) held off a much larger and much much more powerful force of Japanese (IJN) battleships, cruisers and destroyers. They "should" not have succeeded, but put up such a fierce fight that they disrupted the IJN formation, sank or severely damaged several IJN cruisers and battleships to the degree that the Japanese thought they had fought USN cruisers and fleet carriers, and decided that it would take so long and so much fuel that the IJN force retreated. A squad of the USN's "second team" had prevented the Japanese from destroying the transports and cargo ships supporting the US invasion of Leyte.
Fletcher-class destroyers (DDs; such as USS Johnston), at the time, were the USN's largest DDs, well armed and robust. Their armament were five 5"/38 dual-purpose guns (suitable for anti-surface and anti-air) and torpedoes (with defects fixed!). While the 5" guns could not penetrate battleship armor, they could damage superstructure, and their rate of fire with a good crew was 15 rounds a minute or faster. Between poor visibility and the volume of shell hits, it's not surprising the Japanese thought they were engaging cruisers (USN light cruisers carried fifteen 6" guns, also capable of firing a lot of shells at a fast rate).
