10.
SS Justicia For over 100 years a massive British troop
ship from the First World War has been sitting 235 feet(72 m) deep off the coast of Ireland.
The ship is called the SS Justicia, and it's a 776 foot(237 m) long ocean liner.
The vessel was originally destroyed by a German U-boat in 1918.
It was used by the military as a troopship and in July of 1918 was on its way to New
York from Belfast without a single passenger on board.
It was due to pick some people up, but was snared in a violent German trap before it
even made it out of sight of the UK.
23 miles(37 km) from Skerryvore in Scotland, a group of German submarines fired upon the
ship and its escort, a pair of destroyers.
Amazingly, the Justicia remained floating for a full day.
It didn't sink until the U-boat returned the day after and fired even more torpedoes at
the ship!
It killed 16 crew members before plunging to the seafloor.
It seems that during the first attack, the German sub didn't have enough torpedoes to
finish the job and had to go reload!
These days, the ship hasn't moved an inch from where it was sunk on that dreadful day.
It's rusted, covered in barnacles, and is too far away and too deep for recreational
divers to visit.
The only people that have gone down to look at the ship are world-class technical divers.
It takes about 30 minutes to dive down, but another five hours to get back up to avoid
the bends. 9.
Rusted Sherman Tanks The Thomas Donaldson was part of a convoy
entering the Barents Sea on March 20, 1945.
It was an American merchant ship carrying a huge load of Sherman tanks, as well as other
very important supplies for the war effort.
It carried over 7600 tons of general cargo, along with 6000 tons of ammunition.
It was a wildly important vessel, and it was very important it reached its destination
to get the weapons to the Allied forces.
Sadly, as it moved near the shore of Kildin Island off the coast of Russia, it was attacked
by a group of U-boats.
A torpedo struck the engine room, one officer was killed, 2 crewmen were instantly blown
apart, and the engines were destroyed.
The captain had no choice but to order everyone to get into the lifeboats, for the ammunition
was at risk of exploding!
In the end, the ship sank right there off the coast of the island.
Recently, divers discovered this ancient war vessel sitting over 150 feet(46 m) deep.
An exceptionally well-preserved tank was rescued from the ship and brought to the surface.
It is well preserved, but still in pretty rough shape.
As of now it’s unknown if it's going to be refurbished and put in a collection or
simply sent to a scrapyard. 8.
Mi-6 Chopper in a Swamp There is an Mi-6 war helicopter sitting abandoned
in a Russian swamp.
It's been there for about 40 years, ever since it crash landed on August 8, 1981.
The helicopter had stopped to refuel at the Khalampur Base.
It filled up with gas, then took off to go wherever it was going.
After about 5 minutes, both engines ceased function and the helicopter plunged into the
water of the swamp.
Nobody was injured, but the helicopter was too seriously damaged to be salvaged.
An investigation afterward revealed that the refueling workers at the base had made a mistake.
They somehow filled the tank with gas and water, causing the engines to fail.
The helicopter is still sitting in the swamp to this day, too heavy for anyone to pick
up and not valuable enough for any company to salvage.
7.
The USS San Diego Scientists have recently learned what sank
the legendary World War One vessel the USS San Diego.
It took six visits and the most sophisticated technology, but historians now know exactly
what happened.
In 1918, it was a German mine that sank the cruiser off the coast of New York, plunging
it to the bottom of the ocean.
As you probably know already, the United States entered the war on April 6, 1917.
Over the next year, they transported over two million Americans to fight.
By the summer of 1918, 10,000 soldiers were landing in Europe every day.
Sometimes, the transport ships were lost to the enemy – but not too frequently.
And the ones that were destroyed were usually destroyed in European waters.
That made the sinking of the USS San Diego quite a bit of a mystery, since it was only
8 miles(13 km) from Long Island.
You see, there were no ships spotted in the area.
An early inquiry blamed a rogue sea mine, but people wondered if it hadn't been a crew
accident, sabotage, or something even more mysterious.
It wasn't until a team of investigators were finally able to locate the ship on the bottom
of the ocean that they solved the mystery a century later.
Researchers now believe it was the German submarine U-156 that laid the mine that sank
the ship.
During U-156’s 13 months active in the war, it was responsible for sinking at least 44
Allied ships.
What's your favorite maritime mystery from war?
Let us know in the comments below and be sure to hit subscribe before the end of the video!
:) 6.
The Ghost Fleet Mallows Bay is the graveyard of the ghost
fleet, a marine sanctuary in Maryland rich in wildlife and native plants.
This place has an abundance of fish.
There are beavers and otters, and even wild deer running around!
It also happens to be home to historic shipwrecks from the American Civil War.
Sure, there are thousands of rare birds that nest in Mallows Bay, but there are also over
185 vessels scrapped here, with their ugly hulls rotting above and below the surface.
The wooden bodies of ships once used for battle are now home to nesting blue herons, with
trees literally growing out of the boats like floating forests.
In fact, the only way you can tell these are ships is by their shape.
There are just about 200 boat-shaped birds’ nests dotting Mallows Bay, artificial islands
where ospreys and bald eagles spend their days relaxing.
But how did the boats get here in the first place?
Most of the ships were wooden cargo vessels powered by steam, originally built to aid
the Americans in World War One.
In a very short time, the United States built thousands of wooden ships and sent them across
the ocean to Europe, usually carrying supplies to help the fight against Germany.
But these ships were almost always destroyed once they got to Europe.
German submarines sank about half the vessels sent by America.
Then in 1918, the war was over and there were a lot of ships left unusable.
So, the majority of the fleet was brought to Mallows Bay, where they were stripped of
any important metal or reusable parts and left to rot.
5.
World War 2 Japanese Submarine There's a strange new VR experience bringing
to life the wreckage of a Japanese submarine that was blown up twice!
It's called the I-124 submarine, and it's sitting on the bottom of the ocean 50 nautical
miles(93 km) from the Australian city of Darwin.
It's considered a protected war grave because 80 crewmen were on board when it was blown
to pieces by Allied forces in 1942.
Being a protected war grave means that nobody is allowed on the ship.
The corpses of the crew, if they haven't been picked apart by sea life, are technically
buried inside the twisted metal of the vessel.
This is why the VR experience is so interesting.
According to maritime archaeologist John McCarthy of Flinders University, the experience really
gives people the chance to see an amazing piece of World War Two wreckage up close.
And they don't even have to get wet.
The experience was created by using historical plans for the ship, photographs, and high-tech
scans.
As for being blown up twice, that's a bizarre story.
Salvagers discovered the wreckage in 1972 after searching for it for six weeks.
Even though the Japanese government already considered the wreckage a protected grave,
the salvagers wanted to pick the wreck apart and sell the metal.
They believed they could get around $10 million for the scrap.
However, the Japanese government wasn't having any of it.
The salvagers were so angry that they bombed the ship in an attempt to force negotiations.
But it didn't work and the salvagers were forced out of the area.
4.
Sunken Machine Guns Three machine guns were discovered in the
water off Australia’s Sunshine Coast.
According to the Queensland Air Museum, the guns likely came from a World War Two airplane,
probably an American Vought Corsair fighter.
No one knows exactly where the airplane is, but chances are it can’t be too far from
its guns.
The weapons were originally found after getting tangled in some fishing nets of Point Cartwright,
along with a section of the wing.
The guns are 0.5 Browning machine guns, 100% American.
What were they doing off the Sunshine Coast?
Museum president Cliff Robinson says that after the war was over in the Pacific, the
Americans didn't have much more use for their old and outdated aircraft.
So, they simply dumped them in the ocean.
Dozens and dozens of these flying machines were tossed in the ocean off the coast of
Australia, and every now and then one of them is discovered in a fishing net.
It’s just that this time, only the guns seemed to have survived.
The rest of the plane is probably broken in fragments on the ocean floor.
3.
C-130 Hercules In the country of Jordan, off the coast of
Aqaba, there is a whole host of sunken vehicles that have been turned into an artificial scuba
diving paradise.
One of the most recent vehicles to join the ranks was a C-130 Hercules, a massive transport
aircraft.
But it’s hardly the only piece of military hardware that's been submerged around 100
feet(30 m) deep in the ocean.
There are troop carriers, tanks, helicopters, all of them put here to be an underwater museum
experience for tourists.
While there are obviously other places in the world with more authentic wrecks, like
the Chuuk Lagoon in the Pacific Ocean, they aren’t quite as accessible as here.
The cool thing about diving in Aqaba is that you can do it right from the shores of the
Red Sea.
With a snorkel or a scuba, or even on a glass-floored boat, you can see military helicopters parked
on the seafloor, and even tanks lined up in battle formation among the coral.
2.
Aircraft-Carrying Submarine The Imperial Japanese Navy once had a mega
submarine, a true beast of an underwater vehicle that was even able to carry aircrafts.
It was an aircraft-carrier that could also submerge itself entirely underwater and move
through the waves like a shark.
It was called the I-400, and it was lost in 1946 when U.S. forces captured it, destroyed
it, and let it sink to the bottom of the ocean off the coast of Hawaii.
But after all this time, the I-400 has finally been discovered.
It was found hiding under 2300 feet(701 m) of water near the southwestern coast of Oahu.
The discovery was thanks to Terry Kerby from the Hawai’i Undersea Research Laboratory.
He's been in the business of discovering sunken treasures since 1992, and this was his latest
project.
But just how big is the I-400?
The wreckage is longer than a football field.
They called this submarine the Sen-Toku class, and it was the biggest ever built up until
nuclear powered subs came along in the 1960s.
It had a massive range of 37,500 miles(60,350 km), capable of traveling around the world
one and a half times without refueling.
To this day, such an impressive travel capability has not been replicated by any other diesel-electric
submarine.
Plus, it was able to hold up to three folding-wing float planes, which could be launched by a
catapult immediately after the submarine resurfaced.
Each of these planes was able to carry an 1800-pound(816 kg) bomb, with enough range
to easily be dropped on the US mainland. 1.
The HMS Hood The bell from a World War Two battle cruiser
was recently recovered from the bottom of the North Atlantic Ocean.
It was thanks to none other than Microsoft billionaire Paul Allen, who led the expedition
to discover the remains of the British battle cruiser the HMS Hood.
It was May of 1941 when the battle cruiser was in hot pursuit of the deadly German battleship
the Bismarck.
You see, the Bismarck had been like a shark in the ocean, attacking American ships as
they tried to send supplies to Great Britain.
It was an absolute terrorizer of the sea, and a major issue for supply lines.
So, the HMS Hood committed to taking down the evil German ship once and for all.
But just 15 minutes after the Hood fired at the Bismarck, it suffered a direct hit.
The HMS exploded, 1415 crew members were killed, and it sank to the bottom of the Denmark Strait.
74 years later, Paul Allen funded an operation to go down to the creepy remains of the HMS
Hood and retrieve its bell.
They had to use a remotely operated vehicle launched from Allen's personal yacht, but
the project was a huge success.
The bell was handed over to the Ministry of Defense and Royal Navy as a gift to commemorate
fallen sailors.
Thanks for watching!
What’s your favorite sunken vehicle from wartime?
Let us know in the comments below and don’t forget to subscribe!
See you next time, bye! :)