Cox says knowing exactly where the Ommaney Bay is will help the Navy keep an eye on it.ĬOX: These wrecks are war graves. Sunken warships in the region are often targeted by scrap-metal hunters. PRICE: Now archaeologists at the Naval History Command have confirmed the identification. NEIL KRUMBECK: And the shape of the bow - and you can see the beams that supported the flight deck, and, you know, you can match it up quite easily. Sea Scan's lead researcher, Neil Krumbeck, compared it with historical photos. Then in 2021, an Australian company called Sea Scan Survey found wreckage it thought likely to be the Ommaney Bay. A Navy destroyer eventually had to finish off the Ommaney Bay with a torpedo because of the danger to other ships. It took about five hours before rescuers finally pulled him from the water. A nearby sailor had an extra life jacket with a broken buckle and gave it to Cooper. PRICE: The surviving sailors tried to fight the fire, but the order came quickly to abandon ship.ĬOOPER: And I had to hurry. Below that were crew quarters where Cooper, a native of the North Carolina mountains, had just gone to take a shower.ĬOOPER: And so we just got down there, and boom, boom.

One punched through the flight deck and ignited the fully fueled aircraft in the hangar deck. The pilot released two bombs an instant before crashing into the ship. The pilot dove straight out of the blinding sun, and the ship's gunners didn't have time to fire even once. So the Japanese pilots figured, if I'm going to most likely die, I might as well make it count. ship, its chances of survival were about 1 out of 10. SAM COX: By that time of the war, our anti-aircraft defenses had become so good that if a Japanese aircraft found a U.S. Navy's Naval History and Heritage Command.

Retired Rear Admiral Sam Cox is director of the U.S. About a dozen lookouts were scanning the sky for kamikaze planes, which had become a major threat.

PRICE: On January 4, 1945, Cooper, then 22 years old, was a gunner aboard the USS Ommaney Bay. JAY PRICE, BYLINE: After watching a brief video divers took of the wreckage, 101-year-old Joe Cooper said only one word would do. The discovery off the coast of the Philippines has special resonance for one man in North Carolina. ships sunk in a World War II kamikaze attack. The Navy has formally identified the wreckage of one of the largest U.S.

World war II north pacific navy