Scientists they have discovered part of a ship that was blown off a U.S. Navy destroyer during World War II in Alaska’s Aleutian Islands.
Researchers announced Wednesday that found the stern from the USS Abner Read last month in the Bering Sea, nearly 75 years after it hit a mine left by the Japanese after a bloody battle in the islands. It was the only one of the war fought on North American soil.
The blast killed 71 men aboard. The remaining 250 crew members made the ship watertight, and it limped back to the West Coast for repairs.
The Abner Read, named for a Civil War naval officer, went on to fight in the South Pacific before it was destroyed by a kamikaze attack in the Philippines in 1944.
