Bow of US Navy World War II cruiser found on seabed in Solomon Islands

A team of explorers and scientists has located the bow of a US Navy ship that became heavily damaged in combat in the Solomon Islands during World War II.

The bow of the gun cruiser USS New Orleans was located on the seabed in Iron Bottom Sound, an area within the Solomons so named due to the large number of ships that sank there during the Battle of Guadalcanal from late 1942 to early 1943.

New Orleans, the lead ship of her class and a survivor of the attack on Pearl Harbor, was taking part in the Battle of Tassafaronga in the Solomons when she was hit by a Japanese torpedo on November 30, 1942. The explosion caused by the torpedo strike triggered another blast in the ship's forward magazines, which then tore off her bow and ended up killing 182 of her crew.

Successful damage control efforts by her surviving crew allowed the remaining two-thirds of New Orleans to be stabilised enough to eventually be brought back to Australia and then to the United States for repairs. A new bow was later fitted, and the cruiser returned to combat in the Pacific less than a year later; she was finally decommissioned from service in 1947.

The scientists and explorers aboard the research vessel Nautilus found New Orleans' original bow at a depth of approximately 675 metres while conducting seabed mapping using the University of New Hampshire’s unmanned surface vessel DriX and remotely operated vehicles provided by the Ocean Exploration Trust (OET).

The discovery of the bow is part of OET's ongoing expedition to document potential underwater cultural heritage sites in Iron Bottom Sound, where an estimated 111 shipwrecks have been lying dormant for over 80 years.