The stern of the Imperial Japanese Navy destroyer Teruzuki at bottom of the ocean in the Solomon Islands on July 10, 2025. Depth charges are seen along the edge of the deck. (Courtesy of Ocean Exploration Trust)
(Tribune News Service) — A famed Japanese destroyer lost in 1942 has been found severed on the South Pacific seafloor — the result of a fantastic David-vs.-Goliath sea battle that remains the stuff of legend for the U.S. Navy.
The Imperial Japanese Navy destroyer Teruzuki was discovered July 10, at a depth of 2,624 feet in the Solomon Islands, the Ocean Exploration Trust reported Saturday in a news release.
Among the revelations made by a remotely operated camera: the 440-foot-long ship was split, with its stern hitting the seafloor 656 feet away from the hull, the trust noted.
And even after 83 years, the wreck remains armed with highly volatile munitions, scientists said.
“When the exploration team found a 19-meter-long (62-feet) severed segment of Teruzuki’s stern littered with depth charges, it disproved a long-held theory that it was depth charge explosions that sealed the ship’s fate,” the trust said in its release.
The ship’s forward artillery turrets remain pointing skyward, which proved to be the wrong direction, historians say.
To slay a giant
The Teruzuki was massive, stretching nearly 100 feet longer than a football field, yet its demise was dealt on Dec. 12, 1942, by two U.S. Navy PT boats that were scarcely 77 feet long, historians say.
A retelling of the sinking by the U.S. Naval Institute notes the PT-boats were firing their torpedoes at “shadows in the murk,” and only later realized it was the flagship of Rear Admiral Raizo Tanaka — known to historians as “Tenacious Tanaka” due to “his courage in leading nighttime attacks.”
“They heard a tremendous roar as thousands of pounds of water soared skyward,” the institute reports.
“One of their torpedoes had struck home near the aft of the ship, immediately rendering the Teruzuki unnavigable and throwing Tanaka himself unconscious to the deck. ... The whole scene (was) bathed in an orange glow as leaking fuel on the Teruzuki ignited, illuminating the crippled Japanese ship for miles.”
The fire eventually reached powder magazines and the Teruzuki “buckled under a massive explosion” and sank around 4:40 a.m., the institute says. Most of the crew was rescued by nearby Japanese ships.
Historians credit the sinking to PT-37 and PT-40, which escaped before nearby Japanese ships could return fire.
“In just a few minutes’ time, they had felled the single largest warship sunk by any PT boat during the war,” the institute reports.
Finding history
The location of Teruzuki was discovered by coincidence, when an uncrewed seafloor mapping vessel spotted evidence of something the size of a ship, the trust says.
Scientists sent a remotely operated vehicle to investigate and found a “never-before-seen ship” that was heavily damaged and deteriorating.
It was identified with the help of a Japanese researcher on the team, Hiroshi Ishii, of the Center for Southeast Asian Area Studies at Kyoto University in Japan.
Video recorded at the wreck is helping WWII historians rewrite the ship’s final hours, the trust says.
“Japanese naval vessel plans were kept highly secret during the war, so much so that no historical images of Teruzuki exist today,” the researchers said. “This survey is the first ever look at the vessel for this generation.”
The find was made as part of a 21-day expedition in the Iron Bottom Sound that is documenting known WWII wrecks and investigating sites that are suspected to be undiscovered military boats and planes.
Teruzuki is the 12th wreck to be explored during the expedition, which is broadcasting its dives live via Nautiluslive.org.
Five major naval battles were staged in the Iron Bottom Sound region in late 1942, resulting “in the loss of over 20,000 lives, 111 naval vessels, and 1,450 planes,” the trust says.
“To date, fewer than 100 of these US, Japanese, Australian, and New Zealand military ships and planes have been located,” trust officials said.
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