Imaged: Lost 52 Project

The submarine USS Grayback, one of the most successful US Navy submarines in World War II, has been located in 1,400 feet of water off Okinawa. The submarine was sunk in February 1944, on her tenth war patrol after sinking 21,594 tons of Japanese shipping. 

The New York Times reports that the Grayback was thought to have gone down in the open ocean 100 miles east-southeast of Okinawa. But the Navy had unknowingly relied on a flawed translation of Japanese war records that got one digit wrong in the latitude and longitude of the spot where the Grayback had probably met its end.

The error went undetected until last year, when an amateur researcher, Yutaka Iwasaki, was going through the wartime records of the Imperial Japanese Navy base at Sasebo. The files included daily reports received by radio from the naval air base at Naha, Okinawa — and the entry for Feb. 27, 1944, contained a promising lead.

The Lost 52 Project learned of the corrected location of the Grayback. The Lost 52 Project is a privately funded organization founded by undersea explorer Tim Taylor and his wife, Christine Dennison, to locate US Navy submarines lost during World War II. Of the 52 lost American submarines, 47 are considered discoverable; the other five were run aground or destroyed in known locations. Seven of the lost submarines have been found; five by the Lost 52 Project. 

USS Grayback Discovered