New Footage Surfaces of Giant WWII Japanese Submarine 'Once Lost and Now Found

Two years after its initial sighting, researchers returned to the sunken I-400 submarine outside of Pearl Harbor to take more detailed observations and, lucky for us, their cameras were rolling.

The submarine, which was large enough to launch three bombers, was mapped and filmed in a detailed survey by researchers at the University of Hawaii, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and a team from Japan. According to the university, the researchers also found the submarine's bell a short distance away.

Image source: YouTube

Image source: YouTube

Image source: YouTube

"We made a lucky guess where to start when we approached the main hull of the I-400 from the northwest," Terry Kerby, chief submarine pilot of the Hawaiʻi Undersea Research Laboratory, told the university. "Our guess started to pay off when the giant hangar door came into view, followed by the conning tower and hangar. Many items were amazingly intact for something that had ripped out of the hull of a sinking 400-foot-long submarine."

Watch some of the video:

When the I-400 was found in 2013, the university gave a little bit more history on how it was sunk at the time:

At the end of WWII, the U.S. Navy captured five Japanese subs, including the I-400, and brought them to Pearl Harbor for inspection. When the Soviet Union demanded access to the submarines in 1946 under the terms of the treaty that ended the war, the U.S. Navy sank the subs off the coast of Oʻahu and claimed to have no information on their precise location.  The goal was to keep their advanced technology out of Soviet hands during the opening chapters of the Cold War.  HURL has now successfully located four of these five lost submarines.

This video shows the initial sighting of the submarine:

"Anytime we find something once lost and now found, I think it reminds us of more than history," James Delgado, director of NOAA's Maritime Heritage Program, told KITV-TV. "It reminds us that here, even in our own backyard, there's things that can be found, discoveries to be made. And while that's interesting for us who are a little older, I think for young people in particular, it tells you not everything's been done."

(H/T: Daily Mirror)