World War II has been a lifetime ago, but there are still things happening that bring us back to those days. Some of those happenings even bring about the closure that has been long overdue.
This recently occurred when an ocean explorer named Tim Taylor led a team and found five World War II subs on the bottom of the ocean.
Those wrecks were found in 2010 and were part of seven total submarine wrecks that were discovered. With the size and complexity of the ocean, you can imagine why he compared finding the submarines to finding a “needle in a haystack.”
When those submarines went to the bottom of the ocean, there were 288 men on board. Some of them have been on the bottom of the ocean for 80 years and the families never fully knew what happened, nor did they have the location of their loved ones.
According to NBC News, Taylor spoke at an awards ceremony in Washington DC at the Naval Yard, saying:
“It’s not about finding wrecks. It’s not about finding ships. The loss of someone even 78 years ago, and not knowing where they are, leaves a hole in families. The importance of our work is to connect families and bring some type of closure and peace even generations later.”
NBC further reported that Taylor is also the son of a Navy veteran from World War II. In 2010, he began researching the locations of lost submarines using underwater vehicles. The first wreck, the R-12 was found off the Florida coast. It sunk in 1943 with 42 people on board.
After the R-12 was found, Taylor and his wife, Christine Dennison, began the Lost 52 Project and continued to search for the wrecks of 52 US Navy submarines over the following decade.
So far, submarines have been found off the coast of Hawaii, Panama, Alaska, Japan, and the Philippines.