A few months later, in March 2021, when the Limiting Factor’s searchlight beam illuminated the Johnston at a depth of 21,180 feet, or about four miles, it was the deepest shipwreck ever found.
(Nearly 80 years after World War II, their voices recall the struggle)
Such depths are hard to fathom—both literally and figuratively. Less than 2 percent of the world’s oceans are as deep as the submarine cliff on which the remains of the Johnston are poised. The famously deep and hard-to-reach wreck of the Titanic is a mere 12,500 feet below the surface.
The Johnston lies in what oceanographers call the hadal zone, also known as the hadalpelagic zone, named for Hades, the Greek god of the underworld. As with the mythical underworld, no light or warmth from the sun reaches this murky layer of the ocean at depths of between about 19,700 and 36,000 feet. Darkness reigns—the only occasional feeble glow being bioluminescence from the otherworldly creatures that inhabit these depths. Temperatures hover around freezing, and the pressure at 20,000 feet is a crushing four and a half tons per square inch.
In two eight-hour dives, Vescovo filmed and surveyed the ghostly wreckage, noting details of the damage the Johnston sustained in the fray: its flanks shot through, the rear third of the ship missing where it was struck by an 18-inch shell from the mighty Japanese battleship Yamato, and a hole from a six-inch shell beneath the bridge. The wreck’s empty torpedo racks are an eloquent sign of the no-holds-barred fight the crew put up. Its five-inch guns still point to the starboard side in the direction of enemy ships when it sank.
