SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA—According to an Associated Press report, a 75-foot piece of USS Abner Read has been found under almost 300 feet of water in the Bering Sea, near Alaska’s Aleutian Islands, by a team of scientists from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, and the University of Delaware. Abner Read struck a Japanese mine while looking for Japanese submarines during the 1943 Battle of Attu, the only World War II battle fought in North America. Seventy-one men were lost in the blast, but the remaining 250 men on the ship were able to make it watertight for the journey back to the West Coast of the United States. The ship was repaired and eventually sank after a kamikaze attack during the Battle of Leyte Gulf in the Philippines in 1944. To read about the discovery of the wreck of another World War II ship, go to “Finding Indianapolis, which was one of ARCHAEOLOGY's Top 10 Discoveries of 2017.”
