The largest ship graveyard in the world. Chuuk, then called Truk, was Japan’s main forward naval base in the central Pacific, and over three days in February 1944 American carrier aircraft came for it. Operation Hailstone sank twelve smaller warships, light cruisers, destroyers and auxiliaries, and thirty-two merchant ships, and destroyed 275 aircraft, most of them on the ground. The base never recovered. What is down there now is a fleet sitting upright in warm clear water with very little current: holds still loaded, aircraft, vehicles, the fittings of ships that were alongside when it started. Jacques Cousteau filmed it in 1971 and wreck divers have been coming ever since. Federated States of Micronesia.
Chuuk, Micronesia
See it on the map
