July 27, 2021: Documenting a Blast Channel
Image courtesy of John Burns/Ships of Discovery Science Team. Download larger version (jpg, 5.3 MB).
At 0800 on September 15, 1944, the first waves of men in 73 amphibious tractors started for the beaches of Peleliu, one of the Palau Islands of the western Pacific. The subsequent battle was the bloodiest first-day landing of the entire Pacific campaign. Despite this, the amphibious element of the invasion is largely ignored in World War II histories.
In 2018, a team set out to conduct the first project of its kind in Peleliu to explore the landing beaches and fringing reef by conducting a comprehensive, systematic remote sensing search for the material remains from this forgotten battlefield.
The goals of the Peleliu’s Forgotten World War II Battlefield expedition were to locate the scattered material remains of Peleliu’s submerged battlefield, to photogrammetrically record those remains, and to survey the reef to determine if the scars from the underwater demolition team (UDT) mission to blow access ramps into the lagoon were still visible after 73 years. In this image, University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo graduate student Kailey Pascoe documents a narrow blast channel between two undamaged areas of coral.
From: Mission Summary.