Foreign Affairs

Off the Philippines

Wreck of the Montevideo Maru, the search team locates the ship on the seabed

The Japanese freighter was torpedoed on 1 July 1942 by an American submarine whose crew was unaware that it was carrying Allied prisoners of war, mostly Australians.

22/04/2023

The search lasted 12 days, explains the underwater archaeology company Silentworld Foundation, during which an underwater drone equipped with sonar was also used. But it took more than five years to plan the mission.

The videomaker and founding member of the company, Max Uechtritz, recounts the discovery: "We were doing a survey and the instrument had run out of battery. He did one last lap before being brought back on board and then the data came. We waited six hours for them to be processed. And it was there. It was immediately clear that it was a ship. It was in two pieces, bow and stern, 500 meters apart. So we realized we had found it."