Past 4,000m (13,123ft) is the Abyssal Zone, with water temperatures hovering just above freezing and dissolved oxygen only about three-quarters that at the ocean surface. But Johnston's death dive went far, far beyond this. It is in waters as deep as this that the RMS Titanic sank on its ill-fated maiden voyage in 1912. The average depth of the world's oceans is 3,688m (12,100ft), more than two miles deep. What use are camouflaging scales when your predators – nightmarish creatures that hang suspended in the dark – have no eyes?
Some are blind and others almost transparent. The fish that live here look little like the ones that swim near the surface. But down here they consume too much energy to be worth it. Eyes are useless, and so are fast-twitch muscle fibres, which elsewhere prey might rely upon to escape predators. The animals that do live here have evolved to do so in cold and relentless dark. The water is freezing cold and this gloomy zone is sparsely inhabited by life. No plants or phytoplankton grow here as the Sun's light cannot penetrate this far down. At 1,000m (3,280ft) Johnston's ruptured hull would have plunged through waters only a few degrees above freezing into what oceanographers call the Bathyal Zone, also known as the midnight zone. The temperature would have plummeted the further it sank. Past 200m (656ft) Johnston would have entered the twilight zone, a vast layer nearly a kilometre deep which marks the end of the effect of the Sun's light on the ocean. Past 100m (328ft) sunlight would have begun to fade. It sank through layer after layer of the Philippine Sea, distinct stages which grow ever darker, colder and inhospitable.
No-one knows quite how long it took for USS Johnston to reach the ocean floor. If you were to drop Mt Everest at the deepest point of the Philippine Trench, the Galathea Depth, its summit would still be more than a mile (1.6km) underwater. It skirts around the eastern side of Samar Island, on the seaward side of Leyte Gulf. Samar Island sits on the edge of a vast marine canyon known as the Philippine Trench, which runs for some 820 miles (1,320km) along the Philippines and Indonesian coastline. Rather than a smooth decline, they instead drop steeply to great depths. But the waters Johnston sank in are very different. So this is where most ships founder and sink. Ships follow trade routes to ports, and coastal waters offer the chance of sanctuary if the weather turns nasty. Most of the world's shipwrecks are found in shallow coastal waters. Survivors reported one of the Japanese destroyer captains saluting as it slid beneath the waves. It was only after two hours of fighting, with the ship hit by dozens of shells and its survivors clinging to the rear of the battered vessel, the ship finally sank, taking with it 186 of her 327 crew. Just after 07:00, Johnston was hit by shells from the Yamato, but fought for another two hours, peppering much larger enemy ships with shells and scaring off a flotilla of IJN destroyers trying to attack the lightly armed American aircraft carriers. One of them was a destroyer called USS Johnston. The voyage which named thousands of species.How climate change is threatening New York's shipwrecks.The small US force prevented a potential massacre, but their resistance came at a heavy cost.
The small, relatively unarmoured American destroyers came as close as possible to the Japanese warships, preventing them using their powerful long-range guns. The US resistance was so fierce that it prompted the Japanese commander, Vice Admiral Takeo Kurita, to turn his fleet around, believing he was now facing the bulk of the US forces. Massively outnumbered, the small US flotilla fought against overwhelming odds, pressing home their attack against the much larger and better-armed Japanese ships. The battle took place off the island of Samar. A small force – Task Force 77, mainly destroyers and unarmoured aircraft carriers – found itself battling a much larger Japanese formation. While the wider battle largely saw the US outnumber the Japanese fleet, one crucial action was different. Nearly 30 Japanese ships were sunk, and many of the remainder – including the biggest battleship ever built, the Yamato – would be so badly damaged they would be largely confined to port for the rest of the war. The battle had two major effects – it prevented the Japanese interfering with the American invasion of the Philippines (which had been captured by the Japanese nearly four years earlier) and effectively knocked the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) out of action for the rest of World War Two.
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