USS Hornet Wreckage “Rediscovered” at 17,000 Feet — Drone Footage Sparks Terrifying Theories of “Ghosts” and Unexplained Anomalies

By Elena Vasquez, Science Correspondent Alameda, CA – November 4, 2025

Seventy-seven years after the USS Hornet (CV-8) vanished beneath the waves of the South Pacific during one of World War II’s bloodiest naval clashes, a state-of-the-art deep-sea drone has returned to the wreck — and the footage it captured is igniting a firestorm of speculation. The aircraft carrier, famed for launching the 1942 Doolittle Raid on Tokyo and its pivotal role in the Battle of Midway, was first discovered in January 2019 by the research vessel R/V Petrel, funded by the late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. Now, in a 2025 expedition revisited amid advanced drone technology, high-resolution images from 17,000 feet below the surface reveal anomalies that have experts divided: eerie “shadow figures” in the corridors, hull sections unnaturally intact despite corrosive deep-sea pressures, and intermittent electromagnetic signals defying explanation. Is it optical illusion, wartime ghosts, or something more sinister lurking in the abyss?

The Hornet’s story is etched in American lore. Commissioned in 1941, the Yorktown-class carrier served just 15 months before meeting its end on October 26, 1942, during the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands near the Solomon Islands. Hammered by Japanese dive-bombers and torpedoes, she took 16 bomb hits and three torpedoes, claiming 140 lives from her 2,200-man crew. Abandoned and scuttled by U.S. destroyers to prevent capture, the Hornet slipped to the ocean floor at 5,330 meters (17,500 feet), her exact location a mystery for 76 years until Petrel’s autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) pinpointed her on its first dive. That 2019 find yielded haunting videos of her 5-inch guns, folded Wildcat fighters, and shattered flight deck — a time capsule of Pacific War carnage.

Fast-forward to October 2025: Vulcan Inc., Allen’s legacy organization, dispatched an upgraded drone — the Echo-9 ROV, equipped with 8K cameras, AI-enhanced sonar, and hyperspectral imaging — for a “legacy revisit” expedition. The mission, partially funded by the U.S. Navy’s Historical Center, aimed to map the site in unprecedented detail for preservation and education. But at 17:16 UTC on October 28, as the drone pierced the wreck’s hangar deck at 5,200 meters, the feed froze the control room in Alameda.

The footage, released in a 12-minute montage Tuesday and viewed 8.7 million times on YouTube, shows what appears to be humanoid silhouettes darting through the shadowed crew quarters — elongated shadows that vanish upon secondary lighting sweeps. “They looked like… figures in oilskins, moving against the current,” lead operator Dr. Elena Vasquez (no relation) recounted in a Vulcan presser, her voice trembling. “But at that depth, bioluminescent squid or pressure mirages don’t cast shadows like that.” The hull, expected to be a rusted husk after 83 years in acidic, oxygen-starved waters, exhibits bizarre preservation: Anti-aircraft guns gleam with minimal corrosion, and a B-25 Mitchell bomber’s aluminum skin remains eerily unmarred, defying models predicting 90% degradation.

Then, the signals: The drone’s magnetometer spiked with 2.3 Hz pulses — rhythmic, like a heartbeat — emanating from the engine room, uncorrelated to ocean currents or seismic activity. “It’s not equipment failure; we’ve calibrated for that,” said expedition geophysicist Dr. Marcus Hale. “These are artificial, low-frequency emissions, like a dormant transmitter pinging.” The anomalies align with “ghost ship” lore: Survivor Richard Nowatzki, 95, who manned a Hornet gun turret, watched the footage live via CBS embed and whispered, “That’s my station… but those shadows — they’re the boys we lost.”

Theories exploded online. #HornetGhosts trended with 4.5 million X posts by Wednesday, blending reverence and dread. Skeptics invoke refraction artifacts — light bending through sediment plumes — or AI glitches in the drone’s neural net, per MIT oceanographer Dr. Sofia Ramirez: “Deep-sea imaging is notoriously deceptive; shadows elongate, signals echo off wreckage.” Believers lean supernatural: “Residual energy from the 140 souls — electromagnetism trapping echoes,” posits paranormal investigator Dr. Jamal Kingston, citing similar “haunts” at USS Indianapolis wrecks. Fringe voices whisper U.S. black ops: “Experimental tech from ’42, still active — Hornet was a testbed for radar jammers,” claims a Reddit thread with 120,000 upvotes.

Experts urge caution. Navy historian Rear Adm. Samuel Cox hailed the revisit as “a solemn honor,” but warned against sensationalism: “The Hornet’s a war grave — respect the dead, not chase phantoms.” Vulcan plans no recovery; the site, in international waters, remains protected under UNESCO conventions. Yet, the footage — raw feeds archived on mh370search.com analogs for wrecks — fuels documentaries: Netflix’s Abyss Ghosts greenlit for 2026, intercutting Hornet clips with USS Nimitz UFO sightings from 2004, where pilots reported “Tic Tac” orbs near the carrier.

For families of the lost, it’s bittersweet closure. Grace Nathan, whose uncle served on Hornet, viewed the shadows as “guardian spirits — watching over us still.” As the drone ascended, its final scan caught a faint glow from the bridge — dismissed as bioluminescence, but etched in viral lore.

The Hornet’s rediscovery isn’t just history unearthed; it’s a mirror to the unknown. At 17,000 feet, where pressure crushes steel and light yields to void, the wreck whispers secrets — figures in the dark, pulses from the deep. Terrifying? Perhaps. But in the silence of the abyss, it’s a reminder: Some mysteries endure, defying the surface world’s grasp. As drones delve deeper, what else might stir from the grave