Japanese researchers believe they have located the wreck of the Imperial Japanese Navy battleship Hiei – designed by a British naval architect and built with British components before being pitted against the Royal Navy in the early exchanges of the Second World War in the Far East.

The Hiei was the first Japanese battleship to be lost in the conflict and members of the Tokyo-based Asian-Pacific Remembrance Honouring Association have been searching for the wreck for several years.

Badly damaged in an encounter in November 1942 with US Navy units off Guadalcanal, in the Solomon Islands, the Hiei was under tow when it was subsequently attacked by US bombers and the order was given to abandon ship.

The vessel drifted at night from its last confirmed position before sinking with the loss of 188 of her crew, making determining its final resting place more difficult.

The Japanese group has used sonar to map the seabed around the Solomons and to identify anomalies. In late November a previously unknown wreck was discovered about 7 miles north of Guadalcanal.