Sunken Aircraft Carrier Rediscovered off California Coast

[Sailor]

SAN FRANCISCO -- Scientists have rediscovered a mostly intact World War II-era U.S. aircraft carrier used in atomic bomb tests and then sunk at a secret location off the Northern California coast decades ago.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration located and recorded video of the U.S.S. Independence as part of a mission to map an estimated 300 historic shipwrecks in the waters outside San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge.

Images captured by a remotely controlled miniature submarine showed the Independence sitting upright about 30 miles (50 kilometers) off the coast near the Farallon Islands. A plane is visible in a hangar.

The Independence operated in the Pacific during the war and served as a target ship for two Bikini Atoll atomic bomb tests in 1946.

More here:
www.military.com/daily-news/2015/04/18/sunken-aircraft-carrier-rediscovered-off-california-coast.html?ESRC=eb.nl

It's amazing how many ships survived both tests. You guys know about Battleship Nevada, the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen capsized and sank in shallow water in Kwajalein Atoll where her stern sticks up up out of the water. She was being towed to Pearl Harbor for examination when she began flooding.

Incidentially, after she was awarded as a war prize to the US the ship was commissioned into the USN as USS Prinz Eugen.

[warrior1972]

Sorry that I took so long on this. So THAT'S what happened to Prinz Eugen. I always wondered about her fate after Bismarck.

Helluva diary.

[Sailor]

Hey, no worries shipmate. If I remember correctly all the other members of Prinz Eugen's class came to grief during the war while she seems to have lived a charmed life up until Bikini. Not surprising that the heavily armored ships seemed to stand up to the nukes better than the lighter ones. I read somewhere that Nevada, Prinz Eugen and a few others could have brought their crews home even though the ships themselves were total writeoffs, but didn't need exterior lighting.

I also read that there was a surfaced submarine (US fleet boat) that even though she was wrecked topside the examination team was able to start her diesels.

I think Independence survived mainly because she started life as a Cleveland class cruiser but was converted to a light fleet carrier while still on the builders ways, so she had a good deal of the armor that larger Essex class carriers lacked. I believe Saratoga (battlecruiser hull) foundered because she had taken so much damage during the war from bombs and torpedos that under the stresses she was subjected to repaired seams opened and allowed progressive flooding. Her large uptake structure (stack) falling over and internal fires also added to the accumulated damage.