Winston
Lorenzo von Matterhorn
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Video of USS Wasp wreck at link.
The Epic Hunt for a Lost World War II Aircraft Carrier
In 1942, a volley of torpedoes sent the U.S.S. Wasp to the bottom of the Pacific. For decades, the families of the dead wondered where in the lightless depths of the ocean the ship could possibly be. Earlier this year, a team of wreck hunters set out to find it.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/13/magazine/uss-wasp-lost-world-war-ii-aircraft-carrier.html
On the afternoon of Sept. 15, the Wasp was in the Coral Sea, escorting a convoy of United States Marines bound for Guadalcanal, in the Solomon Islands, when it was hit by torpedoes fired at close range by a Japanese submarine. Explosions immediately rocked the ship. Many men were killed instantly. The ship’s magazines and fuel stores detonated like bombs. The hangar deck, where most of the planes were stored, was soon entirely ablaze. At the same time, water rushed into the breaches in the ship’s hull, and the Wasp lurched 15 degrees to its starboard side, like a boxer buckling at the knee after a body shot.
The commanding officer of the Wasp, Capt. Forrest P. Sherman, swung the ship around, so that the flames and smoke blew toward the ocean rather than across the deck, but it made no difference. More than 300 feet of his ship, from the bow to the central “island” containing the bridge, was subsumed by an uncontrollable inferno. Within minutes, the Wasp had become a vision of hell.
Half an hour after the strikes, Sherman realized the situation was hopeless. He made the order to abandon ship. The worst-injured were loaded onto rafts. Many other survivors simply jumped into the flaming waters around the ship with only life preservers, flotsam or mattresses to keep them afloat.
Five hours after the Wasp was hit, it was irreparably damaged but still drifting with the current. The U.S.S. Lansdowne was ordered to scuttle the carrier with a volley of torpedoes. The Wasp slipped below the surface at 2100 — 9 p.m. — then sank through more than two and a half miles of water to the bottom, where it has remained ever since, a giant carcass surrounded by miles of desert, in the permanent midnight of the deep ocean floor. In total, 194 men on the Wasp were deemed “killed or missing” on Sept. 15, 1942.
On Jan. 2 of this year, a research vessel called the Petrel set out from Honiara, on Guadalcanal, to find the Wasp.
The Epic Hunt for a Lost World War II Aircraft Carrier
In 1942, a volley of torpedoes sent the U.S.S. Wasp to the bottom of the Pacific. For decades, the families of the dead wondered where in the lightless depths of the ocean the ship could possibly be. Earlier this year, a team of wreck hunters set out to find it.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/13/magazine/uss-wasp-lost-world-war-ii-aircraft-carrier.html
On the afternoon of Sept. 15, the Wasp was in the Coral Sea, escorting a convoy of United States Marines bound for Guadalcanal, in the Solomon Islands, when it was hit by torpedoes fired at close range by a Japanese submarine. Explosions immediately rocked the ship. Many men were killed instantly. The ship’s magazines and fuel stores detonated like bombs. The hangar deck, where most of the planes were stored, was soon entirely ablaze. At the same time, water rushed into the breaches in the ship’s hull, and the Wasp lurched 15 degrees to its starboard side, like a boxer buckling at the knee after a body shot.
The commanding officer of the Wasp, Capt. Forrest P. Sherman, swung the ship around, so that the flames and smoke blew toward the ocean rather than across the deck, but it made no difference. More than 300 feet of his ship, from the bow to the central “island” containing the bridge, was subsumed by an uncontrollable inferno. Within minutes, the Wasp had become a vision of hell.
Half an hour after the strikes, Sherman realized the situation was hopeless. He made the order to abandon ship. The worst-injured were loaded onto rafts. Many other survivors simply jumped into the flaming waters around the ship with only life preservers, flotsam or mattresses to keep them afloat.
Five hours after the Wasp was hit, it was irreparably damaged but still drifting with the current. The U.S.S. Lansdowne was ordered to scuttle the carrier with a volley of torpedoes. The Wasp slipped below the surface at 2100 — 9 p.m. — then sank through more than two and a half miles of water to the bottom, where it has remained ever since, a giant carcass surrounded by miles of desert, in the permanent midnight of the deep ocean floor. In total, 194 men on the Wasp were deemed “killed or missing” on Sept. 15, 1942.
On Jan. 2 of this year, a research vessel called the Petrel set out from Honiara, on Guadalcanal, to find the Wasp.
