Posted on 04/17/2015 7:14:21 PM PDT by logi_cal869
In a ghostly reminder of the Bay Area's nuclear heritage, scientists announced Thursday they have captured the first clear images of a radioactivity-polluted World War II aircraft carrier that rests on the ocean floor 30 miles off the coast of Half Moon Bay.
The USS Independence saw combat at Wake Island and other decisive battles against Japan in 1944 and 1945 and was later blasted with radiation in two South Pacific nuclear tests. The Navy deliberately sank the contaminated ship in 1951 south of the Farallon Islands.
The rediscovery of the USS Independence offers a fascinating glimpse into American military history and raises old questions about the safety of the Farallon Islands Radioactive Waste Dump -- a vast region overlapping what is now a marine sanctuary where the federal government dumped nearly 48,000 barrels of low-level radioactive waste between 1946 and 1970.
(Excerpt) Read more at mercurynews.com ...
It was drenched with fallout contaminated seawater, most of which has likely long since washed away.
Actually the Independence was a CVL, a light carrier as opposed to a CVE or escort carrier. The Independence class consisted of 9 ships I believe, I’m working from memory here, and they were built on cruiser hulls. They could keep up with the big fleet carriers but they carried about half the air group of a fleet carrier, maybe 36-42 birds. The CVEs could only operate maybe 12-16 aircraft.
Just what FR needs...a geo-morphologist.
There were a lot of these kinds of tests, particularly with testing of the new H-Bombs. My dad got sent over there for some time, we never really heard about what he did, but in his gear when he came back were a bunch of these on chains he wore while there:
http://www.orau.org/ptp/collection/radiac/DT60.htm
You can see in some movie accounts where the ships were boarded and inspected immediately afterwards. In one movie, scientists that were there with radiometers saw the extent and boogied out.
Years later he developed a lot of medical problems and had to be medically retired. My mom fought for years with the VA over causes. It got to the point they said “Prove he was there.” He didn’t save copies of the orders and he wasn’t on a set of orders that would be catalogued by his name only.
After years researching and snail mail correspondence with other veterans, relatives, etc. she go a set of orders where his name appeared along with a few dozen others.
Eniwetok I remember him saying, but that’s pretty much all he did say. He ended up on 100% service-connected disability and died about 20 years after he was there.
Uh, oh. Where there's one, there's more. California should probably be evacuated, but I don't think we have a big enough asylum.
We’re doomed, DOOMED!!
“Able” and “Baker”, my father was there for the show.
Um, no.
It was less than 6 football fields away from the Baker shot. Sadly there were guys tasked with wet sandblasting the wreck for years to remove the radiation with no success as part of Navy decontamination studies.
Not only was it sunk because they could not decontaminate it, it was filled with nuclear waste before it as sunk after undergoing aerial bombardment.
To reiterate, they sunk a nuclear waste filled ship that they could not decontaminate by bombing it. Just as they shot nuclear waste-filled barrels that would not sink after dumping them.
Absolutely brilliant. ‘Washed away’? I don’t think so. But it’s Ok, ‘cause it’ll ‘dilute’, right? /s
http://www.navy.mil/ah_online/archpdf/ah195007.pdf
Oddly, I thought of Dianne Feinstein when I saw that...
Can someone identify the aircraft just behind the 4 TBM’s on the front row? Twin engine and twin tail they look like a b-25’s but not quite.
Link didn’t work. But I found the site. He died in 1971 and I don’t think they’ll be able to do for him or my mother (died 2010).
Cruiser hulls=FDR’s idea, but met with stiff resistance in Washington.
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