Posted on 04/25/2022 7:33:19 PM PDT by Spktyr
Another video only update: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRi8C1Dm6p8
Summary: Pumping is going slowly but well, the salvage crew is moving to some night operations as well as day as they are more confident in the ship's structure and condition now. Ship's list has been greatly reduced, 25-27K gallons of water have been pumped out of the bow section. Artifacts of the Sullivan family, the Juno, and other related items have been removed and placed in dry storage just in case - these items were not exposed to water and will need no restoration.
Thanks for the update, Spktyr. Much appreciated.
Thanks for the update.
Good news!
Better news would be that the bodies of the miscreant(s) who caused this have been located somewhere among the dock pilings...
Sinking was not intentional - the hull was thin to start and time plus marine organisms took their toll on the hull. Keep in mind that donations are how these museum ships have to pay for maintenance of these ships, and those got crushed during the ‘lockdowns.’
Another news piece from yesterday noted that divers found six significant rust/marine organism caused holes and plugged them with conical 12” diameter plugs, and that they were expecting to find more.
That ship’s hull was only 3/8” thick when it left the shipyard; it hasn’t gotten thicker in the intervening 80-odd years.
What, did they skip 7th grade?
Thank you. Any word on the cause of this much flooding without alarms going off yet?
The same thing happened to USS Texas. Old ships need TLC against rust.
Um, it’s not an article, that was my summary. The original piece is a video only. The “Juno” is the result of autocorrect changing what I typed.
Not that I’m aware of. The ship is known to have previously developed several ‘relatively small’ hull leaks that were being mitigated by electric pumps while the ship still remained open as a museum. This is not uncommon for many older museum ships - several are only afloat because their pumps keep ahead of the incoming water.
It is not publicly known whether new holes appeared in the hull, whether there was an overnight power failure or what exactly happened. There is a lot of speculation but nothing officially stated yet.
Yup. Also not so old ships - the same thing is why all the reserve Oliver Hazard Perry class frigates got sent to SINKEXs instead of being refurbished for service or being sold to foreign navies.
Mexico wanted to buy two of them; when their naval survey party arrived to examine the vessels in the 2010s, it was found that the hulls had gotten so thin in some places that a man leaning a bit on a screwdriver could punch a hole in the hull. Needless to say, the Mexicans decided they didn’t want the ships and one of them has since been SINKEX’d.
When the Trump Administration looked at reactivating the ships in 2017 to fill in fleet vacancies, they found out most of the 8 ships they had in mind would need to have the hulls partially or fully replaced in addition to massive modernization. It didn’t make economic sense.
Thanks for the details...
In today’s environment, it is hard to not suspect the worst...
My generation reveres the “Sullivan” name and the sacrifices it represents...
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