Adventures of a Sea Hunter by James P. Delgado Read Free Book Online Page B

and hastily carried out… may have only sketched in gross outlines… the real problem; nevertheless, these outlines show pretty clearly the shadow of the colossus which looms behind tomorrow.” Bradley’s metaphor was the target ships rusting at Kwajalein, many of them seemingly undamaged but “nevertheless dying of a malignant disease for which there is no help.”
    The “cure,” being enacted as Bradley’s book was printed, was to sink the contaminated ships. In February 1949,
Washington Post
columnist Drew Pearson called the tests a “major naval disaster.” He reported that “of the 73 ships involved in the Bikini tests, more than 61 were sunk or destroyed. This is an enormous loss from only two bombs.” Pearson, like Bradley, pointed to what he viewed as a military effort to keep the true lesson of Operation Crossroads—the virtual destruction of the target fleet by radioactivity—from being fully apprehended by the public. Although the story had ultimately leaked out, it was downplayed by the government, and the credibility and patriotism of those who spoke out was questioned.
DIVING THE GHOST FLEET
    I traveled to Bikini as part of Dan Lenihan’s National Park Service team in 1989 and 1990. Lenihan, Larry Nordby, Larry Murphy, Jerry Livingston and I were the first to visit most of the wrecks since Operation Crossroads, and we were undertaking the survey at the request of the U.S. Department of Energy and the Bikini Council. The Bikinians, in their exile on the remote island of Kili, far away from their contaminated homeland, were eager to work with the Department of Energy to see if the sunken “swords” could be transformed into tourism plowshares. The National Park Service had the government’s only team of diving archeologists at the time, and our park-oriented approach was not at odds with tourism. Since I was the NPS maritime historian, I easily wrangled my way onto Dan’s crew. As well, my proximity to theNational Archives and my love of research meant that I could do advance work to learn about the history of the ships and the tests, and thus help the team to figure out just what we would be seeing in the blue depths of Bikini lagoon.
    In 1989 the U.S. Navy did a magnificent job of surveying the lagoon’s 180-foot depths to relocate the sunken ships of 1946. There was no chart documenting the location of the wrecks, so the Navy started with nothing but the generally known location of the aircraft carrier USS
Saratoga
, whose mast rose to within 50 feet of the surface and whose grave is marked by oil leaking from its fuel tanks. Our first dive at Bikini was on
Saratoga.

    Anchored over the wreck of USS
Saratoga
, we bob in the slight swell as each diver checks his gear under the blazing hot sun. Rolling backward into the water is a welcome relief. Clustered together like a group of skydivers, we fall in unison onto
Saratoga.
The carrier is huge, its 900-foot length the largest thing I have yet seen underwater. The superstructure towers above the flight deck, and in the clear water, it feels as if we are flying down the side of a tall building. Open hatches and deadlights invite inspection, but for now, we focus on the gaping maw on the hangar deck. Landing on the flight deck, we pause, and then one by one, drop down farther into the hangar. The flight elevator, bent and collapsed, lies at the bottom of the huge shaft. I turn left and head into the dark cavern of the hangar, following Dan and Murphy’s lights.
    Lying on the deck is a rack of 500-pound bombs. Wedged beneath their noses is a smaller depth bomb. I suck in a little more air and, inflating my lungs, float just a little higher to avoid going near them. The deck below me is covered with silt, and I try not to stir it up. In the distance, I notice that Dan and Murphy’s lights have stopped moving. As I swim up, I see why. They have halted at a plane. Sitting upright on its wheels, wings folded up for storage, is a Helldiver, a dive