U.S. Navy Commences Oil Removal from Capsized German Cruiser 'Prinz Eugen' in South Pacific

[Submariner]

Capsized and sunk the year I was born, and just now fixing the problem before there is a monumental mess.


The U.S. Army, in partnership with the U.S. Navy and the Republic of the Marshall Islands, are safely recovering oil from the capsized World War II German heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen in the Kwajalein Atoll. U.S. Navy Photo by LeighAhn Ferrari

The U.S. Navy, in partnership with the Army and the Republic of the Marshall Islands, have started the recovery of oil from the overturned World War II German heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen in the Kwajalein Atoll.

These recovery efforts will ensure mission capability of the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command/Army Forces Strategic Command’s Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site, which is located on Kwajalein, while also protecting the environment within the atoll.

The Prinz Eugen was transferred to the U. S. Navy as a war prize from the British Royal Navy after the war, and in 1946, it was loaded with oil and cargo and used to test the survivability of warships during the Operation Crossroads atomic bomb tests at Bikini Atoll.

During the test, the cruise withstood the initial blast but sustained heavy damage. Five months later, however, while still she capsized and sank in Kwajalein Lagoon, approximately 3.6 miles from Kwajalein.



The wreck contained about 2,767 metric tons of oil when it sank, and an assessment of the wreckage has shown that there remains a high risk of a spill of more than 1,000 metric tons.

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In the 1970s, I remember the Jacques Cousteau expeditions would find tar balls of all sizes floating in all the worlds oceans, and tar balls on the beaches. Cousteau said the tar balls were from the resulting fuel oil spills of ships sunk by torpedoes and mines during WWII.

[Sherman A1]

1. I had read about this and happy to see that the fuel is being recovered

I fail to understand why the tanks were not emptied prior to the tests. A different time....

[hatrack]

2. True enough - they didn't think a thing about open-air testing, let alone fuel spills from ships

.

[mn9driver]

3. The test ships were intentionally loaded with a full complement of fuel

in order to duplicate the characteristics of a battle-ready warship. I assume they used real fuel instead of water so that they could see if it would ignite or explode. Not environmentally friendly, but yeah, h-bomb test so it wasn’t really a consideration.

[NNadir]

4. A little bit of an anachronism. The H-Bomb was not developed until 1952...

...and even then the bomb then developed, tested in the Ivy Mike test was actually the size of a small building and thus not suitable for delivery.

It was therefore not tested against ships, although it was tested in the same general area.

The first deliverable hydrogen bomb was developed by the Soviets under Andrei Sakarhov, who went on to become one of the most important political dissidents in the Soviet Union, very much involved in bringing the Soviet state down.

The United States developed a deliverable hydrogen bomb shortly after the Soviets did, detonating theirs in early 1954.

The key was isolating isotopically pure lithium deuteride, a non trivial task in the early 1950's.

The first deliverable US hydrogen bomb, tested as "Castle Bravo" remains to this day, the largest US nuclear test. It was much larger than anything the Soviets had built. It had a much higher yield than was expected and came in at 15 MT TNT equivalent. It contaminated huge portions of the Pacific Ocean, severely injuring some Japanese fishermen and leading to the rise of the radiation paranoia that has killed far more people than radiation, including Hiroshima and Nagasaki ever did, since air pollution kills 7 million people per year and radiation, um, doesn't.

The mindless brinkmanship of the cold war resulted in the Soviet Tsar Bomba test, which I discussed in some detail elsewhere on the internet.

Every Cloud Has A Silver Lining, Even Mushroom Clouds: Cs-137 and Watching the Soil Die.