The Sandbag Times Issue No: 22

Researchers Unlock Secrets of the Nuked Carrier USS Independence
Underwater archaeologists have
determined the role USS Independence
played after World War II. They used
declassified government documents and sonar
images of the shipwrecked vessel to unlock the
secret. The Independence (CVL 22) was one of
90 ships assigned to Operation Crossroads, the
atomic bomb tests conducted at Bikini Atoll in
the Marshall Islands. It was scuttled in 1951.
Little was known about its use after the tests.
The location of the shipwreck was found last
year and researchers began comparing sonar
images of the wreck with the declassified
documents to determine the vessel had been
used as a radiological laboratory and nuclear
waste receptacle from 1946 to 1950. “Now we
not only know what shape she’s in and where
she lies but also exactly what happened to the
Independence,” said lead researcher James
Delgado, a maritime archaeologist at the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA). One of the first
vessels to be converted to a light aircraft
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carrier following the attack on Pearl Harbor,
the Independence operated in the central and
western Pacific from November 1943 through
to August 1945. After the war, it was assigned
to Operation Crossroads as part of a fleet
positioned within about 1700 feet of the
“ground zero” blast from the bomb tests
carried out to examine the effects of shock
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waves, heat, and radiation. Twenty-one ships
sunk during the tests, but the Independence
survived, although it was heavily damaged
when it returned to the U.S. This remains one
of the most compelling frontiers in science,
given not only the size of the oceans but what
rests within them.
Read more on this story here.
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