The Wreck of USS Wasp - Burnt and Scarred, But Still (Mostly) Intact
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 17 พ.ค. 2024
- While generally the least known of the American fleet carriers lost in WW2, USS Wasp has one of the most interesting wrecks. Her hull broke, like the others, but it remained together on the bottom. Leading to such things as a flat hull, leading into an angled break.
Moreover, the severe fires she suffered left their mark...without rusting away. Making her the almost unique case of a wreck with visible scorch marks, even after decades beneath the surface. And, of course, there's the typical 'deepwater American wreck' level of preservation.
Wasp is a ship that was ignored in her life, and I want to make sure she isn't ignored in her death, as well.
Petrel's Facebook Video:
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My grandfather went down with this ship, he was an Electricians Mate First Class. Many thanks for this video, friend.
Thank you for sharing.
This hits close to home for you
God bless your grandfather
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Condolences, thanks for sharing.
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Thank you.... A humanising comment indeed.!
Stay safe out there & best wishes from Scotland 🏴 🙏 ❤️
My step dad was a Wasp survivor. He had just made chief before she was sent to the pacific. He was a plank holder being a member of the commissioning crew. He talked very little about her sinking, but he did talk about how she should never left the coast as she had half the power of the Yorktown class and only 3.5 side amour due a naval treaty. He would say he could not believe how fast they made it from the engine rooms to abandon ship. He served a total of 33 yrs. in uncle sams canoe club. He retired as Master Chief and like his friends was always was proud of serving from 1933-1966. Yep 3 wars.
Right - the treaty limited cumulative displacement tonnage and the designers came up with what they hoped would be an "extra" ship to fit the total. But Wasp design was a serious miscalculation. She was a casualty-in-waiting from her first day on the drawing board.
We had a American Legion guy that served on the Wasp before WW2
Engine room
transferred off in 1940 to the USS Ward
then went on leave 3 days before Dec 7
He returned to serve aboard Ward
then transferred again to the USS Blue in 1944
survived to serve in Korea
John Jorge Jr died at the age of 89
We use to listen to his stories about being a sailor
My mother worked at the Boston Army Base as civilian secretary to the base commander. When the Wasp was docked there during fitting out there were papers to be delivered to the Wasp commanding officer. As a treat my mothers boss gave her the job of delivering the papers and giving her the opportunity to go aboard
That one gun is still being water cooled to this day.
They said her hull was glowing red from the heat
Those sonar pictures are incredible wow.
These wrecks are a time capsule.
Chinese think of them a good source of steel
This really goes to show how lucky we were that ships like the Wasp and the Ranger were one off designs. They just were too small and lightly built.
A grizzly old Master Chief once told me his father was near the island and threw a smoke over the side the instant the torpedoes hit. He was terrified that he had caused it!
Wasp is in remarkable condition given how compromised the design was and how badly damaged the ship was. Also, I'm surprised that more sailors weren't killed, given the severity of the fire and explosions.
USS Wasp, thanks for the assist in saving Malta, ALMOST a Royal Navy Ship! Rust in Piece(s) a Valiant effort for a compromised design.
My uncle was a loader on one of those 5 inch guns he said he absolutely hated it the smoke and sound and talked to the capt and got transferred to one of the ship's cooks he had food experience pre war and survived the sinking sadly he passed about 2 years before the ship was found he would have loved to have seen it he was also on yorktown and midway
Awesome pics and well presented- the last one moved me tears. My grandpa was on Hornet and saw her go down- only for him to go down a month later with Hornet. He was rescued and reassigned to the USS Princeton (CVL-23) and lived to fight another day.
I-19 fired a spread of 6 torpedoes. Three hit Wasp, One of them hit USS NC and another hit USS O'Brien. USS NC was the only survivor as O'Brien would break up several weeks later.
The most devastating single spread of torpedoes ever fired by one submarine. We lost a fleet carrier and had a precious fast battleship lost for several months during the most critical time in the pacific war.
Thank you for an amazing video! I'm not sure if it was the Wasp, but I remember reading about two officers standing at the rail when they saw torpedoes approaching. As the story goes, one officer said "Those have got us".
I think you're doing a great job of presenting these wrecks. Please keep it up!
Don’t let the Chynuh steel scavenger fleets know where it is or they’ll steal it.
The Wasp wasn't a fleet carrier. She was a one off due to available tonnage from the treaty. Smaller and not as well protected as the Yorktown.
My grandpa was on the Bulmer. He was basically at sea for the entire war. They ran out ahead of mccarthur when he went to australia leaving the philippines.
He was the torpedo man or in charge of the torpedoes anyway. They were known for making an extra run on some docks in italy. The other ships each did 2 runs. And they did 3 everybody else got shut up.
He died before. I got really interested in all this stuff so I don't remember very many of the stories and he didn't like to talk about it very Much. Maybe it's interesting enough for you to do a video on? I know it's really hard to find information about but maybe you have better sources than I do.
Thank you for the Honor, Respect and care you put into these videos. That last photo really struck home!
There is some question about whether it was two or three torpedoes that struck WASP. Historians John Lundstrom and Richard Frank both say it was two. Lundstrom states that the third initial explosion was not a torpedo warhead itself but an induced one caused by one of the two torpedo hits. Immaterial the matter may be; either number of hits would have sufficed to destroy the ship, given the light construction lacking torpedo protection and the fact it was hit while conducting flight operations.
once again..the mysteries of life, and horrific deaths..and the waste of all due to insanity of humans..thx Sky..for another example..the photos are incredible thanks to the Petrel and the late great Mr.Allen..
That's why it is important to stand up against evil when it rears it's head, so many more innocent don't have to go through senseless pain and suffering by the hands of evil. I hope you understand.
Very good. In videos of shipwrecks, can you include as a visual aid of where on the actual ship the item you are showing located? Eg. when showing a gun, also show a plan of the ship and the actual gun/location highlighted in yellow.
I have a theory about the hull damage. Since there appear to be no jagged tears in the metal where the hull is split, I believe these to be the expansion joints. I can only speak of Essex class and later carriers (30 in Naval Aviation) since these ships all have expansion joints to compensate for the "flexing" of these long ships in a swell. You have to be careful when chaining an aircraft near an expansion joint so the chain and doesn't cross the joint from the pad-eye to the aircraft, especially in heavy seas. Any other theories?
The helmet was unlikely to have been laying in that spot when the ship was on the surface. There is no way such a light object would remain there as the ship accelerated more that 2.5 miles into the abyss. The impact with the sea floor would have been tremendous with lots of debris being flung about. This helmet just happened to land there.
You would think so but weird sht happens. On the titanic there is a glass sitting on a wall shelf in the same spot the passenger left it the night of the sinking. I would assume the titanic hit the ground pretty hard too.
I really appreciate you waiting to put out updated videos on Rex that were recently dived. I'd much rather have detailed information than something was rushed
The level of narrative provided with those videos left MUCH to be desired. Rex will do an infinitely better job.
I want to be sure what I’m looking at, basically. The footage is shaky and often blurred, so it’ll take a bit of time to work out things.
And track down Yorktown and Kaga, since Akagi is getting the publicity. Understandably so, admittedly.
She shattered like glass when she hit the bottom. Looks like she hit belly firt like Bismarck probably smashed in her bottom few decks and blew out the hull plating and she just split and cracked all the way up at every week weld she broke.
This video demonstrates how later ships such as the Essex Class were improved in size, hull protection and much better AA weapons and other protective systems that made those ships much more survivable. No comparison really. Once war in the Pacific broke out it seems the country actually got serious about many kinds of good developments of platforms, both in ships and aircraft. Also the arrival of the VT Proximity Fuze spelled bad news for attacking aircraft, especially torpedo planes.
By late summer 1945 we were about ready to deploy the best naval aircraft ever seen in the Tigercat and the Bearcat. Also, the Midway Class was under construction, and Midway herself would very soon be completed. That would have provided plenty of doom and gloom for the warmongers running Japan. Thankfully it all ended suddenly, and countless lives on both sides were spared.
WASP was the ship that proved out the concept of the deck edge elevator. The YORKTOWN class had three elevators along the centerline of the flight deck while the WASP's third elevator was installed on the port side edge. The favorable performance of the deck edge elevator led to its adoption in the ESSEX class aircraft carriers.
The military was starved as regards budgets from 1930 to around 1937. Even them it was not a lot. One of the reasons the Mark 14 Torpedo was not tested was both the Navy and Congress did not think it was that important. Incredible error that literally changed the face of the pacific war. US Submarines with reliable torpedoes would have made a huge impact in 1942 when it mattered the most. Who knows how many died because of the Mark14? The lack of money affected all the services; R & D was non existent. The Army Air Corps was better off because it could piggyback off of advances in the civilian world. The worst example of the budgetary strangulation in the end was the Army Tank horror and I call it that with all due respect to the poor bastards stuck with subpar tanks in battle. We were basically ten years behind everyone else in developing tanks; another problem we had was hidebound morons in the Army and as usual idiots in Congress. The fact that the Pershing did not reach the front until it no longer mattered was part of that and also the stupidity of Lesley J, McNair, Army Ground Forces commander. IT was in the end his responsibility to make sure the troops got what they needed. He DELIBERATELY stalled progress on the Pershing due to shipping concerns; which of course by early 1944 were gone but he still refused to change his mind. The Pershing was not a great tank but having heavier armor and a much more powerful gun than the Sherman meant our tankers (and all our allies that also had them as well) would have been able to take on the Panther and Tiger on even terms. Sure, the sherman was quicker and faster and more reliable but all that really meant is that we were purposely sending our troops off to fight and die in an inferior tank compared to what they could have.
@@gruntforever7437
Totally agree.
It looks to me almost as if the hull split at one of the Wasp's exapnsion joints, maybe when it hit the seafloor? This is judging on how clean the seperation is from the picture you showed, and similar seperations I've seen on other wrecks.
May 1942 USS Wasp launched Spitfires to Malta at the request of Churchill.
May 1942 Battle of the Coral Sea.
Sonar images really seem to have come a long way in the past 20 years these top down images are impressive.
Wasp was doomed by the treaty system just as much by the three torpedoes that hit her.
@skynea history...
Not that you would or wouldn't know... but I have a bit of an open-ended question.
When Petrel discovered Lexington I asked them when they planned on releasing full-length videos of their explorations as they did Musashi...
They said no plans or intentions existed of doing so... which was quite disappointing...
Could you speculate any reason as to why, given such time, money, and man power has been invested in finding these legendary ships, that so little has been released to the public.
Now that RV Petrel seems to be defunct, it's such a shame we cannot see these expeditions in their entirety
I really appreciate your commentary. You do a lot of in depth research.
I wonder if they will eventually find the Mother of American Aircraft Carriers, Langley CV-1?
That would be really great. I think the Langley had a bunch of P-40s she was transporting somewhere.
I think she’s within or near the limits of the territorial water of Java. She might be fairly shallow, enough that I would rather her remain hidden and not exposed to the wreck scrappers in the region.
Chinese probably have converted to washing marchines by now
Interesting video and commentary, thanks for posting!
Subscribed.
Great work! Just discovered your channel two days ago and honestly, I am in awe at the quality and respect that you give your videos- and these wreaks. The reminder of the human cost these held is a stark and effective thing to commit to memory. I have a greater respect and appreciation for these war graves. Thank you for posting this!
The dogs on the hatches show they were secured but the hatches were open. Extreme forces blew the hatches open even when secured. RIP to those who gave the ultimate sacrifice
If you're talking about the door on the bridge those dogs will fall under their own weight. On some I have seen a felt bushing that gives some resistance holding them up as the felt gets old it offers less resistance and the dogs drop or the bolt on the inside can be tightened to give more resistance.
Wasp did not have a "central elevator" on the flight deck. Just forward and aft
The ship had the first "deck edge" elevator, which was enlarged on the Essex class, and is still a feature of the new "Ford" class carriers. Left side, forward end of the hangar deck. Would have been nice if someone had looked to see if it was still there, although there's a better than even chance that fire, explosion, or water flow took it off.
I stumbled on this and it's super interesting and very informative. Well done mate.
Thank you for not rushing your videos. Just wish there were more pics and videos of these legendary ships before they disappear rest in peace brothers
If you could please have a picture of your subject ships as you do at 19:35 with an arrow pointing to the picture of whatever wreckage part we are looking at so we see exactly where on the ship the damage is we are looking at, I think that would be most helpful to those of us not exactly as naval smart as you are. Thank You. Otherwise you present exellent videos that are interesting and informative.
I try to remember to do that, as can be seen in more of it cropping up in each new video. A problem does sometimes come up when I’m not sure exactly where something is on a ship, or a lack of good pictures.
Either way, I am shifting towards more comparison shots where I can. And when I remember, forgetful as I am.
@@skyneahistory2306 Thank You for your reply. You still make better videos than anyone else I've watched, so you're doing great and I really appreciate your efforts.
Amazing., such detail after all this time. Thanks.
One tiny quibble. It's probable that the prop tips on the Avenger were originally painted yellow, red, and [a dark] blue. This was the standard scheme on pre-war aircraft and early WWII naval aircraft. However, at the time Wasp was sunk, new aircraft were being delivered in simple yellow tips, so maybe if the black part of this blade was repainted, the blue was just painted over. That said, I agree that the blade near the red looks more "black" than blue in the photo.
You did an excellent job. Thank you.
My grandpa served as a damage control on this ship. He was one of the many that went down with the ship.
God bless.
Thank you for the great video ❤
USS Wasp (LHD-1) flies her colors proudly.
it's so frustrating to see opportunities for an rov penetration be passed up so freaking much
Fantastic. Thanks.
Beautiful ...Thanks ---
Great vid Skynea. May she and her crew rest in peace. She proved that a Wasp can indeed sting twice.
Is that a fire-fighting hose draped over the 20mm cannons (7:00). It looks like a nozzle on the end hanging down.
Thank You Many Many Thanks
A Mighty Lady She Was 😢
I wonder if the break was in part, due to low-temperature embrittlement of welds as Wasp sank to colder water in the depths. Just speculating.
"A wasp can string twice." - Winston Churchill
I've read from some sources that during her refit to prep her of the pacific, Was had a single quad 40mm mount. According to drawings and photos it was placed on the port side, just foreword of the aft 5" mounts. Is there any footage of the wreck in that area?
In the first image of The Upside Down Avenger that you showed, could that be another plane in the right background of the picture? I think I see a star.
My dad was on it his left side was burnt and he was in the water an extended period of time before he was rescued
I was stationed on USS Wasp LHD 1 2000-03....
Well done sir…
Not surprising with the lack of wood
When I see the propeller tip from the airplane laying there for 77 years with the yellow red blade tips...... what is time?
I love these videos.
I want to can you get that 5 inch going to fire if you put a live around in it
Amazing history frozen in time. These folks saved our world, I reckon it's our turn. God Help 🇺🇸
You do a much better job than the Kagi, Akagi and Yorktown videos.
Was this one of the converted liberty cargo carriers?
No, it was purpose-built as a carrier to use up the remaining overall tonnage for carriers allowed by the Washington Treaty. They didn't have enough tonnage left to build another Yorktown so they did the much lighter Wasp as a one-off. When Japan repudiated the treaties they built another Yorktown-class in the Hornet (CV-8) and then did a complete redesign for the post-treaty Essex class.
My grandpa was on board was an e3 water tender. Named podzon would love to see a picture of him
Why no pics of the 40mm ?
My second Favorite Ship of the Big 6.
My grandad was on her when she went down. Bless CV-7's lost and crew.
Just a critique:
When showing things, it would be nice to know what part/Station of the ship is being filmed.
One 5"/25 mount looks pretty much like the other eight. Or the ones on Hornet and Yorktown. Ditto the 20mm and 1.1s. I for one would like to see less of the guns, and more of the remaining aviation features? We know the flight deck forward of the island is gone, how much is left relatively intact aft of the island?
Wasp was a "treaty" carrier, built under the aircraft carrier tonnage limits of the Washington Naval Treaty. As such, her weaknesses were dictated by the need to build as big a carrier as possible, within the weight limit. Thus, no armor, twin shafts instead of four, and a lower power engineering plant.
Frankly, (IMO) no amount of armor would have saved her, given that she was hit by two torpedos, even disregarding the fire. In fact, the Essex class was vulnerable to sinking by two torpedo hit, according to BuShips, depending on where they struck. Fortunately, none of the Essex class was ever hit by two torpedos.
I try to note where things are on the ship, where I can. I could do more of that with Hornet, but with Wasp, the released material didn’t give many context clues.
Like the weapons. Other than the ones by the island, I couldn’t be sure *where* they were, exactly. I could guess the 20mm are near the stern, but it would be a guess. I could guess the 5-inch is near the bow…but still a guess. That sorta thing.
As for aviation features…I would have, if I could. I’m limited to what Petrel showed, however, and the released footage didn’t show much of the flight deck or anything like that.
Or it was so blurry as to be nearly impossible to make out.
She was built not because of a personal tonnage limit but because the US had some tonnage left over.
Stunning pictures the quality of preservation is totally amazing , Good vid.
My Father also served abroad her.
Yes this is deep, clear images, men died here. Reality hits me hard. 2023 is so soft. My heart goes out to them yanks..
RV Petrol needs to scan entire seafloor
That water cooled machine gun has plenty of water to cool it now. 😂
I think she must have split when she hit bottom. Otherwise the pieces would have landed farther apart on the way down.
Lightweight Yorktown.
I thought wasp didn’t have torpedo planes
*_It was a mostly peaceful sinking...._*
Rusticle‘s on her and that is bad
The rock band should have sunk with the ship.😂
6:03
Should be raised and restored.
as much as i'm grateful for you videos and your awesome work, i have one point of criticsm. please work on your intonation. i barely can watch and listen to videos of yours for a long duration because you always have this unnatural, robotic intonation. there is so much information and good commentary to it but this kills it for me. i still highly appreciate your work. thank you.
Im not allowing anybody to say first
In the true meaning of the word they are not wrecks
😛😛😛😛😛😛❤❤❤❤❤👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍
Please stop cluttering up your videos with why explanations of your methodology, or comparing one of your videos to another. You have gathered excellent material and are very knowledgeable about your subject. If you catch yourself saying: "....now that that's out of the way" please go back and drop whatever "that's " is out of your presentation.
Ladies buzz cut
Now the Chinese scavengers will take this ship apart like the Prince of Wales and Repulse.
Good luck. She is very deep unlike POW and Repulse. Something like 14000 ft down.
Cool videos but you don’t have to say things like “I’m going to…” or “I’d like to note…”, etc. By just doing those things it’s clear what you’re doing. Its like if you wrote a story and prefaced everything with “Now I’m going to tell you about…”