USS Wasp (CV-7) Found!

[rcaf_100]

The R/V Petrel managed to locate the wreck of the USS Wasp back in January.

The USS Wasp was found on January 14th. She's at a depth of 4345 meters, right side up although some parts of the ship appear to be split apart. We had a journalist and photographer onboard for this expedition and you can read the story and see the photos here. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/13/maga ... e=Homepage

Photos were just posted on their Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/pg/rvpetrel/ph ... 5348684267
(you don't need a FB account to view the photos)

It looks like there's at least a couple of SBD's (or something similar) in the debris field.

[Pat Carry]

Great!!

[Russ Matthews]

More photos of the wreck and aircraft (including Avengers) can be found in this article from Warbird News ...

http://warbirdsnews.com/aircraft-restoration/paul-g-allen-expedition-discovers-the-sunken-uss-wasp-and-her-aircraft.html

[TAdan]

Well done Petrel! That NY times article was enthralling.

[Speedy]

Wasp has always been something of a tragic mystery for me. As a kid I had a book on WWII that had a picture of the Wasp "burning furiously". But why that much, that quickly, in the early days of WWII? And it was only as an adult that I was able to read up on what Wasp was, why and how it was built--an 'extra' carrier that the U.S. tried to sneak in with 'leftover' Treaty tonnage. A bit smaller than its contemporaries, and with virtually zero anti-torpedo armor. Mostly used in the Atlantic to ferry aircraft across the pond, it got transferred to the Pacific after Coral Sea and Midway left the US with a shortage of carriers. Talk about a sitting duck for a sub attack, and that is what did Wasp in.

Cool that the Paul Allen Foundation is continuing to find the ghosts of the war at the bottom of the ocean.