LIVE: USS Independence (CVL-22) wreck exploration -- 8/22/16

[Russ Matthews]

Port side of aft elevator -- looking into hangar deck.

[Russ Matthews]

Dropping through hole in center of flight deck

[Russ Matthews]

On Hellcat

[Russ Matthews]

Recovering vehicle to repair ground fault in the sonar mapping system. Hope to relaunch in a few hours.

[Russ Matthews]

Back in the water.

[Russ Matthews]

They showed what looked like an outer wing panel from an SB2C Helldiver. Quite smashed. It had what looked like the remains of a pitot tube from the left wing tip area and a white field for the star and bar. It also had a dive flap with fingers on the ends which are found on the SB2C and not the SBD. Very cool. I wish I had taken screen capture.

Here ya go ...


A (quite smashed) Helldiver outer wing panel.


(What's left of) the pitot tube.


The clincher: perforated dive brake/flap with characteristic "crenelated" edge visible in the top right of frame.

[Russ Matthews]

They said that they explored the cockpit of the F6F last night. I missed it. I wonder how they determined it was a F6F-5N? Did they see the radar scope in the panel?

The cockpit was almost completely filled with silt and the ROV was severely restricted in its movements by the various debris within the elevator well. An extreme zoom revealed some of the throttle assembly and a few instruments (but, no sign of the radar scope). Likewise, the radome was gone.. along with the out right wingtip.

The night fighter determination was made through deduction based on archival research. Reports from Operation Crossroads state that there were a number of Hellcats staged on Independence .. all of them "5N" models. An aerial photo taken prior to the Able blast shows two F6F-5Ns (obvious by the radomes mounted on their right wings) parked just aft of the forward elevator. The first survey teams to reboard the ship noted that there was a fighter crumpled at the bottom of the open shaft .. likely thrown there by the shockwave and 40 degree starboard list immediately following the nuclear detonation.

Presumably that plane is the one still in the wreck. Unfortunately, the tail is broken off so there was no way to confirm the BuNo for certain.

Last edited by Russ Matthews on Mon Nov 06, 2017 7:41 pm, edited 1 time in total.

[Russ Matthews]

Did they leave the guns on that thing?

In short .. yes.



Taigh was spot on in his description of the thinking behind the Crossroads testing program and why the weapons were mostly left in place. The Hellcat's .50 cals were also visible on her broken left wing leaning upright against the forward bulkhead of the elevator well.

[Taigh Ramey]

It looked like you could see a receiver of one of the 50 cal guns in the open gun bay of the left wing of the F6F.

Interesting that they said that the elevators were blown off of the deck during the Able blast and were never recovered and that the F6F was knocked into the opening. It's hard to fathom that the force was so great that it blew the massive steel elevators off and then afterwards the Hellcat was knocked into or rolled into the open shaft. I can't wrap my head around the lack of blast damage on the fragile Hellcat. My thinking is that it was below decks during the blast not on deck considering its condition. Saratoga had aircraft in the hangar deck so didn't the Independence have them too?

I too looked for the scope of the APS-6 radar set that would have been in the center of the instrument panel of the Hellcat but I could not see it. The camera angle was not great and the area was blocked by the pushed back windscreen.

Interesting that the fragile canopy, in the open position sans plexiglas, looked to be fully intact. The windscreen was pushed back and was also missing all of its glass. The center armored glass would have been pretty heavy. I wonder if the retaining screws disintegrated over time and the glass fell inward and is under the silt in the cockpit.

The commentator thought that the windscreen was pushed back because the aircraft had been over on its back but this didn't seem likely as there was little other roll over damage visible.

Interesting that the silt had filled the cockpit all the way up to the throttle quadrant. Cool to see the SC still visible on the super charger control knob on the quadrant just above the silt. The throttle was visible in about the full forward position.

Cool stuff!