When Divers Located The Ship That Survived Pearl Harbor, They Saw What Sank WWII’s Toughest Vessel
Almost three miles beneath the surface of the Pacific Ocean, robotic devices crawl their way across the seafloor. Suddenly, the motorized explorers land on something that makes the experts controlling them take notice. It looks like the wreckage of a World War II ship. And as the robots delve deeper, they’ll help solve the huge mystery of why this vessel sank.
USS Nevada
This wreck is the USS Nevada — and her story is remarkable. But the ship endured severe damage long before her mysterious sinking. For one thing, the massive battleship survived the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. Then she went on to fight in WWII, where suicide bombers attempted to destroy her. Despite all this, though, the Nevada still returned home in a functional state.
Bomb testing
From there, the military used the Nevada in their atomic bomb testing – but that didn’t bring her down to the depths of the Pacific, either. Instead, she sank in 1948, not as the result of any conflict or bomb-testing program. What was it that finally downed her? Well, thanks to a crew of modern-day explorers, we now have a clearer picture.
27,500 tons of power
The USS Nevada was one of a pair of 27,500-ton battleships constructed in Quincy, Massachusetts, ahead of WWI. But after her commission in March 1916, it took two years for her to hit the open seas. Eventually, she headed to the British Isles to aid in the European conflict.
Sailing the world
Then, at the end of the war, the ship sailed through the Atlantic, Caribbean, and Pacific, completing various exercises and fleet drills along the way. Soon enough, the vessel reached her tenth anniversary of service – receiving modernizations between 1927 and 1930 to make her even tougher at sea.
