B.C. 'underwater' pilots explore scuttled atomic bomb test ship, its first visit in 65 years

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Two underwater technologists from B.C. and a former Vancouver Maritime Museum executive director are playing a key role in the rediscovery and examination of an atomic-bomb test ship scuttled off the California coast.

Last week, as thousands of viewers watched online, Josh Chernoff and Rueben Mills gently manoeuvred the remote underwater vehicle Hercules around the wreck of the former USS Independence, while James Delgado, the director of maritime heritage for the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration narrated the visit.

It was the first time since it was scuttled 65 years ago that subsea mariners and historians had visited the Independence.

“It just blew me away to see the Mighty I,” said Delgado, a historian and author.

The visit was organized through Robert Ballard’s Ocean Explorations Trust and NOAA and was broadcast on Nautiluslive.org, an online teaching organization that works with Ballard’s group.

The ship was sunk in 1951 off Half Moon Bay, California, five years after it was a central participant in Operation Crossroads, two atomic bomb tests at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands.

The atomic detonations, one in the air and one underwater, were part of a U.S. project to understand the effects of nuclear radiation. More than 90 ships had been moored in Bikini Atoll. On July 21, 1946 the atmospheric bomb Able was set off; four days later, Baker, an underwater denotation, was set off.

While many of the ships were sunk, the Independence survived. Along with eight other ships, it was towed to San Francisco, where it was further studied.

Delgado, who wrote a book about the Bikini wrecks and their place in atomic history, said the Independence was part of a crucial theory that ships exposed to radiation could survive, be cleansed and put back into use.

Delgado said even though the ship had been well-studied before it was scuttled, it revealed new information.

“We did a detailed inspection that gave us a few things we didn’t know. We were able to better document the changes made when she was America’s first atomic laboratory to train sailors in how to respond to an atomic attack.”

With the help of the Boeing company, NOAA used sonar to find the Independence last year in 823 metres of water.

“It is one thing to see a sonar image. It is another to drop down and see the ship itself and to learn from it,” Delgado said.

But it was the piloting skills of Chernoff and Mills, who gave Ballard’s group the first look at Independence. The men are products of B.C.’s well-established subsea technology industry. They’ve each been working with Ballard for about four years.

Chernoff, 43, lives near Comox and got his start in remote submersibles by logging underwater, using ROVs to cut trees drowned in reservoirs. Mills, 39, manages an engineering department in Sidney and designs and builds submersibles.

“The history of B.C. in submersibles in this type of work is strong and it has been able to develop many strong ROV pilots and also in scientific research and all aspects of marine industry,” said Chernoff.

The explorers discovered large sponges and other invertebrates growing on the wreck and took samples which showed radioactivity at negligible levels. They also found two aircraft in the ship, one a Hellcat and the other a Helldiver, which had not been documented in post-atomic examinations.

“One of the first things we saw when we approached the stern was incredible damage that had been documented in 1946 with one area of the stern, the flight deck, pushed up, curved up and punched in close to four metres,” Delgado said, adding that they also found some of the test equipment used to record the effects of the two bombs.

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