Three hours after nightfall on Sept. 15, 1942, the U.S.S. Wasp, a United States Navy aircraft carrier, slipped beneath the waves 350 miles southeast of Guadalcanal. Hit by two or possibly three torpedoes from a Japanese submarine, the crippled ship was abandoned, then torpedoed by an American destroyer to send it to the bottom, approximately 14,000 feet below.
In the early morning hours of Jan. 14, 2019, researchers laid eyes on the Wasp for the first time in 76 years. Sam Cox, Director of the Navy History and Heritage Command was there:
“Arriving back in the search site after the medical emergency, Kestrel was ready to continue the search for USS WASP:
“Like the first set who came here, these modern sailors were not timid at all, getting right in with the Zodiac as the crew hooked a cable to the AUV so it could be hoisted out of the water. Two more search attempts, like the two previous ones came up totally empty.
On the sixth dive, the AUV started taking on water, and the search effort was halted while repairs were made. The search area that had been covered now looked like a large rectangle and future searches would start adding to the perimeter.
The question was, which direction?
(CBS Reporter Mark Philips. Image courtesy CBS.)
PETREL had a commitment to return to Guadalcanal on 16 January to pick up CBS correspondent Mark Philips and a TV news crew.
Ed Caesar had to get off, and although the PETREL’s great connectivity had enabled me to stay in touch with my office and keep up with work, I really did need to get back to Washington.
Time for further searches was running out.
The PETREL could return to the WASP site later, but I could not.
While the AUV was being tinkered with, Kraft sent the ROV down to check out the debris field located on the first search. It turned out to be dozens of WWII-era helmets, and a variety of other miscellaneous metal fragments, nothing of which looked like it definitely could have come from an aircraft carrier.
Kraft and Mayer scrubbed and rescrubbed the after-action reports and the positional data. The question was whether or not to possibly use our last shot on LANDSDOWNE’s outlying position, or to continue to search to the north and west of the debris field.
We were all convinced by now that the debris field was not from WASP. It was possible the debris was from the torpedo hits on O’BRIEN or NORTH CAROLINA, although how that would have produced a field of helmets was mystifying.
Now working under the assumption that the debris field was from the hits on the ships in HORNET’s group, PETREL’s team tried to determine the relative direction of HORNET’s group from the WASP when she was hit.
Although the distance, roughly five miles, was well recorded, the navigational fixes from HORNET’s group were as varied as those of WASP’s. The famous photo that shows O’BRIEN being hit by a torpedo as WASP burns several miles in the background was about the only clue, using the direction of smoke pouring from WASP as a reference. The chicken bones suggested a search to the southwest of where we had been looking.
After about another 18 hours of searching, the AUV surfaced at about three in the morning on 14 January. The data card was pulled from the AUV and took about twenty minutes to load onto the computer. The search of the data was only a matter of minutes before the wreck of the WASP could be seen sticking out like a lighthouse against the barren backdrop of the bottom.
WASP was sitting upright and mostly intact. The sonar shadow clearly showed the island superstructure, and it was apparent there were large holes in the flight deck other than the elevators. The resolution of the side-scan sonar was such that from the first instant there was absolutely no doubt that this was an aircraft carrier, and the only one it could possibly be was WASP.
The first view of the WASP was accompanied by a very long period of silence in the operations room. There was relief that we had found her, but the sight of an aircraft carrier at the bottom of the ocean is incredibly sobering. Like the LAFFEY, knowing that this ship represented the final resting place of 176 Americans, actually made it very somber for me, and everyone else in the room (at the time, I still thought it was 194 Americans.) Eventually, however, I admit that excitement set in. It turned out that WASP’s actual position was 11 NM from the closest U.S. Navy navigational fix, and 23 NM from that of LANDSDOWNE.
PETREL is equipped with very precise GPS station-keeping ability, and took a position just off the port beam of the WASP and lowered the ROV into the water. Through the multitude of video and still cameras on the ROV, at least two sharks were observed to follow the ROV down to about 1,000 feet before they broke off. It took about an hour for the ROV to descend to about 14,000 feet, arriving just off the bottom (but not touching it) only about 50 yards from the WASP. It could have been lowered closer with considerable precision, but Kraft wanted to take absolutely no chance of either hitting the ship or the ROV.
As the ROV cautiously approached the WASP, it became apparent that the ship had settled in deep mud almost to the normal waterline, which meant that finding exact locations of torpedo impacts would not be possible, although observed upward blast damage on catwalks along the flight deck gave indication of where torpedoes had exploded.
The first part of WASP to come in view was the innovative (and standard thereafter) deck-edge aircraft elevator, which could take planes from the hangar deck to the flight deck without creating a “hole” in the flight deck. At first it looked like the flight deck was ringed by icicles; these proved to be chains that had served as lifelines along the catwalks which had come loose and were hanging from the stanchions.
As the ROV slowly worked its way aft, 20mm and 5” guns came into view. At the stern, the flight deck “round-down” had come loose and fallen at a diagonal across the last few frames of the ship, which caused the very aft end of the fantail to separate, which resulted in the stern name-plate being buried in the mud and not visible.
As the PETREL periodically re-positioned to ensure the umbilical cable would not come in contact with the ship, the ROV slowly worked its way forward along WASP’s starboard side. In the area of the island, the quad 1.1” anti-aircraft mounts were remarkably intact.
Through the zoom lens, the interior of the bridge was a shambles and extensive material from the overhead had collapsed on to the deck. Just forward of the island, the ship was cleaved athwartships as if cut by a knife, mostly likely caused when the ship came to rest on the bottom, but probably originating in torpedo damage that was not visible in the mud. After rounding the bow, finding an anchor, and then crossing the flight deck to observe the port side of the island, which showed evidence of intense heat, the survey of the ship ended. Although 45 aircraft had gone down with the ship, none were observed on the flight deck nor through openings into the hangar bays.
PETREL’s team then navigated the ROV through the debris fields surrounding the ship, which contained such things as fire control radars from the gun directors and other unidentified, but sometimes large, pieces of metal.
About eight or nine badly damaged aircraft were located in the debris field. One was definitely an F4F Wildcat fighter, one was probably an SBD Dauntless dive-bomber based on the dive brakes, and the rest were TBF Avenger torpedo-bombers. In some cases, wings had been blasted away from fuselages, but in every case the tail assembly had been obliterated (no sign of horizontal or vertical tail surfaces were observed anywhere and had presumably been buried in the mud.) The phenomenon precluded any identification of aircraft by bureau number or other ship or squadron markings.
With the survey complete and everyone satisfied, except for maybe the sharks, PETREL commenced a return voyage to Guadalcanal. Ed Caesar had gotten more “drama” for his article on the search than he had expected. I notified the Chief of Naval Operations and Vice Chief of Naval Operations of the find, and noted that the PETREL Group wished for no publicity until the New York Times Magazine had the opportunity to break the story, which finally occurred on-line on 13 March and in the Sunday magazine on 17 March.
While anchored offshore Guadalcanal, CBS correspondent Mark Philipps conducted an extensive interview with me on PETREL’s Deck, as I pointed out the battles in Iron Bottom Sound, none of which made it on the air (this kept alive my perfect record with CBS; in 2006 Scott Pelly interviewed me for 45 minutes for a 60 Minutes piece, and it all ended up on the cutting room floor.) Nevertheless, the WASP and HORNET stories did make it onto CBS morning and evening national broadcasts.”
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That is the nature of entertainment and what we understand the terms ‘media’ and ‘news’ mean in our digital era. What remains of the sacrifice of young people long ago lacks context to modern society.
Sam Cox is one of those who is fighting to save it. A last chapter in this adventure tomorrow.
– Ed.
Copyright 2019 Sam Cox
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