Sinking of an Aircraft Carrier | Free Documentary

the uss oriskany she was a fearsome presence in the korean and vietnam wars she hasn't served in the us navy in over 30 years now a rusty veteran waiting for barry let's see gee it's like putting a legend in the background but the oriskany has one final mission before she rests, a salvage team is racing against the clock to strip her of her last riches, so that's what we're taking gold, copper, gold, her mission is to remove tons of dangerous material from this city floating, it's pretty dangerous down there. If the skull is opened, something bad will happen and then it will be towed more than 500 miles across the open sea, but the great risk will not go without a fight.

As its end approaches, a bomb squad will equip the ship with lethal quantities of explosives that we don't know If you want to have an accident and these types of accidents kill, then this giant will be sunk creating the largest artificial reef in the world. It is a high risk project to sink the unsinkable. Over the centuries, countless ships have been destroyed by war or sunk to make artificial ones. reefs but no one has ever reached reefs an

aircraft

carrier

docked in corpus christi, texas the decommissioned oriskany is the first ship chosen for the us navy's artificial reef program the

sinking

of the world's largest and most complex warship will test the skills of one of the best marine demolition crews in the world your goal is to synchronize the

aircraft

carrier

with explosives but you can't just drop a couple of bombs on an aircraft carrier and expect it to sink it's built to stay afloat under any circumstances it's a top secret ship and the The navy does not want the designs to fall into the wrong hands.

It will take the team months of planning to unravel the mystery of how to sink the unsinkable. When this ship was built decades ago, there were thousands of engineers and shipbuilders who did their best. efforts to ensure that this ship never sinks, this is not a trivial task and will require almost as much effort as it took to build the ship. To finally sink it, it will take thousands of hours of scraping, blowtorching and hydroexplosion to prepare the plane. aircraft carrier for synchronization day the team will work seven days a week and have only eight months to complete the job it is an incredibly complex ship a floating city filled with every imaginable supply and service everything the 2,600 crew members would need to live and fight at sea for months it has four separate kitchens bedrooms hospitals mechanical workshops and radar facilities everything from dental offices and hair salons to shoe repair and movie theaters, literally thousands of rooms and the team continues to discover new ones every day that I have been crawling hard around the boat for three months, about 10 hours a day and just considering the size of the boat.

I still occasionally come across a room I've never seen before, but after 30 years in storage the ship is. In a rusty and decrepit state, it is filled with lead-based paints, sheeting, aviation fuel, asbestos and PCBs, all toxic materials that must be removed so as not to poison the ocean environment. Oriskany's journey from warship to reef began in September 1976. After an eventful and storied career Oriskini was decommissioned twice before finally being struck from the naval register in 1989. She joined a host of American warships left rotting in storage after two failed attempts to sell this monstrous vessel for scrap.

The Navy chose it for the artificial reef program. around the world have been creating reefs for centuries artificial reefs are created when obsolete vessels sink form an outcrop for sponges and corals to colonize today reefs attract recreational fishing and recreational diving to boost local economies many gulf states They competed to have any reef in their waters at risk. The state of Florida won the bid and began its environmental remediation. Don Herring is the project manager and the man assigned by the Navy to verify that each job is done according to strict environmental standards, he has to inspect every square inch of the ship looking for toxic waste literally crawling through thousands of rooms and 565 tanks to make sure no type material is left in the tanks, so when the ship actually introduces hazardous materials into the water, some are so big as an airplane hangar, others as small as a coffin, but the cleanup is only half of the project, the sump plan is the other half.

I think the contractor put together a good sump plan, it will flood basically without any mechanical means and they decide how much water it can balance, how much displacement it can take and how it holds the water. moving where you have to move and when you have to move quite involved involved is an understatement the job is almost impossible since World War II no US Navy aircraft carrier has been sunk in action doing it during the war means first going through rings of defenses , an air protection cone, escort vessels and even submarines, are part of the package.

If an attacker manages to overcome these lethal weapons, he faces a four-inch armor plate surrounding an inner core of over a thousand rooms, each of which can be insulated to float. nothing less than a nuclear bomb can sink one. Aircraft carriers came to prominence during the peaceful campaign of World War II. They revolutionized combat by providing a highly mobile air station that could deliver a constant barrage of air strikes to the most isolated battlefields. One of the most daunting things about the Oriskany Reef project is its size, 911 feet long and 145 feet wide. Displaces 30,800 tons. Something this big needs some serious tie downs to keep it in place.

It is secured to the dock using dozens of lines. Effective are these huge chains, two of them lead to giant anchors weighing a whopping 33,000 pounds each, buried 25 feet into the ground, nice little anchor and this is just the flow, so the anchor goes down probably another five feet, so it's pretty big. I have to try to get out of here, it was definitely easier going down. Frank Leckie is an expert in ship demolition, but he's never seen anything this big before. There is so much to do in such a short time, for example, the lighting of the boat we drive. 25,000 lights throughout the ship and 25,000 feet of lights, for example, every 10 feet away, you have a 125,000 foot long light that is just a small phase, a small part, every aspect of this job is a big challenge.

Peeling paint, for example, contains lead and everything has to go. We were assigned 29 tons halfway, we got 29 tons and we are already halfway there. We ended up saying okay, we'll just fill 24 dumpsters. We ended up filling 50. Dumpsters The USS Oriskany was a ship caught in a fundamental shift in naval history at the end of World War II. Its construction began in May 1944 and it was supposed to become the most modern ship to fight in The war in the Pacific, but the war ended before the Oriskany was put to sea. The 27,000-ton Essex-class aircraft carrier USS Oriskany awaits launch at the New York Navy Shipyard.

It is the first capital ship of the United States. completed since the end of the war at that time she could only launch and land propeller-driven aircraft and her role in the fleet was uncertain she was redesigned with a more powerful hydraulic steering system bridge and a flight deck to launch propeller-driven aircraft combat in 1952 she was reclassified as an attack aircraft carrier and really became the powerful or was a strategic player in the Korean and Vietnam wars until the 1970s the Oriskany was one of the most active ships in the US fleet the bomb lifters which were once used to increase their firepower are now the key to their demise as miners working on a coal scene the demolition team uses these shafts to cut deeper into the ship, the engine rooms are where the products are hidden most toxic chemicals and hazardous materials we develop.

We call mineshafts that reach the main engine rooms, but they also feed each of the levels. We had to cut two inches of armor. class a armor here and then on level four, just before the engine room, down here, if you can look down, we had to cut the armor again from six floors below the flight deck, each level has to be cleared of fat and oil. and the only thing that can handle decades of dirt is a hydroblast or extreme pressure washer that blasts dirt with over 8,500 pounds of force through the floors and some valves down there all blown.

You'll stand up straight, slip and crack your skull open. It's pretty dangerous down there. Some of the tanks can only be accessed by narrow ladders that descend 60 feet down, not only do they operate in tight spaces, but they also have to deal with the heat. a scorching 110 degrees nothing is easy what you can notice when you enter the tank is that not only is it very hot, there is no airflow at all, it is somewhat oily and it is about 50 60 feet deep and you have to climb down a ladder very narrow to get there, so it is, overall, an extremely tiring job that requires frequent turnover of people due to the arduous conditions, but despite all the risk, there is a reward.

The medals from which the ship was made are now being mined to pay for the operation. very high quality metals, the navy only used the best metals when they built a ship. There is a lot of revenue coming from each of these loads and we ship two or three loads of this a week, but the main reason for metal recovery is several quarts. one is income and the other is that returning metals like brass, copper and aluminum to the economy saves energy and resources. Every time a new ton of copper is made, enormous natural resources are needed and for it to stay at the bottom of the ocean does not help the reef.

This is our gold mine. This is where we extract our gold. This is what we are extracting gold from. copper gold but the mother lode is on the outside of the ship this is the starboard elevator the planes came from here and take us this way. Anything over water like this is dangerous and safety is out of the question. This whole lift is worthless and a man gets hurt, that's not worth it, so we take our time and do it right. It's interesting. The Navy built this ship to be unsinkable, so it will take a lot of engineering work for her to sink properly.

The

sinking

plan is the most critical part of the operation before the demolition team can begin work. There is one more place that needs to be inspected. On the ocean side of the huge room, a Navy diving team will check the status of all previous repairs and look for any new damage. This is critical information for the placement of the explosives, so our job here is to identify the dimensions and condition of all blanking plates. In the hazard sea openings there are 124 on the drawing and we have to go down and identify the condition of each one to make sure the next crew knows what to do when they are working under the ship.

Identify patches and patch numbers and correct drawings. The drawings will then, on the inside of the ship, identify which pipes go to that patch, so when you want to sink the ship, level it, and sink it, you'll even have to figure out how much. The water is going to go through each pipe and that is not done well. This ship won't sink properly and will probably end up on its side or something weird like that. They want to sit it in the background, sitting vertically, just like you see. sitting here on the pure side, except it will be underwater, the divers are working in less than 50 feet of water, but with almost zero visibility, the work carries some risks, probably the worst that can happen is that the diver loses the air or lose air. your mask and then panic and come to the surface, if you do that and hold your breath, the compressed air in your lungs basically explodes out of your lungs and goes into your bloodstream, goes through your heart and into your brain and that is. uh that's called arterial gas embolism and it can result in paralysis, death, pretty bad stuff despite the risks, these highly trained navy divers are having great success.

Red diver, I have a patch, we're on one, one, but sometimes it's just luck. draw before disaster strikes okay cool okay cool okay sam okay wait okay okay red we have an unconscious diver on the surface tinder slender head come back up come here get him out of the water red divers on the surface hold him on the surface doctor get the stretcher here like you called we have vital signs for breathing you have difficulty opening your eyes okay coming oh yeahhey god it happened okay it was getting to the bottom uh this looked like we had a diver coming up he had a schedule so skip it the decompression and he seems fine so I think we're good to pick him up bring him in this is the kind of situation they train for all the time, now the demolition team will raise the stakes, another level is the bomb. squadron leader your team will be working on these huge chambers that contain giant valves called sea chests these valves and pipes open directly into the ocean to allow ballast water to enter the chambers stewart's job is to choose which valves to fly in this sea chest here and that sea chest there, we have identified 22 positions and valves throughout the boat, most of them are in the center, those are our main ones, there are also some critical locations, both forward and aft, the placement of bombs and complete detonation are critical places for charges in the wrong place or using the wrong amount of explosives and the ship could flood unevenly and the project would end in disaster as the ship would roll and sink on its side, all will detonate simultaneously and the ship should settle on a uniform keel.

We are using a double redundant system to ensure that all charges detonate together. We do not want any charges not to detonate because we do not have any unexploded demolition material left on the ship if all goes as planned the top of the control tower or Oriskany's command will be located 55 feet below the surface, making it an excellent recreational diving site and that is a crucial reason not to leave behind any unexploded ordnance that could put the life of an unsuspecting diver at risk. This will not be the first time that the mighty or has felt the devastating impact of explosives on October 27, 1966 a signal flare accidentally ignited a chain reaction of explosions in the forward hangar of Oriskany and when we entered there the fire was rising up the side of the building, we went to turn on the hoses on the side of the charger um and when someone hit it with water with the other hose and the magnesium explodes when you hit it and it was just like it was raining fire buried by armor the men inside never had the opportunity the fire is the most dangerous most of the people who died in that fire died from asphyxiation, they did not die from burns, well, they burned after suffocating, it was the worst disaster in the history of the Oriskany. 44 pilots and crew lost their lives as the remediation team races to prepare the Oriskany for its. burial at sea, mother nature throws them a curveball, we had a very unusual semi-tropical storm come through, it rained at least several inches and it's not a major concern for the safety of the project, but what we have to do It is to be concerned about cleaning the water that entered the structure of the ship so that there is no effect on stability, but this is certainly not the last complication that the team will face.

The Navy is happy with the work the remediation team has done so far. The state of Florida. However, it has decided that the Oriskany is not safe enough to be sunk in its waters, but it seems that they want to make it a little safer for divers, and the hanging bundles of cables like this one are potential items that can get tangled . We would like to remove something like this. I'm going to go ahead and spray this. Everything with green has to disappear. They've marked some overhead wiring obstructions and things like that. We're running into a bit of a problem.

As for the problematic weather, we are approaching hurricane season so we need to hurry up and get it done if they want to tow this to Florida before hurricane season starts. The extra work doesn't end with tangles, the wiring and the wooden flight deck contain PCBs, it's one of the most toxic substances in the world and it all has to go, putting more pressure on the team as they race to beat the season. hurricanes. We did a calculation, we counted the length of the cables on the island, etc., how many? levels and we estimate that there were probably close to 200 miles of cable in this superstructure alone, all of these have to come out, they are called cable trunks, mostly communication cables, we can't use torches because the cables contain PCBs as soon as you heat them up and putting a flame on them will release them into the air and then we have a problem so we don't burn any everything is done manually with the saw or with the cable cover much more aggravating but it is what you have to do to get it out properly, this is a lot of cable that one man removed it in about four hours and 15 minutes and it still hasn't been removed, but that's how much one man with the saw and a couple of wire cutters can remove in about that amount of As the crew puts the finishing touches on remediation preparations, preparations begin for the last voyage of oriskany that will be towed almost 600 miles from corpus christi, texas, to pensacola, florida, that is where the most dangerous phase of the operation will take place, manipulating the bombs that will launch the powerful or to the bottom of the sea, but towing this behemoth across the Gulf of Mexico represents another risk as hurricane season approaches.

I'm glad he's leaving. I think we've done everything they asked us to do and it's time for this to end. I think we certainly accomplished everything we came to do. The anchors that were buried eight months earlier have to be dug up and loaded onto the flight deck along with thousands of feet of chain that will come along during the voyage and be used. Keep the Oriskany in place on sink day tonight and tomorrow morning the tugs will arrive and take her out on Monday morning they will connect all the tugs and begin to move out of the canal.

We'll park up here. On the two-span lake canal, the hardest one to pass is this drawbridge here. I mean, we got over it going in, but it was really tight, like six or eight inches, and then we headed right back into the bay and were hanging. In line with the boat, it's so high out of the water that if it's windy I can't get out, so a lot depends on the wind, so I'll have all the tugs, all the people, and if it blows more than 15 miles an hour I have to start again on tuesday morning and if it flows again i have to start again on wednesday morning the oriskany is a dead boat meaning she has no power or steering ability so the wind conditions have to be calm for the tugs to handle her with winds blowing over 25 miles per hour it is too dangerous to leave the port as you can see today is not a good day to go today we have probably winds of 20 knots we cannot leave until it is 10 a.m. winds at least 10 knots is the maximum today it's probably blowing 30 to 40 mile per hour winds the pilots canceled the pilots but there's always a chance you know this front is coming this should be a pause this should give us a window approximately six and seven hours, so wait well. as you can see with the wind behind us and the flag and the smoke with all this wind it is surely canceled with all the crews on standby the costs are increasing it can cost up to 100,000 a day you have the pilots, the help hugs the leader tugs put some gas in your car look at today's prices I have 10,000 horsepower tugs for a day that will burn 7,000 gallons just that boat there is only 30,000 in fuel so you have the assist tugs so you have the pilot then here they need four pilots guys in the morning we are all going to arrive at six o'clock it may be good weather it may not be good weather but if we arrive at six we will finish Early we will try to have everything ready and the next morning we will do the same until let the ship leave.

There's nothing left to do now but bet on Mother Nature in Corpus Christi, Texas, the Oriskany has been waiting days for the weather to be perfect, but today's forecast is finally looking good, it hasn't been an official attempt yet, but if I had to bet my salary on it, we get out of here, the word gets out and the work of disputing the enormous Hulk, Roger Rogers, begins, they are going to go ahead and cut that off. table for you as soon as the dolphin tug is

free

, I'll go ahead and cut this one off and we'll be done, oh, you're done with over a thousand tons of precious metals and hazardous materials taken from the highest traveling ship, the team has had to pump ballast water to clean the bridge.

The Oriskany is almost 200 feet high and the 203 bridge only the tide will tell how much clearance we had last time. Three or four dollars. I had a guy up there with the sauce ready. to go probably about three knots I prefer to go slower the danger is that if you go fast you hit something it will cause a lot of damage go slow you can touch it it is a big bet the tugboats aim at the center of the bridge if the tide is too high the powerful o he'll take it down with just a few inches to spare the oriskany glides through that's a beautiful sight right there i'll tell you he did well his next challenge is to get to pensacola almost 600 miles away but when he reaches the bay the line The tow bar suddenly breaks down, the Oriskany drifts dangerously close to the rocky shore, and the crew realizes something has gone wrong.

The oriskany is of no help, as she moves around without energy. The pilot tug crew struggled with the chain and eventually reconnected to the tow bar. Oriskany finally arrived at the naval base in Pensacola Florida. The team begins working on the most important phase of the operation, executing the timing plan. Naval engineers have developed a plan that they believe will sink the ship evenly and quickly. Poles are strategically cut through dozens of tanks and chambers. The oriskany was built not to sink because of it. side protection system and has tanks on each side of his four aft, if he took a hit on the first tank, he had two more tanks in to keep him airtight or maybe he would penetrate two tanks, he still had one more to keep him. airtight, so in the sump plan what they had us do was fill all these tanks so that they are already full of water, so now this whole protection system is full of water, we flood it around it, that's why the boat unsinkable is now sinkable.

All about compromising the integrity of the ship. The double-layer hull side protection tanks and thick steel walls must be precisely cut to allow seawater to fill the ship evenly and quickly once we reach the sinking site. Frank will bring some of his people. We go down into space and they will remove all these patches. There is too much water on one side or the other and the boat will capsize. Our main deal has been trying to pump the ship down by putting all the ballast on it and we put about uh 15,000 tons of water, which is about 540 tanks that we've filled, but there's a problem: the ship is leaking like a sieve. and water is entering the tanks where it could affect the explosives.

We have spaces for engines that we need to put in. Explosive charges on an old ship like this, the tanks leak through the pipes, so a lot of the water goes into the engine room spaces, we have to pump it out before the explosives come on board, for so we must keep these spaces really dry. Now the bomb squad moves to place the detonation cord through the maze of corridors inside this floating city. It's an extremely treacherous job. Aircraft Carrier. Do you know what the biggest ships we have are? you think you can go one way you know you think you're going starboard and suddenly you turn around you go for it the 22 bombs are connected with 10 miles of debt yes, sometimes the most important thing for us with the dead core is the route we want to make sure we don't do it Without thinking about it or going through other charges or other debts, the detonation court runs to the flight deck and on this ship houses the electronic brain center that will control the ignition of the bombs.

The 45-foot bow is tied to the deck, but will break

free

and float as the carrier sinks beneath it. This actually turns on the firing system, activates the firing system and also operates the cable cutters that separate this entire ship from the ship while she is sinking. There's a duplicate on the support ship basically. what we have is a brake cable around each charge and as each charge detonates we will get an indication here, record it here instantly and then it will be transmitted back to the support vessel for verification today. The first thing we have is security.

This whole ship is equipped with explosives and military decoration, that's what's here, something green, something soft, no one comes off the hangar deck without an escort because we have all our loads in place andeveryone is tied to their debt cables. The worst that could happen would be an uncommanded detonation, if you bother it, throw it out, hook it, let me know and we'll take a look at it. I can't emphasize it enough. You know we don't want to have an accident and this kind of thing. accidents kill the demolition team rush to complete the last-minute cleanup but now they have to work side by side with the bomb squad, making them awkward coworkers one wrong move could set off the explosives the ship would sink at the dock and lives would be lost there Only 24 hours before the Oriskany leaves port, the pressure increases the closer we get to the end here, probably the more dangerous it becomes because now we are opening all the access we created for the sink, for so there are holes everywhere and all the hatches are blown out. there are holes in the deck holes in the bulkhead the deck plates are gone everything is planned and it's supposed to be far away but it gets dangerous to clean it up and wire it up so it explodes there's only one thing left to do hey let's get a second aircraft carrier loaded with explosives. the mighty arm breaks loose from its moorings the eris cannon leaves the port towards its final resting place frank and the demolition team accompany him they monitor the patches and welds and are ready to man the pumps if it starts to fill with water it's an old ship and look at it after all the gutting we've done, it's still tough an armada of tugboats takes position in case the aircraft carrier breaks free of its tow cables the countdown to zero hour has begun 25 miles from pensacola, florida, the oriskany floats above it final resting place in the gulf of mexico nes uh port security this is alpha tango how to copy on security just want to clarify again we need a 1250 foot arc from any point on the oriskany today under agreement with the state of florida the aircraft carrier has to sink in a very precise set of coordinates, the tugboats carefully push the mighty o over a buoy that marks the place how far away are we robert 150 feet ahead ranger we are about 350 feet away hey, when it gets close right , give it a hard pull here and it will turn the bow there and get right where you want to ensure the boat stays exactly on target.

The anchors will deploy in a four-point anchoring system. this is the starboard anchor chain that is connected up to the island, from here we will have approximately 100 tons of chain and anchor that will keep the ship offshore and this will be the first and most important chain and anchor that we will deploy on the ship. anchor was normally a three inch chain, we brought a three and three eighths chain and the original ship anchors weighed about 25,000 pounds. We brought in £30,000 to keep the boat in one place. We only have one time deployment, once we cut the cable, we can't get it back. we can't bring it in we can't shorten it we can't lengthen it we have one shot and this is the only shot we have to deploy almost 100 tons of chain per anchor leg frank gives work to release the anchors yes, you look good The last anchor is in the water , but there are still a few more incisions to make.

Once these sections of the room are opened, there is nothing to stop her from sinking. We cut six-by-six holes in the side of the boat so that when she arrives. up to that level the water will flow and make the ship sink quickly you guys, we have your job here, go blow it up tomorrow the sun rises on the day of the sinking 25 miles off the coast of florida the oriskany is anchored above its place of final rest this is the same day we do it we are cleaning the rest of our equipment I didn't get off so when they set up the explosives we are crazy but we are not crazy enough to stay here one of The final jobs aboard the mighty O are setting up video cameras to capture the explosions and film the sinking of the Oriskany from inside the ship.

The cameras are mounted on the suspension cover. Images from inside the sinking ship that have never been seen before. It's been pretty smooth since then. We have been here and I hope it continues like this. The weather seems good, but anything can happen. You know anything can happen. The final systems are checked again and again before the green light is given to begin the countdown. Security is tight and all boats are maintained. Outside the one-mile exclusion zone, the bomb squad deploys the last lines of the detonation court, they will attach the explosive charges to the Ike boat, hey, five, three, two, one, the charges have successfully exploded, but the powerful or will it settle directly to the bottom or will it go down fighting?

This is actually very strange. You had to see her do this. I mean, it's disturbing. She is drinking a lot of water right now. Much water. She looks like she's about to reach the third deck right now. Frank and. don is getting a little worried when the ship starts to list to port you're looking at the entire flight deck what's going to happen is the house is going to help start writing it once it sinks the only problem is right now it's too much , she might roll on her side, come on girl, look what she's supposed to do, she'll level out, she'll level out, she'll do it her way, come on baby, roll back again, level it out again.

In this spectacular footage taken from the hangar deck camera, a wall of water engulfs the ship just 37 minutes after detonation, the mighty succumbs to the sea and slides beneath the waves, is beginning to mount itself, is coming back again, boom, it's going to hit the bottom the applause is only temporary for the job to be successful oriskany has to sit upright at the bottom of the sea the only way to know for sure is to dive in place sitting upright and in perfect position The chopping and chopping behind her the crew can rest assured that the mission is a success from its launch at the end of World War II through years of brave service the powerful attack aircraft carrier or finally rest in peace survived Korea a nearly disaster in vietnam and eight months of cleanup and explosives is now ready to serve again this time as the world's largest artificial reef so you can