The U.S.S. Wasp: Torpedoed, Scuttled, Sunk and Now Found

How exciting!!! My husbands grandfather was on board the Wasp! We have a picture from it on the water back when it was being used, have his coat and even have the lifejacket that helped keep him afloat and safe until they were rescued!.

Dear Mr. Ismay: My father was onboard the USS WASP (CV 7) on that fateful day. He was a Tail Gunner and had just dropped onto the flight deck roughly 15 minutes prior to that attack. He spent nearly 10 hours in enemy and shark infested water before being rescued by a PT boat trailing a monkey-knot wire (rope). I have wanted/searched for what it appeared to be this forgotten vessel (never mentioned in any Battle Group stories). I am SO STOKED to have read your article and I would love to hear more, please. The WASP left harbor on my Father's birthday (01 July) and sunk on the exact date of his future passing (15 Sept) 57 years later. I am a 17 year Iraqi War Combat Fleet Marine and it would give me no greater pleasure to speak with you further. Please contact me, if would. I look fantastically forward... Respectfully, B.L. Donohoe

An excellent article as much for the description of the technology used to find wrecks on the sea bottom as for its evocation of a military participant's love for his/her home and country. One comment as to the article's title, specifically " ... Scuttled, Sunk ... " Have never known a scuttled ship not to have sunk.

Is there a list of those who died that day on the Wasp? It would be good to remember them all.

This is video of the actual door my grandfather walked through on the bridge many times as an officer on the WASP. He was on it when it went down. I just can't believe what I'm seeing.

This story is exceptional and reminds me of THE SHIP OF GOLD IN THE DEEP BLUE SEA, and Shackelton's trip the South Pole, by Alfred Lansing.

Amazing!

It is a shame that the WW2 carrier, the USS Enterprise, the most glorious ship in our Naval history, was not preserved as a National Monument rather than being scrapped.

While on a Pacific cruise years ago, a plate/marker on the ship indicated that the vessel had been built by Mitsubishi Ind. The planes that attacked Pearl Harbor were built by the same Japanese Co. During a stop in HI, a cruiser could take a tour of Pearl Harbor as part of a day trip. The irony of the ship-planes-tour connection was not lost on me. Vertical integration. Did anyone else notice? Or Care? An uncle I never met was shot down as a paratrooper in this Pacific War at age 21. His father, my grand-dad, was shooting at Germans in France during WW1 and survived. Lesson: If you're born at the wrong time in this world, it's likely someone will hand you a gun and send you off to war. Me? I missed the Vietnam War because of a student deferment. That saved me from moving to Canada or Sweden.

"...in part to assess the damage the ships suffered and to see what lessons can be applied to how the service builds ships in the future". I'd start by not building any ships of the future anything like ships from the World War II era, the distant past.

Terrific, informative article and even more terrific, evocative photos! Thanks!

Time to put this technology to work to find Amelia Earhart's airplane.

Great story, I wonder if the same tech could be used to find other more recent things and to map the ocean.

Oh good, use of this technology in the Mediterranean should reveal lots of wicked ancient shipwrecks. We should be able to learn a lot more about history from them then from some war wreckage.

What legal principle makes it "illegal" to salvage a sunken warship on the bottom of the sea a million miles from anywhere?

Hoping they soon find my dad's ship, USS Johnston, off Leyte Island, Philippines.

Wonderful work begun by the late Paul Allen; we're all indebted that he thought to honor his father. FWIW, Ian Toll's history "Pacific Crucible" of the years 1941-1942 is well worth reading; the Wasp is covered as part of the Guadalcanal battle. This book is volume 1 of Mr Toll's trilogy. Volume 2, "The Conquering Tide" covers 1942 - mid year 1944. Voume 3 covering the remainder of the Pacific theatre is scheduled to be completed this year. A superb history.

My father, E.R. Crabtree, served on the USS Wasp CV-7 until the day she was torpedoed. He survived and retired after 20 years as an enlisted sailer in the US Navy. j s v t r atmedotcom

We had several wrecks, the HMS Exeter, Encounter and most of the Electra just disappear off of Java, torn up, destroyed with explosives and looted for scrap. About 200 sailors went down with them, possibly more as one was carrying survivors from other sinkings. The battleship HMS Prince of Wales and the cruiser Repulse (800 men lost in total) have also been found to be damaged in the South China Sea, some Vietnamese men were caught in the act of salvaging there once. The Dutch also had some ships removed off of Java - the HNLMS De Ruyter, Java and Kortenaer in the same area. 900 Dutch sailors lost, now there graves have been totally looted. I read that postwar, various wrecks off of Normandy were dynamited and salvaged by local Frenchman in an official capacity to clear the seas. I think the HMS Isis was one. I wonder if that was agreed or not, or whether it caused outrage then?

USS Wasp was commissioned in 1940 and sunk in 1942. In that space of time she had an incredibly active life. Ferrying British aircraft to the besieged island of Malta in the Mediterranean. Her and the battleship USS Washington operating with the Royal Navy to escort convoys to Murmansk in Russia. Transferred to the Pacific, operating in the Solomons against the Japanese. When torpedoed, she held herself together long enough for the majority of the crew to abandon ship. With her skipper the last to leave after making sure no one was left aboard.

I can't imagine any decent American saying "Why do you want to talk about a wreck? You know you lost that battle.’” It is as offensive as Trump saying McCain wasn't a hero because he was captured.

My uncle, Lt. Paul Doane, was lost in WWII on the USS Seawolf (SS 197) submarine, which was never found. If was reportedly sunk by freindly fire near the end of the war. It's wonderful to see these huge efforts to locate these ships and give closure to the families. Special thanks to all involved.

I'm fascinated by nautical archaeology and what it can tell us about who we are and where we came from. From the Late Bronze Age wreck at Ulu Burun to this one, we've only begun to explore. Thank you Paul Allen.

The USS Indianapolis was not just another US Navy ship when it was sunk on JUly 30, 1945. It had just delivered the first disassembled US atomic weapon to Tinian, where it was assembled, loaded aboard the B-29 Enola Gay, and detonated over Hiroshima a week later, leading to the quick end of the Pacific War On September 2. Ny a weird coincidence, a man I knew (then one of the French Horn players of the Boston Symphony) was a Navy radioman in the Pacific on that day, and was in radio communication with the ship when it suddenly stopped transmitting. It is possible that a certain complacency at command levels as the naval war was winding down (the Imperial Navy had lost all of its heavy units and was without sources of fuel due to the loss of the Indonesian oil fields) led to a lack of urgency in finding out what had happened and the delay in launching immediate rescue efforts, allowing many more casualties due to exposure and shark attack.

Our country has service men and women in harms way in many parts of the world. Their lives are on the line for freedom in fire fights in Syria and Afghanistan. By their presence they prevent hostilities is places like Korea. Their sacrifice is heroic, their service a gift to the nation they love. But WW II was a different kettle of fish. Unlike now, where most of us go about our lives unmindful of those who serve, during WW II our country was all in. I recently got a photo circa 1942 of my father, uncle and two aunts- all in uniform. The entire family volunteered to defend and protect. They were far from unusual. When we see photos like the resting place of the USS Wasp, this generation gets a glimpse of how the “greatest generation” earned the title and all that we owe them.

Where did all the beautiful comments written about yesterday's piece on The Wasp disappear to. Sometimes the comments are as moving, informative and riveting as the piece itself. PLEASE bring back the comments on the story from 3.13.19.

I crossed the Pacific several times, via troop ship, from Long Beach to Yokohama, and experiencing the vastness of that ocean, I'm greatly impressed that any of these shipwreck sites can be found.

Descendants of the sailors who did not survive the attacks on these ships may appreciate seeing their final resting places. May those places remain undisturbed. The article states, “Some folks say: ‘Why do you want to talk about a wreck? You know you lost that battle,’” Cox says. “It has to do with the sacrifice, the valor of U.S. sailors. These were at that time mostly professional sailors; the draft had not been in effect for that long.” Admiral Cox is right on regarding the valor of US sailors. But it is superficial for some to state they "lost the battle." Even in a successful battle, one suffers casualties -- partly of soldiers and sailors, as the admiral noted, but also of ships. How one reacts in the face of those casualties helps determine whether one wins the battle. In the battles of Coral Sea and Midway, the US suffered casualties, but we prevailed.