Salvor Leads Navy Team During Salvage Operation of Sunken WWII War Memorial
NAVSEA News
By JO2 Larry Foos, Commander, Logistics Group Western Pacific Public Affairs
SINGAPORE - It was a ship that did not want to be forgotten. After taking a fatal strike from an Imperial Japanese Kaiten suicide torpedo in November 1944, the World War II oil tanker USS Mississinewa (AO 59) had not been found for more than 56 years. The catastrophe took the lives of 63 American Sailors and one Japanese torpedo pilot. In April 2001 a team of San Francisco Bay area divers came upon her hull. Recognizing it as a war site, the divers reported their discovery and left the ship as is. Shortly after the encounter, something began to happen. The ship started to leak oil, somewhat like its contemporary, USS Arizona (BB 39) in Pearl Harbor, except at a more rapid rate. It got the attention of a nearby island government.
Mississinewa's hull lies in 130 feet of water inside a large atoll, or ring of coral, near the island of Ulithi of the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), about 350 nautical miles northwest of Guam. Called the Ulithi Atoll, the natural lagoon was an ideal place to safely transfer fuel from U.S. Navy oilers to deployed forces during World War II.
In August 2001, a small oil trail was spotted at the surface of Ulithi Atoll drawing attention to the Mississinewa. The FSM government declared a state of emergency and contacted the U.S. Navy for support. The Chief of Naval Operations directed Commander, Seventh Fleet and Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) to assess the situation of the Mississinewa (pronounced mes-es-in-ay-wä). Navy inspectors determined that the Mississinewa still had as much as 2,775,000 gallons of Navy special fuel oil, diesel and gasoline in its storage tanks, and it needed to be removed. That is when the rescue and salvage ship USS Salvor (ARS 52) was called into duty.
On February 26, 2003, the crew of Salvor, with the support of a variety of commands including Mobile Diving Salvage Unit One (MDSU-1) and Explosive Ordnance Disposal Mobile Unit Five (EODMU-5), successfully completed the month-long recovery of approximately 2 million of gallons of oil.
Initially, Seventh Fleet sent a survey team from NAVSEA after the discovery of the leak in 2001. NAVSEA and one of its contractors stopped the leak with a cement patch but, soon after the ship began to leak again. NAVSEA, Navy-contracted technical experts, and a team of divers from MDSU-1 were sent back out to refortify the patch and to survey the tank contents. They discovered that the source of the leaks was not from the ship's hull but from corrosion of the oil transfer piping system. It was then apparent that a plan would have to be developed to extract the oil, especially considering that typhoons, which are common in the area, could make matters worse.
Salvor was among nine Navy commands, the Coast Guard and four privately contracted vessels and barges involved in the salvage operation. The planning phase began in March 2002. Several months of training, equipment acquisition, shipping and mobilization had to take place prior to the actual operational phase, which began January 25.
NAVSEA, along with its Emergency Ship Salvage Material contractor GPC, Inc., took the lead for the technology requirements and developed a method to extract the oil from the ship's hull, called "hot tapping." The relatively new procedure enables divers to tap right into the hull of the ship, inserting a valve so that a hose can be attached to pump oil into the awaiting barge at the surface. Positioning the taps hasn't been a problem because the ship is turned up side down with the hull facing up. Participating Sailors say the operation has been an invaluable experience.
"I'm highly impressed with the success of the diving operation," said Engineman 3rd Class Bart Manzer, a Johnstown, N.Y. native and Salvor crewmember. "It was obviously well planned and executed. The word on the street is true--the U.S. Navy divers provide the best salvage diving in the world, " said Manzer.
Homeported in Pearl Harbor, Salvor has 13 divers from MDSU-1 and two divers from EODMU-5 in Guam, deployed on the ship to participate in the operation. Salvor's commanding officer, Lt. Cmdr. John A. Carter, a Corvallis, Ore. native is the operation's on-scene commander.
The staff of Commander, Logistics Western Pacific (CLWP) in Singapore worked side-by-side with NAVSEA to develop the sophisticated oil-offloading plan. CLWP, in his operational "hat" as Commander, Task Force 73, is the operational commander for the salvage operation.
"Our staff provides the oversight and regional knowledge expertise for planning and accomplishing the task," said Lt. Cmdr. Richard Thiel, CLWP's diving and salvage officer. "It was a tremendous culmination of planning between a wide range of agencies, from the U.S. federal government down to the fleet. This operation couldn't have been effective without the great cooperation we had," said Thiel.
NAVSEA Supervisor of Salvage representative Bill Walker was impressed with the team effort by participants, and was especially appreciative of Salvor's captain. "The Navy on-scene commander, Lt. Cmdr. Carter, provided outstanding leadership and set a positive cooperative tone for this joint effort," he said.
Although a lot of the attention has been on the oil offloading process, no one is overlooking Mississenwa's historic significance as a war grave. Because the vessel is upside down, workers can avoid entering spaces that may contain human remains.
On February 10, a memorial service was held onboard Salvor to honor the lost American Sailors of the Mississinewa over the site where they lie. Attended by crewmembers and local islanders, the service was highlighted by a memorial message from Carter and two Sailors emptying a ceremonial bowl of sand into the wind, along with the releasing of flowers, a gun salute, taps and the National Anthem.
Much of Carter's memorial message spoke highly of the fallen crewmembers' example. "For as long as men have gone down to the sea in ships, and as long as war has been perpetrated upon us, men like these 63 entombed beneath us, have died protecting freedom, protecting us," he said. "So the real reason we are here, is to say thank you! Without the sacrifices made by these men and many others like them, our lives as we know them today could not be."
On February 18, Salvor crewmembers placed a permanent memorial that they built on the uninhabited island of Mangyang, just a few miles from the Mississinewa.
Thanks to an oil leak that mysteriously began after her discovery, the crew of the Mississinewa, will no more be lost, or forgotten.
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