NAVY NEWS WEEK 38-6 21 September 2018 How the U.S. Is Recovering Oil from a Nuked Warship Prinz Eugen, once the pride of the German Navy, is sitting upside down in the Pacific and threatening to leak. By Kyle Mizokami Sep 17, 2018 U.S. Navy photo by LeighAhn Ferrari, chief mate, U.S. Naval Ship Salvor The U.S. military is trying to recover the oil form a ship that's been underwater for 72 years. In an interesting twist, it's not even an American warship. The United States captured the German heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen as a war prize after the end of World War II. The Prinz Eugen capsized in 1946 after being nuked—twice—during the atomic bomb tests at Bikini Atoll. For decades, experts have feared that the ship's oil might leak into the Pacific. Now the Pentagon is trying to do something about it. The Doomed Fleet It was July 1946, months after the end of World War II, when the U.S. Navy assembled one of the mightiest fleets in history. Led by the aircraft carrier Saratoga and battleship New York, the group also included captured Axis vessels such as the Japanese battleship Nagato and the Prinz Eugen. A doomed fleet of more than 80 warships anchored at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands, way out in the Pacific Ocean... and was promptly nuked. Twice. See the video in this 8½ minute clip at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gy6-ZKWCoH0 . Even with WWII barely in the rearview, U.S.-Soviet relations had been turning frosty. Most believed (rightly) that Moscow would get a bomb of its own. The U.S. Navy wanted to know what nuclear weapons would do to warships, so they built this ghost fleet. Operation Crossroads involved two tests, Test Able and Test Baker, each simulating an atomic attack on a fleet at anchorage. Prinz Eugen flying the Stars and Stripes, January 1946. Getty Images The German heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen was one of the German Navy’s largest ships. Fast and powerful, Prinz Eugen had teamed up with the mighty battleship Bismarck during wartime to sink the British battlecruiser Hood before being stuck in Germany for repairs. The ship was given over to the U.S. Navy at the end of the war, briefly became USS Prinz Eugen (IX-300) and survived both two atomic bomb blasts, with only a broken main mast to show for it. Prinz Eugen survived the blasts, but she became frightfully radioactive. After initial attempts to decontaminate the ship, the U.S. towed the heavy cruiser to Kwajalein Atoll, where she sank six months later. Today the ship is visible just off the coast of Enubuj island, upside down in shallow water, her propellers resting above the surface of the Pacific Ocean. The Hot Tap The wreck of the Prinz Eugen, with USNS Salvor and tanker Humber anchored above. U.S. Navy photo by LeighAhn Ferrari, chief mate, U.S. Naval Ship Salvor In 1974, the U.S. Military warned the oil still aboard the German warship was at risk of escaping and should be removed within 30 years. Here’s a U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service report on the feasibility of the removal process. According to the report, a major concern is a typhoon damaging the wreck and facilitating a major leak. The hull has sprung several smaller oil leaks over the years. The Navy determined in 1974 that neither Prinz Eugen nor the oil inside the wreck is still radioactive. The oil retrieval process is now ongoing, a joint project of the U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, and the Republic of Micronesia. The U.S. salvage ship USNS Salvor and oil tanker Humber are moored directly above the Prinz Eugen, assisted by the U.S. Navy’s Mobile Diving and Salvage Unit One. The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service estimates there is approximately 2,767 tons of oil still onboard the ship. (The cruiser was fueled up for the tests in order to simulate the effects of an a-bomb on a fully loaded, combat-ready warship.) Aboard USNS Salvor, with Prinz Eugen’s remaining propellers visible in background. U.S. Navy photo by Stephanie Bocek The operation is using the Easy Tapper Hot Tapping Machine Kit to cut into the hull, access the fuel reservoirs, and install a valve system for siphoning away the oil. The oil is then pumped into Humber’s holds. A similar operation was undertaken in 2003 to remove oil from the sunken U.S. Navy oil tanker USS Mississinewa, sunk by a Japanese manned torpedo during World War II. The manner in which the Prinz Eugen settled, upside down in very shallow water, makes it simpler to draw the oil than with other wrecks. The fact that the old cruiser stored most of her fuel in tanks adjacent to the hull walls also makes accessing the oil easier. There are 143 external tanks along the hull wall and another 30 deeper inside the ship. The U.S. military expects the operation to extract the oil to wrap up by the end of October 2018. Source: https://www.popularmechanics.com China Could Have 4 Aircraft Carriers by 2022: Should the Navy Be Worried? To what end is Beijing building this force? How many carriers will the PLAN ultimately build? Is China growing a carrier force meant to protect its interests or expand them? We simply don’t know—but we will certainly find out. by Kyle Mizokami September 12, 2018 The People’s Liberation Army Navy—more commonly known outside of China as the Chinese Navy—is modernizing at a breakneck pace. Chinese shipbuilders have built more than one hundred warships in the past decade, a build rate outstripping the mighty U.S. Navy. Most importantly, China now has two aircraft carriers—Liaoning and a second ship under sea trials—and a third and possibly fourth ship under construction. With such a massive force under construction it’s worth asking: where does PLA naval aviation go from here? For most of its modern history China has been the target of aircraft carriers, not an owner of one. The Imperial Japanese Navy’s carriers conducted strikes on the Chinese mainland in support of ground campaigns in the 1930s, strikes that went a long way toward honing the service’s legendary naval aviation record. U.S. naval power protected nationalist Chinese forces at the end of the Chinese Civil War, and U.S. Navy carriers conducted airstrikes on Chinese “volunteers” during the Korean War. In 1996 during the Third Taiwan Crisis, the United States deployed a carrier battle group near Taiwan as a sign of support against Chinese military actions. It could be fairly said that aircraft carriers made a significant impression on China. Image: Reuters. Today, China has two aircraft carriers: the ex-Soviet carrier Liaoning, and a second unnamed ship, Type 002, currently undergoing sea trials. Liaoning is expected to function strictly as a training carrier, establishing training, techniques, and procedures for Chinese sailors in one of the most dangerous aspects of naval warfare: naval aviation. Despite this, Liaoning’s three transits of the Taiwan Strait and visit to Hong Kong show the PLAN considers it perfectly capable of showing the flag. The second ship, Type 002 (previously referred to as Type 001A) resembles Liaoning but with a handful of improvements, including an active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar the carrier’s island and a larger flight deck. Experts believe Type 002 will carry slightly more fighters than her older sibling, up to thirty J-15 jets in all. Type 002 will be the first combat-capable carrier, although the lack of a catapult means its aircraft must sacrifice range and striking power in order to take off from the flight deck. A third ship of yet another class is under construction at the Jiangnan Shipyard at Shanghai, with credible reports of a fourth ship of the same class under construction at Dalian. This new class, designated Type 003, is the first Chinese carrier constructed using a modern, modular construction method. The modules, known as “superlifts” each weigh hundreds of tons, are assembled on land and then hoisted onto the ship in drydock. Large American and British warships, including carriers such as the USS Gerald R. Ford and HMS Queen Elizabeth are assembled using the superlift method. Although there are few hard details on Type 003, we do know some things. The new carrier will forgo the ski ramp method for CATOBAR, or Catapult-Assisted Take-Off But Arrested Recovery. The use of catapults will allow the carrier to launch heavier aircraft with great fuel and weapons loads, making the carrier more effective as a power projection platform. China has reportedly conducted “thousands” of test launches of a new electromagnetic aircraft launch system (EMALS). Not only does an EMALs launch system enable the launch of heavier combat jets, it can also launch propeller-driven aircraft similar to the U.S. Navy’s E-2D Hawkeye airborne early warning and control aircraft and the C-2 Greyhound cargo transport. The ability to tune EMALs power levels also makes it easier to launch smaller, lighter unmanned aerial vehicles from catapults. We don’t currently know the size and displacement of the Type 003s, and likely won’t be able to even make an educated guess for another year. They will probably be incrementally larger than Type 002 with an incrementally larger air wing and overall combat capability, though one still falling short of American supercarriers.