On December 17, 1917, the U.S. Navy submarine USS F-1, crashed off the coast of San Diego. Now, greater than a century later, researchers on the Woods Gap Oceanographic Institute (WHOI) have collected the primary high-definition visuals of the wreckage.
Throughout a collection of seven dives performed earlier this 12 months, researchers employed the crewed underwater car Alvin and autonomous underwater car Sentry, each based mostly on the WHOI analysis ship Atlantis, to snap close-ups of the sunken submarine. Since 1917, F-1 has been resting roughly 1,300 toes (400 meters) underwater. A Navy underwater car located it by chance within the Seventies, however this expedition is the primary to seize detailed photos of the misplaced sub.
The F-1 was built in 1901 and launched in 1911. The crash occurred throughout a coaching mission, throughout which the F-1 collided with one other submarine, sinking in mere seconds. Nineteen crew members misplaced their lives, however 5 escaped and survived. By the point of the 1917 crash, the U.S. had been at battle with the Central powers for seven months.
“Superior ocean expertise and easy teamwork performed a giant half in delivering these new photos,” Bruce Strickrott, supervisor of the Alvin Group at WHOI and the sub’s senior pilot who helped lead the expedition, stated in a statement. “As soon as we recognized the wreck and decided it was secure to dive, we have been capable of seize never-before-seen views of the sub.”
The group used multi-beam sonar methods on Atlantis and Sentry to supply maps of the F-1 and surrounding areas. Then, high-resolution cameras on Alvin picked up pictures and movies of the wreck. The researchers stitched these photos collectively to create detailed 3D photogrammetric fashions. The pictures confirmed that the F-1 is mendacity on the seafloor on its starboard (proper) facet, going through northwest, and is “remarkably intact,” Strickrott instructed Live Science.
The researchers left the battle grave web site untouched, nevertheless, “to protect its situation and be respectful of its legacy,” Bradley Krueger, an underwater archaeologist for the Naval Historical past and Heritage Command who participated in among the dives, instructed Reside Science.
In the course of the collection of dives, the researchers additionally surveyed a Navy torpedo bomber coaching plane that crashed close by in 1950.
The dives have been a part of a coaching and engineering mission to supply the Alvin pilots with expertise controlling the submersible and using deep-sea imaging applied sciences. The analysis was performed as a collaboration between the U.S. Nationwide Science Basis, College-Nationwide Oceanographic Laboratory System and the U.S. Navy’s Workplace of Naval Analysis and Naval Historical past and Heritage Command.
After the dives, the researchers held a remembrance ceremony aboard the Atlantis, ringing a bell 19 occasions, as soon as for every of the F-1’s crew members who died within the crash.
“As a U.S. Navy veteran, it was a profound honor to go to the wreck of the F-1 with our ONR and NHHC colleagues aboard Alvin,” Strickrott stated in a press release.
