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.

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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.

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