SRC Project Display

Divers mapping Stanley wreck site, Isle Royale NP, MI

The USS Arizona Memorial, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii

The coral reef environment at Biscayne NP, Florida

A green seaturtle off the coast of Oahu, Hawaii

Kwajalein

In 1989 and 1990 SRC divers conducted survey dives on Prinz Eugen, the German cruiser famous for partnering with the Bismarck when it sank HMS Hood during World War II. Eugen is upended with its screws and a portion of its stern emerging from the water. The vessel was sacrificed as part of the target array for the Atomic Bomb blasts at Bikini during Operation Crossroads in 1946. It was later towed from Bikini to Kwajalein and turned turtle during a storm.

Exposed screw and shafts of the Prinz Eugen

SRC archeologists and mappers spent two days (one each year) investigating the wreck while waiting through the inevitable delays that accompanied working at Bikini before the infrastructure existed to support recreational diving at the atoll. NPS divers used tanks and weights supplied by the Kwaj Diving Club to access the site as their dual tank systems were usually packed and crated during these layovers. Even given the less than ideal logistics, the dives on Prinz Eugen generated useful information and images.

The cruisers gravity turrets have fallen away several feet to the lagoon floor directly below the weather deck. The vessel is largely intact and still retains vestiges of its use in the target array including a blast gage tower or Christmas Tree. The latter is on the port quarter extending into the silt from the upended deck.

Prinz Eugen is just one of many World War II vestiges easily findable and accessible to diving in Kwajalein Atoll Lagoon. SRC recommended a complete remote sensing survey of the lagoon with diver ground-truthing in the mid-1990s. Such a project was slated for funding by the DOD Legacy program but did not take place due to a major shortfall in the Defense programs available monies for several years.

April 1990 - Continued mapping and photographing Prinz Eugen. Lenihan was project director, Larry Murphy, Larry Nordby, Jerry Livingston, Jim Delgado, Nick Caloyianis and Bill Curtsinger.
August - 1989 Initiated mapping and photo documentation of Prinz Eugen. Lenihan was Project Director, Larry Murphy, Larry Nordby, Jerry Livingston, Jim Delgado.
Reference:
Delgado, James P., Daniel J. Lenihan and Larry Murphy, 1991, The Archaeology of the Atomic Bomb: A Submerged Cultural Resources Assessment of the Sunken Fleet of Operation Crossroads at Bikini and Kwajalein Atoll Lagoons, Republic of the Marshall Islands. Submerged Resources Center Professional Report No. 11. National Park Service, Santa Fe, NM.