Bikini Atoll - the best of the rest! ***IMAGE INTENSIVE***

[TeeJF]

​

So I've pretty much exhausted the best wrecks we dived in the Bikini Atoll lagoon... well, almost! In addition to several more dives on the aircraft carrier USS Saratoga, the destroyer USS Lamson, and the submarine USS Apogon, we also dived a transport known as a Liberrty Ship, the USS Anderson which is another destroyer, a WW1 era Dreadnought called the USS Artkansas, the battleship Nagato which was a massive 17" gun battleship and Japanese Admiral Yamamoto's flagship.

Sadly the Liberty ship was little more than a disparate jumble of steel plates inhabited by some particularly large and sinister looking sharks so we spent that much time cuddled up to the wreck avoiding exposing ourselves that I took no pictures!

The Anderson was really quite interesting, covered liberally in artifacts and relatively intact. There's a few pictures of her here including a composite shot I created by carefully aligning two photos taken from the same point several meters away from the bow of the wreck. Photo stitching was as yet a thing of the future for me so I apologise for the visible joint! My glue must have been to thick.

Finally then there are a few pictures I took on the upside down battleship Nagato including some of her huge 17" main armament taken as we swam underneath the decks. I was so narced (nitrogen in your breathing air is highly narcotic below 28 metres and you feel horribly drunk) that I detached myself from our party at one point and swam off with the first group heading the other way. I also tasted a metallic edge to my air and took my valve out to swill it at 50 metres quite forgetting that human beans can't breath water very well! narcs are a really bad thing when you're diving and I have never got used to them in well over 34 years of on and off diving. Thank God for mixed gas which removes the problem and is readily available nowadays.

The piccies...​

The destroyer USS Anderson...​

The USS Anderson at sea...

A composite shot of her bows created the old fashioned way!

Secondary armaments...

The loading hatches on Anderson's midships torpedo tubes.

Swimming towards Anderson's stern.

The paint on this deck hatch is still in really could condition despite several atomic bombs going off and 60 years immersion in salt water!

At the stern now, here are the rudder and props.

Time to leave and head back up to the surface. The cage on the stern is a depth charge rack.

Yamamoto's flagship, the battleship IJNS Nagato...

Almost down on the seabed and I hadn't a clue at this point what I was taking photos off because I was so puddled with the narcs

Part of the bridge structure lying upside down and just about stopping the battleship from rolling all the way over.

This is Admiral Yamamoto's fighting bridge just about as high as you can get on the superstructure.
But it has broken away and lies on it's side now on the seabed close to the hull of the ship.

Odd to think that Yamamoto may have been standing in this small room atop his flagship as he gave the command "Tora, Tora, Tora" to initiate the attack on Pearl Harbour.
Personally though I would be prepared to put money on it that he was actually in some sumptuous lounge way down below!

We are swimming completely underneath the forward part of the wreck past the first of the 17" guns.

TJ usually suffers narcs far more than me but on this occasion she was in tip top form and looking after me!

Highlighted in the torch beam, this is the end cover for a 17" gun barrel used to weatherproof it in stormy seas. It is known as a "tampion".

Prolific fish life on the wreck.

TJ emerging after a short swim through the interior of the wreck. She had just gone in to what was known as a bomb flat,
a room where ammunition for the AA guns was un-loaded from an ordnance lift and fused ready for firing by the adjacent AA guns.

Hope you enjoyed these few wrecks from Bikini Atoll, thanks for looking. ​

 

[Lucky Pants]

Wonderful reports you guys really enjoyed them .

 

[freespirits]

great final report on these wrecks ,,really cracking pics even with the wobbles .,,, great job

 

[night crawler]

You know I never know what to say after reading your reports, I'm just green with envy and very jealous, I wish I had kept up my diving.

 

[UE-OMJ]

TJ usually suffers narcs far more than me but on this occasion she was in tip top form and looking after me!

Ok, whats 'narcs'?

 

[Priority 7]

nice too see more WWII wrecks my good man

 

[night crawler]

Ok, whats 'narcs'?

Nitrogen narcosis I never had it as I never wend that deep but when you get down around 100 foot 30 Mtrs you can suffer from it. From what I have heard it's a bit like being drunk, Type it in to Wiki and you will get an explanation.

 

[gingrove]

Night crawler said it all! My 14 year old son is doing his first open water dive next week - at this rate I might have to join him on the course!

 

[UrbanX]

Som explores I come out of thinking "I don't think I can get any wetterr" but I'm not going to say that anymore. Fantastic report as always, a proper slice of history. Thans for taking the time to write it up and document so well.

 

[TeeJF]

Ok, whats 'narcs'?

Air can be considered to be roughly 80% nitrogen and 20% oxygene. The proportions aren't quite such easy figures but it's near enough and the trace gases are normally so low a percentage we'll forget them.

When breathing nitrogen (as a component part of air, referred to as a partial and when calculating pressure figures it is referred to as a partial pressure) at anything above atmospheric pressure it becomes progressively more narcotic until at around 3.2 times atmospheric pressure it begins to get quite bad. Below that point many people think it isn't affecting them - it is but they are perhaps better able to cope with it than others and so they don't realise it's effect. By 50 metres depth which equates to 4 x atmospheric pressure for the nitrogen partial of the air we are breathing it is extremely narcotic. Mistakes are made, sometimes with serious consequences, a metallic taste appears in the mouth, and even the easiest calculations become incredibly difficult. And if out of water and breathing the gas at that pressure such as you might be in a deco chamber, one can barely suppress the urge to laugh!

Nitrogen narcosis or the narcs as it is usually referred to is not a constant phenomena either, it is affected by one's physical well being and fitness, one's mental state (anxiety inevitably makes them far worse), the temperatuure of the water (cold = worse) and the light and visibility. Thus for example one may feel much more narced on a 35 metre dive than a week before on a 40, due to the prevailing conditions et all.

I would NEVER contemplate descending to anything deeper than 35 metres or so in UK waters on air because I would become very narced. In Bikini where the water was relatively clear and very warm we were able to actually manage the narcs we experienced at 55 meters but it was far from ideal. It is also interesting to note that I was personally off my face on the Dreadnought USS Arkansas at just 42 metres (because the guide had falsely hyped up the risk in his pre-dive brief like the sad macho man he was) and also totally off my face on the Nagato at 48 metres (darkness) but much less narced some 5 to 8 metres deeper on the sea bed at the front of the Saratoga (55 - 56 metres) purely because it was light there, we were really relaxed, and also well into our week of deep diving by that point.

In order to alleviate narcs it is possible to replace a proportion of the nitrogen in a breathing mix with helium which does not have narcotic effects. It does however have a different set of unique problems due to it's atomic weight. It is also prohibitively expensive to use, so much so that Tracy and I used to buy our own helium in bulk and then mix our own trimix or heli-ox to charge our cylinders.

Hope that all makes sense?

 

[TeeJF]

Thanks for your lovely comments fellas. I'm proper made up! Bikini really was a blast and I'm so glad we did it when we could because it's a no go area again now. Such is life.

 

[shane.c]

Good report and info,

 

[flyboys90]

Yet again a superb report from the intrepid travellers,wonderful I really enjoyed them both.

 

[teeheehee]

Once again awesome pics and history.

 

[TeeJF]

Cheers guys!