Scuba Jim
Contributor
Sorry it's late!!! 
I've copied most of this from my web site, so if you seen that (shame on you if you haven't!) then feel free to read it again. If not, well the choice is yours!
Everyone wants to dive the Saratoga! What is there to say about Saratoga that has not already been said? A US Navy Aircraft Carrier, CV-3, she was only the 3rd US carrier ever built, and the first to be built specifically as a carrier, the others being converted battleships. A steel-hulled vessel with a waterline length of 830 feet, flight deck length of 888 feet and officially weighing 33,000 standard tons, the Saratoga is the largest shipwreck most of us are ever likely to dive on! In fact, her flight deck length of 888ft makes her longer than the Titanic. After the attack on Pearl Harbour on 7 December 1941, Saratoga became America's primary carrier in the Pacific. Her service to the US during World War II was distinguished, not least because the Japanese claimed to have sunk her 7 times; she saw action all over the Pacific theatre - Bougainville, Munda, Vella Lavella, Rabaul, Gilbert Islands, Eniwetok, Kwajelein, Sumatra, Java, Iwo Jima and the Tokyo area of Japan. Her planes are known to have sunk 1 Japanese carrier, 2 cruisers and several destroyers, and shot down numerous enemy planes. Her finest hour was undoubtedly at Iwo Jima, where she survived 7 aerial bombs and Kamikaze attacks from no less than 5 planes. 123 crew died in the ensuing infernos, but Saratoga gamely refused to sink. Her actions during World War II gained her an unprecedented 7 Battle Stars. By 1945, however, Saratoga was out of date, superseded by faster carriers capable of carrying more planes & munitions over greater distances. Having partaken in the Magic Carpet run - she shipped some 30,000 war weary American troops home across the Pacific on 8 crossings - Saratoga was graciously retired, and sailed to Bikini Atoll for the US military's A-bomb tests.
USS Saratoga.
Saratoga, like so many of the ships at Bikini, survived the Able Blast, but succumbed to damage caused by the massive shock waves and water surge that Baker Blast created. Some 8 hours after Baker Blast Saratoga finally slipped between the waves. New York Times correspondent Hanson W. Baldwin wrote this epitaph as he watched Saratoga sink slowly beneath Bikini's lagoon: "There were many who had served her in the observing fleet and they fought with her through the long hot hours as the sun mounted. Outside the reef...the observing ships cruised, while the Sara slowly died. There were scores who wanted to save her - and perhaps she might have been saved, had there been a crew aboard. But she died a lonely death, with no man upon the decks once teaming with life, with pumps idle and boilers dead. From three o'clock on she sank fast, her buoyancy gone, as the fleet kept the death watch for a 'fighting lady'. The Sara settled - the air soughing from her compartments like the breath from exhausted lungs. At 3:45 pm the starboard aft corner of her flight deck was awash; then the loud speakers blared: 'The water is up to her island now; the bow is high in the air.' She died like a queen - proudly. The bow slowly reared high; the stern sank deep, and, as if striving for immortality, the Sara lifted her white numeral 3 high into the sun before her bow slipped slowly under. Her last minutes were slow and tortured; she fought and would not sink, but slowly the 3 was engulfed by the reaching waters, the tip of her mast was the last bit of Sara seen by man." Unless, of course, you are a diver fortunate enough to be visiting Bikini Atoll!
Like all the warships at Bikini, Saratoga was "battle ready" - as well as primed munitions and a complement of bunker & aviation fuel, she carried 3 of the US Navy's Helldiver single-engine dive bombers and an Avenger single-engine torpedo bomber, located in the main hangers, in a line just aft of the forward elevator. 500lb bombs are also located in the same area. Eight paired 38 calibre guns in four houses - two forward and two aft; 12 single 38 calibre guns & 24 Bofors antiaircraft guns of which six have been located; and 52 Oerlikon 20 mm anti-aircraft guns of which five have been located bristled along the edges of the flight deck. Twelve Mk 51 gun fire-control directors can be found next to the anti-aircraft guns. Forward of the bridge can be found one of her large twin 5-inch turrets, the other having been removed prior to the Bikini tests.
Saratoga is the shallowest dive at Bikini. She sits upright on the seabed 190ft below the surface, but her bridge superstructure can be clearly seen from the surface, being only 40ft down. Spiralling down the bridge you arrive at the flight deck in about 90ft. The gaping maws that are the main elevators lead down to the hanger deck at about 130ft.
Because of her vastness Saratoga is worthy at least 4 during a week at Bikini. The first "check-out" dive at Bikini (some check-out dive!) is on Saratoga - a 90ft dive to the flight deck and an inspection of the bridge where a full complement of instrumentation can be found, including dials, telegraph and voice tubes.
Speaky tubes on the Saratoga bridge.
Yet more speaky tubes on the Saratoga bridge.
Odds & ends on the captain's table.
Compass binnacle, speaky tubes and helm.
She canny take much more cap'n, the dilithium crystals are depolarising, she's going to blow.
The conning tower portholes are all covered with screens, but they let in some light - a torch is a useful item to have on every dive at Bikini! Also in the superstructure can be found a map table, basin and gun directors. A small school of inquisitive batfish can usually be found around the top of the bridge.
Batfish on bridge superstructure - sorry it's not a very good pickie!
Deeper down below the bridge can be found the barber's shop with a barber's chair
Short back & sides, sir? Ooo - suits you, sir!
and the scullery, full of plates.
All breakages must be paid for!
On the starboard side of the bridge structure can be found two beautiful running lights
Running light 1.
Running light 2 .
a phone
ET phone home.
a rather beautiful knotometer, if that's what you call them
That'll look nice on me mantelpiece too...
and at the back a stacks of portholes.
What can we see through the round window today, children?
Dropping down onto the flight deck and moving across to the port side, you pass first the forward munitions elevator
There's bombs down there...
and then the colossal forward elevator, a square shaft some 70ft wide that drops down into the guts of the ship.
I'm falling!
Continuing past the elevator and after a 120ft swim (yes, that is how wide the Saratoga is!) you eventually reach the port side. Here can be found various anti-aircraft guns and a forklift truck,
Forklift truck.
which makes for a great photo moment!
Returning across the flight deck you pass one of the blast gauge towers,
Blast gauge tower.
Clownfish on blast guage.
metal structures about 20ft high upon which numerous instruments were placed to measure a range of data from the detonations, including radiation, wind, temperature, light etc.
Back to the forward section of the bridge and you can find the Saratoga's 5-inch gun turret, the twin barrels pointing skyward in a final salute. These guns are perhaps the most famous images of the Saratoga.
Look out behind you!
Is that a gun in your pocket...?
The second dive on Saratoga takes you into the hanger. Dropping down through the forward elevator shaft you descend a further 50ft below the flight deck to the main hanger deck at 130ft. Moving aft the first things you come upon are a line of 500lb & 1000lb bombs, massive bulbous beasts about 4-6ft long.
500lb bombs.
1000lb bomb.
Moving aft from the bombs you come across the first of the 4 planes that can be found in the hanger. They are all intact, although those further aft are beginning to deteriorate.
Avenger plane wreck.
Helldiver plane wreck.
Which one tells me how fats I'm going?
From the position of the planes you can clearly see back through the hanger to the light pouring in from the aft plan elevator. The deck in this region buckled during Baker blast, and over the ensuing 55 years has become to slowly collapse downwards. Like a giant's discarded toys, twisted metal, girders and cables are strewn across the hanger floor and drape from the underside of the deck. However, with the ambient light filtering in through the elevators it is easy to make your way aft and out onto the flight deck again. The flight deck near the aft elevator is so severely damaged that it has been crushed down to almost the same level as the hanger deck. To the port side of the aft elevator the bulkhead has collapsed, exposing a munitions room full of torpedoes and bombs.
Torpedo.
From the aft elevator you can proceed back towards the bridge by way of the engine exhausts. Saratoga's conspicuous funnel collapsed onto the deck during the Atom bomb tests but the huge exhausts holes coming up from the engines can be seen in line along the starboard side. From here you can inspect the gun sites and range finders located on the aft section of the bridge before exiting the water.
Another dive is at the bow of the ship. Because Saratoga is so enormous, it is actually quite difficult to get any idea of her true size by looking at individual portions. The bridge is decidedly small in comparison to the overall size of the vessel, as are the elevator shafts. It is only when you consider that each elevator is approximately one-twelfth the length of the ship - and to be honest, that does not really work! - that you get an idea of the size of this behemoth. However, a swim to the bow rectifies that problem. There are two ways of diving the bow.
The first is to swim off the flight deck like some old Helldiver and drop down over the bow to the hawsers. The port hawser is empty, the chain for the anchor dropping away below you to the anchor on the sea floor. Each link in the chain is bigger than a human's torso, and they are draped in soft corals and sea whips.
Lionfish on anchor chain.
Big chain, eh?!
A human could fit in the hawser, no problem.
Hawser pretty boy then.
Come back, all is forgiven?!
The port hawser still contains its vast anchor, a monster chunk of metal about 15ft across. But the true size of the ship is gained if you swim a few yards off from the bow into open water and look down the vessel's prow - the sweeping curve drops down to the sea floor. The sides of the hull sprout millions of whip corals like oversized hairs, and as you look back along the edge of the hull you realise that you are at main deck level in 90ft of water and the hull is resting on the sand some 100ft below you! It is only then that you get a true perspective of exactly how massive the Saratoga really is!
The second is to dive froward on the starboards side, past the 5-inch guns and down to the sea floor, where, if you swim out about 100ft you come to the remains of two planes which had flipped off the deck when the ship sank, one an Avenger, the other a Helldiver. Both are upside down their wheels sticking up towards the surface, their bomb bay doors partially open. One contains two torpedoes and the other a 1000lb bomb.
Prop on Avenger.
Avenger.
Avenger.
Helldiver.
Helldiver.
From these planes you swim at angle across the sand to the bow, which looms above you like a cliff.
Bow of Saratoga.
You can swim up the anchor chains to the hawsers and then over the top on to the flight deck. Most awesome indeed, what!
Another dive is the Haunted House, where you enter the ships hanger areas from the stern elevator shaft and move forward to the forward elevator via the munitions area. Here you can see tons and tons and tons of bombs, torpedoes, more bombs, torpedoes and all sorts of other stuff, some of it on carts ready for loading, some strewn across the floor. It is very eerie moving along the permanent ropeway past all these munitions, light filtering in through the holes in the ship. Great fun!
Yet more torpedoes.
Another Saratoga dive is to the stern section of the ship, where you can gain access through the open passageways along the side of the ship to interior sections, and down to the lagoon floor to gawk at her massive props and rudder.
Saratoga is undoubtedly the most massive wreck that most people are likely to dive and she still has secrets to give up. She has some 8 deck levels, but only the first 3 have been even remotely scrutinised; her engine rooms are yet to be accessed. With the large amounts of sediment to be found in the wreck, and with her increasing age, this will probably be unlikely, as well. For all that, she is without doubt the most famous shipwreck upon which I have ever dived!
Next instalment - HIJMS Nagato
I've copied most of this from my web site, so if you seen that (shame on you if you haven't!) then feel free to read it again. If not, well the choice is yours!
Everyone wants to dive the Saratoga! What is there to say about Saratoga that has not already been said? A US Navy Aircraft Carrier, CV-3, she was only the 3rd US carrier ever built, and the first to be built specifically as a carrier, the others being converted battleships. A steel-hulled vessel with a waterline length of 830 feet, flight deck length of 888 feet and officially weighing 33,000 standard tons, the Saratoga is the largest shipwreck most of us are ever likely to dive on! In fact, her flight deck length of 888ft makes her longer than the Titanic. After the attack on Pearl Harbour on 7 December 1941, Saratoga became America's primary carrier in the Pacific. Her service to the US during World War II was distinguished, not least because the Japanese claimed to have sunk her 7 times; she saw action all over the Pacific theatre - Bougainville, Munda, Vella Lavella, Rabaul, Gilbert Islands, Eniwetok, Kwajelein, Sumatra, Java, Iwo Jima and the Tokyo area of Japan. Her planes are known to have sunk 1 Japanese carrier, 2 cruisers and several destroyers, and shot down numerous enemy planes. Her finest hour was undoubtedly at Iwo Jima, where she survived 7 aerial bombs and Kamikaze attacks from no less than 5 planes. 123 crew died in the ensuing infernos, but Saratoga gamely refused to sink. Her actions during World War II gained her an unprecedented 7 Battle Stars. By 1945, however, Saratoga was out of date, superseded by faster carriers capable of carrying more planes & munitions over greater distances. Having partaken in the Magic Carpet run - she shipped some 30,000 war weary American troops home across the Pacific on 8 crossings - Saratoga was graciously retired, and sailed to Bikini Atoll for the US military's A-bomb tests.
USS Saratoga.
Saratoga, like so many of the ships at Bikini, survived the Able Blast, but succumbed to damage caused by the massive shock waves and water surge that Baker Blast created. Some 8 hours after Baker Blast Saratoga finally slipped between the waves. New York Times correspondent Hanson W. Baldwin wrote this epitaph as he watched Saratoga sink slowly beneath Bikini's lagoon: "There were many who had served her in the observing fleet and they fought with her through the long hot hours as the sun mounted. Outside the reef...the observing ships cruised, while the Sara slowly died. There were scores who wanted to save her - and perhaps she might have been saved, had there been a crew aboard. But she died a lonely death, with no man upon the decks once teaming with life, with pumps idle and boilers dead. From three o'clock on she sank fast, her buoyancy gone, as the fleet kept the death watch for a 'fighting lady'. The Sara settled - the air soughing from her compartments like the breath from exhausted lungs. At 3:45 pm the starboard aft corner of her flight deck was awash; then the loud speakers blared: 'The water is up to her island now; the bow is high in the air.' She died like a queen - proudly. The bow slowly reared high; the stern sank deep, and, as if striving for immortality, the Sara lifted her white numeral 3 high into the sun before her bow slipped slowly under. Her last minutes were slow and tortured; she fought and would not sink, but slowly the 3 was engulfed by the reaching waters, the tip of her mast was the last bit of Sara seen by man." Unless, of course, you are a diver fortunate enough to be visiting Bikini Atoll!
Like all the warships at Bikini, Saratoga was "battle ready" - as well as primed munitions and a complement of bunker & aviation fuel, she carried 3 of the US Navy's Helldiver single-engine dive bombers and an Avenger single-engine torpedo bomber, located in the main hangers, in a line just aft of the forward elevator. 500lb bombs are also located in the same area. Eight paired 38 calibre guns in four houses - two forward and two aft; 12 single 38 calibre guns & 24 Bofors antiaircraft guns of which six have been located; and 52 Oerlikon 20 mm anti-aircraft guns of which five have been located bristled along the edges of the flight deck. Twelve Mk 51 gun fire-control directors can be found next to the anti-aircraft guns. Forward of the bridge can be found one of her large twin 5-inch turrets, the other having been removed prior to the Bikini tests.
Saratoga is the shallowest dive at Bikini. She sits upright on the seabed 190ft below the surface, but her bridge superstructure can be clearly seen from the surface, being only 40ft down. Spiralling down the bridge you arrive at the flight deck in about 90ft. The gaping maws that are the main elevators lead down to the hanger deck at about 130ft.
Because of her vastness Saratoga is worthy at least 4 during a week at Bikini. The first "check-out" dive at Bikini (some check-out dive!) is on Saratoga - a 90ft dive to the flight deck and an inspection of the bridge where a full complement of instrumentation can be found, including dials, telegraph and voice tubes.
Speaky tubes on the Saratoga bridge.
Yet more speaky tubes on the Saratoga bridge.
Odds & ends on the captain's table.
Compass binnacle, speaky tubes and helm.
She canny take much more cap'n, the dilithium crystals are depolarising, she's going to blow.
The conning tower portholes are all covered with screens, but they let in some light - a torch is a useful item to have on every dive at Bikini! Also in the superstructure can be found a map table, basin and gun directors. A small school of inquisitive batfish can usually be found around the top of the bridge.
Batfish on bridge superstructure - sorry it's not a very good pickie!
Deeper down below the bridge can be found the barber's shop with a barber's chair
Short back & sides, sir? Ooo - suits you, sir!
and the scullery, full of plates.
All breakages must be paid for!
On the starboard side of the bridge structure can be found two beautiful running lights
Running light 1.
Running light 2 .
a phone
ET phone home.
a rather beautiful knotometer, if that's what you call them
That'll look nice on me mantelpiece too...
and at the back a stacks of portholes.
What can we see through the round window today, children?
Dropping down onto the flight deck and moving across to the port side, you pass first the forward munitions elevator
There's bombs down there...
and then the colossal forward elevator, a square shaft some 70ft wide that drops down into the guts of the ship.
I'm falling!
Continuing past the elevator and after a 120ft swim (yes, that is how wide the Saratoga is!) you eventually reach the port side. Here can be found various anti-aircraft guns and a forklift truck,
Forklift truck.
which makes for a great photo moment!
Returning across the flight deck you pass one of the blast gauge towers,
Blast gauge tower.
Clownfish on blast guage.
metal structures about 20ft high upon which numerous instruments were placed to measure a range of data from the detonations, including radiation, wind, temperature, light etc.
Back to the forward section of the bridge and you can find the Saratoga's 5-inch gun turret, the twin barrels pointing skyward in a final salute. These guns are perhaps the most famous images of the Saratoga.
Look out behind you!
Is that a gun in your pocket...?
The second dive on Saratoga takes you into the hanger. Dropping down through the forward elevator shaft you descend a further 50ft below the flight deck to the main hanger deck at 130ft. Moving aft the first things you come upon are a line of 500lb & 1000lb bombs, massive bulbous beasts about 4-6ft long.
500lb bombs.
1000lb bomb.
Moving aft from the bombs you come across the first of the 4 planes that can be found in the hanger. They are all intact, although those further aft are beginning to deteriorate.
Avenger plane wreck.
Helldiver plane wreck.
Which one tells me how fats I'm going?
From the position of the planes you can clearly see back through the hanger to the light pouring in from the aft plan elevator. The deck in this region buckled during Baker blast, and over the ensuing 55 years has become to slowly collapse downwards. Like a giant's discarded toys, twisted metal, girders and cables are strewn across the hanger floor and drape from the underside of the deck. However, with the ambient light filtering in through the elevators it is easy to make your way aft and out onto the flight deck again. The flight deck near the aft elevator is so severely damaged that it has been crushed down to almost the same level as the hanger deck. To the port side of the aft elevator the bulkhead has collapsed, exposing a munitions room full of torpedoes and bombs.
Torpedo.
From the aft elevator you can proceed back towards the bridge by way of the engine exhausts. Saratoga's conspicuous funnel collapsed onto the deck during the Atom bomb tests but the huge exhausts holes coming up from the engines can be seen in line along the starboard side. From here you can inspect the gun sites and range finders located on the aft section of the bridge before exiting the water.
Another dive is at the bow of the ship. Because Saratoga is so enormous, it is actually quite difficult to get any idea of her true size by looking at individual portions. The bridge is decidedly small in comparison to the overall size of the vessel, as are the elevator shafts. It is only when you consider that each elevator is approximately one-twelfth the length of the ship - and to be honest, that does not really work! - that you get an idea of the size of this behemoth. However, a swim to the bow rectifies that problem. There are two ways of diving the bow.
The first is to swim off the flight deck like some old Helldiver and drop down over the bow to the hawsers. The port hawser is empty, the chain for the anchor dropping away below you to the anchor on the sea floor. Each link in the chain is bigger than a human's torso, and they are draped in soft corals and sea whips.
Lionfish on anchor chain.
Big chain, eh?!
A human could fit in the hawser, no problem.
Hawser pretty boy then.
Come back, all is forgiven?!
The port hawser still contains its vast anchor, a monster chunk of metal about 15ft across. But the true size of the ship is gained if you swim a few yards off from the bow into open water and look down the vessel's prow - the sweeping curve drops down to the sea floor. The sides of the hull sprout millions of whip corals like oversized hairs, and as you look back along the edge of the hull you realise that you are at main deck level in 90ft of water and the hull is resting on the sand some 100ft below you! It is only then that you get a true perspective of exactly how massive the Saratoga really is!
The second is to dive froward on the starboards side, past the 5-inch guns and down to the sea floor, where, if you swim out about 100ft you come to the remains of two planes which had flipped off the deck when the ship sank, one an Avenger, the other a Helldiver. Both are upside down their wheels sticking up towards the surface, their bomb bay doors partially open. One contains two torpedoes and the other a 1000lb bomb.
Prop on Avenger.
Avenger.
Avenger.
Helldiver.
Helldiver.
From these planes you swim at angle across the sand to the bow, which looms above you like a cliff.
Bow of Saratoga.
You can swim up the anchor chains to the hawsers and then over the top on to the flight deck. Most awesome indeed, what!
Another dive is the Haunted House, where you enter the ships hanger areas from the stern elevator shaft and move forward to the forward elevator via the munitions area. Here you can see tons and tons and tons of bombs, torpedoes, more bombs, torpedoes and all sorts of other stuff, some of it on carts ready for loading, some strewn across the floor. It is very eerie moving along the permanent ropeway past all these munitions, light filtering in through the holes in the ship. Great fun!
Yet more torpedoes.
Another Saratoga dive is to the stern section of the ship, where you can gain access through the open passageways along the side of the ship to interior sections, and down to the lagoon floor to gawk at her massive props and rudder.
Saratoga is undoubtedly the most massive wreck that most people are likely to dive and she still has secrets to give up. She has some 8 deck levels, but only the first 3 have been even remotely scrutinised; her engine rooms are yet to be accessed. With the large amounts of sediment to be found in the wreck, and with her increasing age, this will probably be unlikely, as well. For all that, she is without doubt the most famous shipwreck upon which I have ever dived!
Next instalment - HIJMS Nagato
