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Depth
Charges |
by Curtis C. Ebbesmeyer
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Eerie email
arrived from Rota Island forty miles north of Guam in the Northern
Marianas Islands. Mark Michael, owner of Dive Rota, and fellow divers
had recovered two aluminum cylinders from the East Harbor Channel.
Mark's messages arrived daily, as if demolition experts radioing
hair-raising reports as they defused the bomb.
“They are smaller than a 55-gallon drum, weigh
200+
pounds, and look like
they’re filled with concrete.
They appeared to have
been made from a single
sheet of ½” marine-grade
aluminum bent into a cylinder
and heliarc welded at
the seam. The bungs in
the end are brass and numbered.
I removed one of
the flanges on the end of
the cylinder. The flange is
aluminum and the bolts
are brass. There is a tube
that runs through the
middle of the cylinder for
the whole length. In the
middle of the tube is a flapper
valve of some sort. There are several wires cut
and dangling around the
flapper valve.”
“I have some possible
ID numbers stamped into
the aluminum on the top of
the cylinder. They are 85
over an 8 and then 85280.
The bung markings are ‘
PM ‘in a circle at the top
and the number 885307 at
the bottom. Both bungs
are the same.”
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“I have had these cylinders examined
by Coast Guard, EOD [Explosive Ordnance Demolition], a private explosive
disposal outfit, and SEAL team personnel. All said that they have
never seen
anything like these,
but they were not any type of ordnance they had ever seen or had
experience with. I thought maybe they were some type of scientific
equipment.”
“That’s fascinating news,” your editor emailed. “Last
night, I was watching the History Channel — The Color of
War program — and saw some depth charges go overboard.
I had the fleeting impression that some of them
resembled your photos. The footage went by so fast that
I could not be sure. Please be very careful with your experiments.
There is still a lot of nasty stuff left over from
wars — bombs, bullets, grenades, depth charges, torpedoes &
white phosphorous — who knows what? Perhaps you might check
the military history of the island. Troops
usually left in place the stuff left over from WWII.”
“I chipped what I thought was cement from the inside,
but it isn’t cement. It looks like some kind of brownishclear
resin. Technical personnel suggested I let my sample
dry out and then roll it up in a length of newspaper and light
it on fire and record the results. The material did not flash,
pop or explode. When I examined the remains from the
fire, all that I found was brown resin material that had melted
like glass. The mystery is still a mystery.”
Mark lived and his
email continued.
“I just had a gentleman
who is an ordnance &
explosives technician
come by today as he was
on Rota for some other
job and showed him my
aluminum mystery cylinders.
He seems to think
that they are some type of
depth charges although
the aluminum cylinder
throws him. He took
some measurements and
photos and said he would
get back to me. He
thought it might be some
type of experimental
thing.”
Finally, on the
internet, Mark solved the
mystery. Photos and descriptions
in the Navy
manual OP 1330 (FIRST
REVISION; Volume 2),
matched perfectly. They
are Mark 8, Mod 0 antisubmarine
hydrostatic depth
charges launched from
surface craft. Each held
270 pounds of TNT within
an overall device weighing
520 pounds in air. Prior to
launching, they could be
set to detonate at 50 to 500 feet.
“The depth charges were removed from my premises
this morning at my request by our local EMO (Emergency
Management Office), so they no longer represent a danger
to anyone around my dive shop. I am still a bit miffed that
the experts years ago informed me that they were not dangerous.
There are still some in the area, so if I find any
more, they will stay where they are and the EOD people
can handle them. I am very glad that this story had a
happy ending and nobody got hurt or killed.”
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Sea
Sondes (Weather Balloons) |
by Curtis C. Ebbesmeyer
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Next time you see a weather forecast think of balloons
falling into the sea. Each day at the same times (00:00& 12:00
Universal Coordinated Time), almost a thousand weather stations scattered
worldwide let fly a weather balloon. Buoyed
with helium, in a minute the 6-foot spheres ascend a thousand
feet lifting miniaturized weather stations known as radiosondes.
As they rise, the sondes transmit temperature, pressure, humidity
data. In 90 minutes, up where spy aircraft fly, they
explode and fall with their sondes to earth and sea.
All totaled in a single year the global weather network
launches almost 700,000 sondes. Military and civilian meteorologists
send aloft another 200,000 – 300,000, bringing
the annual count close to a million. Of the yearly tally, roughly
100,000 probably end up in the ocean.
Do sondes rain much debris on the sea? Like the hockey gloves previously
spilled in the North Pacific (Alert Vol. 1,
No. 2 & Vol. 3, No. 1), radiosondes are good floaters, a single one disintegrating
into balloon shards, battery, miscellaneous wires and |
Air-sondes
sea-sondes,
by the sea shore.
Jim Ingraham |
plastic, and 234 cubic
inches of styrofoam, based on the one beachcombed by Cindilla
Trent in
1996 at Ocean Shores, Washington. All totaled, the expendable weather apparatus
lost annually would fill about six, 40-foot cargo containers
(worldwide, about a thousand containers are lost overboard
each year).
Sondes signify our throwaway society and the burden
weather forecasts place upon the sea. In terms of other expendables,
the downed sondes annually rain enough styrofoam
to mold 4 million 4-oz. coffee cups. During a decade, sondes
contribute a billion bits of styrofoam, enough to litter thousands
on each mile of Earth’s 382,000 miles of shoreline.
Inspiration
for
this article
came from
beached radiosondes
reported by
Wim
Kruiswijk,
Netherlands, and
Cindilla
Trent,
Queen
Charlotte
Islands. |
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