U66 makes a 'Bloody Marsh' of the Carolina coast

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U's 66(left) & 117 under air attack during eighth patrol>

Eighth
U-66's eighth patrol started after a quick refit on 7 April 1943 when she left Lorient. At 148 days, it was to be her longest. She first sank the 10,173-ton American Esso Gettysburg, which was carrying crude oil, on 10 June after unsuccessfully attempting to attack several other American tankers. On 2 July, she successfully sank the 10,195-ton Bloody Marsh (this ship was on her maiden voyage), with a torpedo. The last ship encountered on the patrol was the 10,172-ton Cherry Valley, also American, which she sank on 22 July. U-66 then returned to Lorient.

https://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/news/...na%20in%201943.

Bloody Marsh was a T2-SE-A1 oil tanker built in 1943 in Chester, Pennsylvania, by Sun Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company. It was on its maiden voyage from Houston to New York with a cargo of 106,496 barrels (4,472,832 gallons) of oil. While steaming off the coast of South Carolina on July 2, 1943, a torpedo from German submarine U-66 struck the aft port side, destroying the engine room and killing three of the crew. The rest of the crew and armed guards on the ship boarded life rafts and escaped. A second torpedo struck the port side amidships and broke the tanker in two, sinking it quickly. U-66 surfaced to view the sinking ship and struck one of the lifeboats, knocking the sailors into the sea before leaving the scene.

As one of 87 shipwrecks listed on NOAA’s Potentially Polluting Wrecks list, it was important to find Bloody Marsh and get an ROV on site to identify the wreck and assess it for pollution risk. About a month after the ROV dive in 2019, a colleague at the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Jack Irion, passed on some information from a study of surface oil slicks found through satellite imagery. The researchers found a repeating slick in the area of Bloody Marsh off South Carolina. I submitted a new survey area to NOAA Ocean Exploration based on this information, and while surveying in the area this past summer, they found a shipwreck-like target in the multibeam data 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) downstream of where the oil slicks originated at the surface.

https://nmssanctuaries.blob.core.win...oody_marsh.pdf BOTTOM LINE: Perhaps not an immediate ecological threat after 78 years on the bottom; but sooner or later, as the tanker corrodes, all that oil's gonna go....up! <This Google Earth map shows surface oil slick plots reported from satellite imagery from 1997 to 2019 along with the historic reported sinking position of SS Bloody Marsh and the target ultimately found during Dive 02 of Windows to the Deep 2021. Image courtesy of NOAA Ocean Exploration, Windows to the Deep 2021.

[nikimcbee]

I didn't catch how deep the wreck is? Could they pump the oil off? Would it be any good, doesn't oil break down?

[nikimcbee]

I was confusing U-85 and the U-66. U-66 was one of the first Drumbeat boats, while U-85 was the first Drumbeat boat to be sunk by the US.

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Originally Posted by nikimcbee

I didn't catch how deep the wreck is? Could they pump the oil off? Would it be any good, doesn't oil break down?

The vessel lies at 1500+- feet in rough waters 75 miles off S.Carolina. The main hull of the C2 type tanker was welded making ID from earlier riveted vessels fairly certain. The bow section, with two additional storage tanks, is as yet undiscovered. All told 4,472,832 gallons of very stable type IV oil, already appearing on the surface in streaks, does not chemically degrade swiftly in saltwater. An entire collapse of the corroding hull and the missing bow will be quite a mess. A look at "11 major world oil spills" incl. the retreating Iraqi army's intentional release of Kuwait oil wells, the BP well blowout the Gulf of Mexico, Exxon Valdez etc. illustrate the wicked nature of the problem, especially to marine flora and fauna...