Have you thought about the sunken ships on the ocean floor? You may wonder if they eventually dissolve or perhaps someone finds them and brings them up. Well, they are government property that’s left alone for a pretty long time. Now, with the information of how valuable low background steel is, people are on the hunt.
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Noteworthy Sunken WWII Battleships
Some of the most noteworthy sunken battleships lying on the seafloor are from WWI and WWII. Nearly 80 years after the end of WWII, many ships still lie wrecked. Some of those include:
- USS Samuel B. Roberts
- USS Johnston
- USS Abner Read
- Battlecrusier Scharnhorst
- USS Grenadier
What Happened to the USS Indianapolis?
The USS Indianapolis wreck was discovered in 2017 by a civilian search team in a 600-mile swathe of the Pacific Ocean. In July of 1945, the 10,000 ton cruiser was sunk by two torpedoes in the Philippine Sea. The wreck was found but the location remains a secret because it held an estimated 300 American Sailors.
Unfortunately, the story and tragedy of the USS Indianapolis ship is not what the finders are interested in. They are far more interested in the “finder’s fee” they will receive. Most of the people who discover ships are looking for one thing, low background steel. The US no longer makes it, so the low background steel price payout is worth hunting for.
Low Background Steel Is a High-Value Item
Sunken warships have valuable steel for a particular reason. Steel produced after World War II was irradiated with radioactive cobalt isotopes. This happens during the process of mixing iron and carbon. Therefore, steel made prior to World War II is low-background steel. It is found on shipwrecks, in artillery shells, and in wartime material.
The radiation is not dangerous. In fact, it does not change how the US makes or uses steel. Low background steel has a limited supply which makes it extremely valuable. With the high value, scavengers and scrapers are willing to do whatever they have to in order to get it, and if that means dive to the ocean floor so be it.
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Who Do the Sunken Ships Belong to?
The warships and submarines technically belong to the government, which owns the waters. Furthermore, a report from The Guardian in 2017 states that warships which contain corpses of 4500 troops have been destroyed in the hunt for valuable low-background steel.
There are approx. 13 million tons of warships with tens of thousands inside the Pacific Ocean alone. Military.com states, “Analysts have discovered that at least 40 of these sunken vessels, which are also the graves of British, American, Australian, Dutch, and Japanese troops have been disturbed in the hunt for low-background steel.”
The remains of 300 Sailors on the Australian cruiser HMAS Perth were found after scrappers illegally took 60-70% of the wreck.
How Do Scrappers Get Low Background Steel?
Retrieving the low background steel is not an easy task. In order to break apart the materials, scrappers use explosives. Next, they use crane barges or lifting buoys to bring it out of the water. The illegal scavengers have little empathy for the bodies entombed inside the wrecked ships. They also leave behind evidence of their ransacking, which causes damage that could not have been done by enemy weapons during the war.
Unless countries act soon, the shipwrecks will soon be a memory. The legislation to protect the war remnants depends on cooperation with the countries the ship lies between, as well as the state that created the ship.
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