Hi,

I am part of the original crew of LHA-3.

Unfortunately I was unaware of the decomissioning and sinking of the ship at the time.

I have been reasearching the sinking to determine if I will ever be able to dive on the remains of the BW.

From the information that I have been able to learn, the ship sank at a position about 70 NM from Kuai.

The position that I have been given by an eye witness is:

22:58.756N
160:46.63W

If I chart this correctly, this puts the BW in about 2246 fathoms of water. Not divable.

My curiosity is why was the ship sunk in this position, if according to the information on this and other sites, it was intended to create an artificial reef?

At this depth, I don't think we can have any kind of productive reef environment.

When I plotted this position, I noticed that it is aproximately 16 NM from a shallower area with 34 fathoms of depth. This would have made a decent reef (and dive spot).

My questions:

Can anyone confirm my coordinates?

If they are accurate, does anyone have any information on why the ship was sunk at this location and not in shallower water?

I would appreciate any feedback on this.

Best Regards,

John Jaume
Formerly SK2 (DV) S-1 Div

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