Wreck Discovery
In September 2000, a joint expedition to find the sunken battleship conducted by the BBC, NRK, and the Royal Norwegian Navy began. The underwater survey vessel Sverdrup II, operated by the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment, was used to scan the sea floor. After locating a large submerged object, the research team then used the Royal Norwegian Navy's underwater recovery vessel Tyr to examine the object visually. The wreck was positively identified by an ROV on 10 September, which located armament consistent with that of Scharnhorst. The ship sank in approximately 290 m (950 ft) of water. The hull lies upside down on the seabed, with debris, including the main mast and rangefinders, scattered around the wreck. Extensive damage from shellfire and torpedoes is evident; the bow was blown off, presumably from a magazine explosion in the forward turrets, and lies in a tangled mass of steel some distance from the rest of the hull.
Read more about this topic: German Battleship Scharnhorst
Famous quotes containing the words wreck and/or discovery:
“The old man had heard that there was a wreck and knew most of the particulars, but he said that he had not been up there since it happened. It was the wrecked weed that concerned him most ... and those bodies were to him but other weeds which the tide cast up, but which were of no use to him.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It was one of those evenings when men feel that truth, goodness and beauty are one. In the morning, when they commit their discovery to paper, when others read it written there, it looks wholly ridiculous.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)