Divers Finally Found The Eerie Wreck Of A Cold War-Era Submarine

The magnificent wreck of the USS Stickleback flickers on the screen. This is the moment submarine expert Tim Taylor has been waiting for. He focuses his full attention on the monitor. It shows flashes of the Stickleback, which is slowly decaying 11,000 feet beneath the ocean waves. And then the whole thing comes into view. The prize Taylor and his team have been searching for for years. He is the first person to see the Stickleback since it went missing all the way back in 1958.

USS Stickleback

That fact alone is enough to understand why Taylor was obsessed with tracking this submarine wreck down. No one had been able to find it for 62 long years. But it’s not the only reason why the USS Stickleback is special. Commissioned in 1945, the Stickleback played a storied part in history. This is its remarkable story.

Balao craftsmanship

Given the craftsmanship that went into the Balao subs, it’s perhaps not surprising that they were classics of warfare. The first of this class – the USS Balao – was launched in October 1942. It massively improved on the previous Gato class of submarines. And yes, all the Balaos were named after species of fish. But that didn’t stop the Stickleback from having a massive impact.

Deep divers

What made the Stickleback so effective? The Balao subs had thick high-tensile steel alloy hulls so they could dive to depths of 400 feet. And actually, the submarines’ hulls wouldn’t fail until they reached 900 feet. That’s a pretty important number when you understand how the Stickleback ended up in its watery grave.

Diesel engines

Because when you think about Stickleback’s construction, it’s almost inconceivable that it would sink. It started out in March 1944 at the Mare Island Navy Yard in Vallejo, California. Like all of her Balao kin, she was a diesel-electric vessel powered by four ten-cylinder engines and four high-speed electric motors. The diesel engines drove the twin propellers. Impressive, right?