German Heavy Cruiser Prinz Eugen flying the Stars and Stripes - January 1946 - Story on my blog

 

I remember seeing her upside down on the beach Kwajalein Atoll

Service with the United States Navy[edit]

USS Prinz Eugen passing through the Panama Canal in 1946. The guns on A turret are missing.

On 27 May 1945, Prinz Eugen and the light cruiser Nürnberg—the only major German naval vessels to survive the war in serviceable condition—were escorted by the British cruisers Dido and Devonshire to Wilhelmshaven. On 13 December, Prinz Eugen was awarded as a war prize to the United States, which sent the ship to Wesermünde.^[67] The United States did not particularly want the cruiser, but it did want to prevent the Soviet Union from acquiring it.^[75] Her US commander, Captain Arthur H. Graubart, recounted later how the British, Soviet and US representatives in the Control Commission all claimed the ship and how in the end the various large prizes were divided in three lots, Prinz Eugen being one of them. The three lots were then drawn lottery style from his hat with the British and Soviet representatives drawing the lots for other ships and Graubart being left with the lot for Prinz Eugen.^[76] The cruiser was commissioned into the US Navy as the unclassified miscellaneous vessel USS Prinz Eugen with the hull number IX-300. A composite American-German crew consisting of 574 German officers and sailors, supervised by eight American officers and eighty-five enlisted men under the command of Graubart,^[77][78] then took the ship to Boston, departing on 13 January 1946 and arriving on 22 January.^[67]

After arriving in Boston, the ship was extensively examined by the US Navy.^[72] Her very large GHG passive sonar array was removed and installed on the submarine USS Flying Fish for testing.^[79] American interest in magnetic amplifier technology increased again after findings in investigations of the fire control system of Prinz Eugen.^[80][81] The guns from turret Anton were removed while in Philadelphia in February.^[82] On 1 May the German crewmen left the ship and returned to Germany. Thereafter, the American crew had significant difficulties in keeping the ship's propulsion system operational—eleven of her twelve boilers failed after the Germans departed. The ship was then allocated to the fleet of target ships for Operation Crossroads in Bikini Atoll. Operation Crossroads was a major test of the effects of nuclear weapons on warships of various types. The trouble with Prinz Eugen's propulsion system may have influenced the decision to dispose of her in the nuclear tests.^[78][83]

USNS Salvor and the tanker Humber draining oil from the wreck in September 2018

She was towed to the Pacific via Philadelphia and the Panama Canal,^[78] departing on 3 March.^[82] The ship survived two atomic bomb blasts: Test Able, an air burst on 1 July 1946 and Test Baker, a submerged detonation on 25 July.^[84] Prinz Eugen was moored about 1,200 yards (1,100 m) from the epicenter of both blasts and was only lightly damaged by them;^[85] the Able blast only bent her foremast and broke the top of her main mast.^[86] She suffered no significant structural damage from the explosions but was thoroughly contaminated with radioactive fallout.^[84] The ship was towed to the Kwajalein Atoll in the central Pacific, where a small leak went unrepaired due to the radiation danger.^[87] On 29 August 1946, the US Navy decommissioned Prinz Eugen.^[84]

By late December 1946, the ship was in very bad condition; on 21 December, she began to list severely.^[78] A salvage team could not be brought to Kwajalein in time,^[84] so the US Navy attempted to beach the ship to prevent her from sinking, but on 22 December, Prinz Eugen capsized and sank.^[78] Her main battery gun turrets fell out of their barbettes when the ship rolled over. The ship's stern, including her propeller assemblies, remains visible above the surface of the water.^[87] The US government denied salvage rights on the grounds that it did not want the contaminated steel entering the market.^[84] In August 1979, one of the ship's screw propellers was retrieved and placed in the Laboe Naval Memorial in Germany.^[8] The ship's bell is currently held at the National Museum of the United States Navy, while the bell from Tegetthoff is held in Graz, Austria.^[65]

Beginning in 1974, the US government began to warn about the danger of an oil leak from the ship's full fuel bunkers. The government was concerned about the risk of a severe typhoon damaging the wreck and causing a leak. Starting in February 2018, the US Navy, including the Navy's Mobile Diving and Salvage Unit One, US Army, and the Federated States of Micronesia conducted a joint oil removal effort with the salvage ship USNS Salvor, which had cut holes into the ship's fuel tanks to pump the oil from the wreck directly into the oil tanker Humber.^[88] The US Navy announced that the work had been completed by 15 October 2018; the project had extracted approximately 250,000 US gallons (950,000 l; 210,000 imp gal) of fuel oil, which amounted to 97 percent of the fuel remaining aboard the wreck. Lieutenant Commander Tim Emge, the officer responsible for the salvage operation, stated that "There are no longer active leaks...the remaining oil is enclosed in a few internal tanks without leakage and encased by layered protection.