Sailors Just Fixed American Flag On Sunken WWII Ship-Here Are The Powerful Pictures
Petty Officer 3rd Class Alfred Coffield / dvidshub.net
Heroes. All Of Them.
On June 21st, 2017, a team of sailors from the Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) Group 1 went down into the waters of Guam to fix a flag that’s been coming off a sunken World War II tanker. They documented the event in the pictures below.
After doing some digging, we found out that these concrete barges were built to freight supplies such as fuel and other necessities. They were unpowered and were typically towed by a larger ship to get to their destinations.
This one, called American Tanker, is a 300+ foot barge that was probably towed from Honolulu to Apra Harbor in Guam back in 1944. Several of such barges were built and once they reached their destinations, they were sunk in order to provide a breakwater to the harbor.
What it comes down to us is this. After more than 70 years we still have sailors who devote themselves to doing these things. Although minor in some people’s minds, simply fixing a flag that’s been coming off shows so much respect for all the service members who paid the ultimate price so we can sit here and write this and for you to read it in English and not German. Powerful stuff in our book.
For that, we’d like to say “thank you.”
P.S.-We also found a YouTube video of recreational scuba divers filming the barge on a trip. It’s unrelated to the story above, but you get the see the barge in its entirety. It’s worth checking out.
