SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Scientists have rediscovered a mostly intact World War II aircraft carrier used in atomic bomb tests and then sunk off the Northern California coast decades ago.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration located the U.S.S. Independence as part of a mission to map an estimated 300 historic shipwrecks in the waters outside San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge.
Images captured by a remotely controlled miniature submarine showed the Independence sitting upright about 30 miles off the coast near the Farallon Islands. A plane is visible in a hangar.
The carrier operated in the Pacific during the war and served as a target ship for two Bikini Atoll atomic bomb tests in 1946. The Navy then used the vessel to study nuclear decontamination before scuttling it in 1951.
Scientists say the contaminated ship isn't a threat to public health.