Adventures of a Sea Hunter: In Search of Famous Shipwrecks

suspended alongside the hull when Merrimac sank. We also find two rows of anchor chain, partially buried in the buckled plating and sediment that covers the deck, running from the bow to the stern, exactly the way that Hobson described how his crew had rigged it.

We can find no definitive evidence of damage from the scuttling charges, though a hole and damage to the port quarter conceivably could be related to the charge that Hobson placed there. The hull is set into the silt of the harbor bottom to a level above the waterline, and our limited time on each dive does not allow for a comprehensive survey of the side of the hull to see if there is blasting damage. But we do see other damage that testifies to Merrimac’s end — and that demonstrates dramatically why Merrimac’s crew, like the men in the Spanish ships who fought through flame and shot — deserve the honor of being called heroes. The decks are warped and twisted from the intense heat of the fires that burned through Merrimac’s coal for an hour. Reaching into the torn hull, I pull out chunks of coal that laboratory analysis later shows are “coked” as a result of the fire.

There is nothing pretty about war, and when the pomp and ceremony and the glamour are stripped away, what is left, so visibly on this wreck and on the shattered hulks of Cervera’s sunken fleet, is harsh evidence of the intensity of battle, the costs of war, and the strength of character and love of country that inspires people to sail into harm’s way to fight for a cause or to defend what they hold dear. As we surface from the muddy grave of Merrimac, I think of how raw and untouched this undersea battlefield is compared to the museum-like setting of San Juan Hill and its cleaned-up, memorialized and glorified view of war.

CHAPTER ELEVEN HITLER’S ROCKETS

NEAR NEUSTADT, GERMANY

More than 400 feet beneath the Harz Mountains of Germany, we trudge through darkness, climbing over fallen rock and twisted metal, splashing through pools of stagnant scummy water. The darkness is as thick and oppressive as the silence that fills the tunnel. We interrupt both with flashes of light and the sound of our footsteps as we work our way deeper into the mountain. The chamber stretches on into blackness, and we can’t help feeling some dread as we continue into what we know once was literally the depths of hell itself.

Ahead of us lie 12 miles of tunnels and subterranean galleries, hewn from the rock by slave laborers. Hastily constructed by the Third Reich in the wake of the unrelenting Allied air war against Hitler’s Germany, this underground complex was once part of the Nazi concentration camp system. Buried deep within the mountain was a factory where inmates built jet engines and assembled V-1 and V-2 rockets. Abandoned by the Germans in April 1945, the complex was sealed shut in 1948 and disappeared behind the Iron Curtain, because it was in the Russian occupation zone.

Since 1964, the area above the former KZ (Konzentrationslager— concentration camp) Mittelbau-Dora has been the site of a memorial, and in 1974 a museum was built on the grounds. The barracks, guard towers and barbed wire are gone — only broken concrete foundations, cracked and rutted streets, and the crematorium on the hill that rises above the camp are grim reminders of what happened here. But below the surface, inside the mountain, lies a moment trapped in time. To access that stark, unmitigated evidence of evil and suffering, a reunified Germany completed a new 500-foot tunnel that cut into Kohnstein Mountain in order to reopen some of the underground complex for visitors. Only 5 per cent of the tunnels are open to the public because when the Russians blasted it closed in 1948, they brought down rock and portions of the concrete and metal that divided the tunnels into a multilevel factory. Postwar quarrying of the mountain above also cracked and loosened the rock, so the tunnels are dangerous. Large rocks fall without warning, and some galleries, once open, are now choked shut. To move deeper into the mountain, and back into the untouched past, we are wearing the rig of hard- rock miners as we climb, slip and slide over huge boulders, gravel and mud. Even so, at least a third of the complex lies sealed beneath cold water that has seeped in and flooded the tunnels, along with their assembly lines, workshops and offices.

It’s December, and outside, the temperature is well below freezing, with snowflakes dancing in the wind. Inside the mountain, the temperature hovers just above freezing. Our breath fogs as we haul our dive equipment deep into the heart of the mountain. We will be among the first to slip beneath the water and explore the flooded depths of Mittelbau-Dora. Our goal is to venture into some of its forgotten rooms and bring back film footage to share with the world.

Our Sea Hunters team is now a close-knit band of brothers in the field, underwater, underground, on the decks of ships and in the studio. Producer and team leader John Davis, chief diver Mike Fletcher, his son Warren, our second underwater cameraman, Marc Pike and soundman John Rosborough make up the core team. Guided by our colleagues Dr. Willi Kramer, Torsten Hess (curator of KZ Mittelbau-Dora) and a mine safety engineer, we find ourselves in a unique situation, diving into the depths of a flooded underground concentration camp to see what untouched evidence remains of Nazi crimes against humanity. Dr. Kramer, who is with Germany’s Department of Monuments and Culture, is the chief underwater archeologist for Northern Germany and the government’s only underwater archeologist to work with Germany’s hydrographic office and the military. That assignment has included diving to explore sunken warships and U-boats, downed aircraft and subterranean chambers. Willi was the first to dive here, and now he leads us into the darkness.

I turn to John Davis and say, “This looks like one of the rings of hell.” He replies, “Dante couldn’t have imagined this.” He’s right. The dark, the cold, the silence and the overwhelming sense of the horrors that took place here engulf us as we travel deeper into the tunnels.

ROCKETS FOR THE REICH

The achievement of the age-old dream of human flight in the early twentieth century spawned a new dream of flight into space. Scientists in various countries experimented to perfect rocket designs through the 1920s and ’30s, with varying levels of success. In 1932, the new Nazi government set up a rocket program. Among the scientists who joined that program was Wernher von Braun, who, with full funding and Wermacht (Army) support, developed a series of rockets: the A1, A2 and A3. The Germans built and tested these first rockets at an artillery range outside Berlin. By 1935, they needed a new facility.

The island of Usedom, on the Baltic coast at the mouth of the Peene River, proved to be the ideal locale. Known as Peenemunde, this new test center, developed by both the Wermacht and the Luftwaffe (Air Force), opened in May 1937. There, in isolation, von Braun and his team began the design and testing of a new rocket, the A4. That weapon, designed to be a long-distance combat rocket, would later become notorious as the feared V-2. But the testing of the A4 was plagued by problems, because its twenty thousand individual parts required meticulous assembly. As the Germans worked to improve the range and targeting of the A4, they also took steps to simplify its construction on an assembly line.

The first successful launch of an A4 rocket came only after Germany lost the Battle of Britain and at Hitler’s urging, as he wanted results after years of costly development and tests. On October 3, 1942, an A4 roared off the pad. The space age had begun, but with a deadly purpose. Hitler demanded that five thousand rockets be built for a mass attack on London. At the same time, the rocket scientists had designed a smaller but also deadly weapon, the Fi 103, later designated the V-1, to attack Britain. These small winged rockets were the world’s first cruise missiles.

The “V” designation came from Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, who called the rockets Vergeltungwaffe (vengeance weapons). The V-2, a single-stage rocket, was 46 feet long, weighed 14 tons, carried a one-ton payload (two-thirds of which was the explosive charge) and traveled at a maximum velocity of 3,600 miles per hour, with a range of 200 miles. Facilities for constructing the rockets were built at Peenemunde, using prisoners from concentration camps as workers. The first assembly lines to build V-1 rockets started up in July 1943, and in early August, a new line was added to build V-2s. First fired at Paris in early September 1944, V-2s were also fired at London and Antwerp. In all, out of 4,600 V-2s built, the Nazis fired about 3,200 in anger, most of them, despite popular belief, not at London but at Antwerp. The V-1 and V-2 rocket barrage against the Allies killed about five thousand people. Ironically, four times as many — nearly twenty thousand — died in slave labor camps constructing the rocket facilities and making the weapons themselves.

Located in the middle of Germany near the town of Nordhausen, about 35 miles from the infamous