YMS-359

One YMS Identified, Another YMS Identity Narrowed

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Of the 3 Minesweepers at the bottom of Lake Washington, only the YMS-359 was positively identified since their discoveries (the YMS-359 has 359 painted on the bow).

Now the guys over at pugetsounddivers.com are reporting they have identified one of the other two minesweepers and narrowed the identity of the third.

The least intact YMS in the lake is now identified as the YMS-416.

Short history on the YMS-416:
“Laid down 9 January 1944 by the Stadium Yacht Basin Inc., Cleveland, OH; Launched 28 May 1944; Completed 21 October 1944; Struck from the Navy Register 7 February 1947; Sold 6 December 1947.” Fate (previously) unknown. At some point this one was stripped and scuttled.

The YMS we discovered most recently looks like it may be the YMS-118, -124 or -311. Here is a short history on those three ships:

YMS 118 : Struck from the Naval Register, 17 April 1946; Sold in 1951 to the Northland Navigation Co., Ltd. of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, rebuilt as a general cargo vessel and named Pacific Prince; Sold 31 January 1962 to Skeena Navigation Ltd. of Vancouver; Sold 31 March 1962 to the Northwest Shipping Co., Ltd. of Vancouver; Sold 16 June 1966 to Fred S. Hill and John R. Keebaum of Seattle, WA and rebuilt as a fishing boat and renamed V-O; Sunk in February 1967 in a voyage from Seattle to King Cove, AK.

YMS 124: Laid down, 4 December 1941 by the Krause and Banks Shipbuilding Co., Inc., North Bend, OR; Launched, 6 June 1942; Completed, 23 October 1942; Struck from the Naval Register, 17 April 1946. Fate unknown.

YMS 311: Commissioned USS YMS-311, 6 November 1943; Decommissioned, 31 July 1946 and placed in service as a Naval Reserve training ship; Named Robin and reclassified as a Motor Minesweeper, AMS-53, 1 September 1947; Recommissioned in February 1952; Reclassified as a Coastal Minesweeper (Old), MSC(O)-53, 7 February 1955; Decommissioned 7 December 1957 and placed in service as a training ship at Tacoma, WA; Placed out of service in the summer of 1961; Struck from the Naval Register, 1 August 1961. Fate unknown.

I tend to believe the most recent YMS to be discovered is the YMS-118 because the wreck we are diving has clearly been rebuilt into a fishing vessel. Note square windows of pilot house in prior posts – square windows are not ‘original equipment’ for any YMS as they all had round bomb-blast/porthole type windows.

The inconsistency with calling this YMS the -118 is that it reportedly sank in route to Alaska – so how did it end up at the bottom of Lake Washington?

US Navy Minesweeper Discovered in Lake Washington

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This past Sunday, in a joint effort between JaWS Marine and Innerspace Exploration, we located a previously undocumented Navy Minesweeper in Lake Washington. This ship is 130ft in length, 24ft wide and is sitting in 200ft of water off Sand Point/Magnuson Park.

The YMS designation stands for Yard class Mine Sweeper. These ships were used during WWII for near shore mine sweeping as means to prepare for amphibious based assaults. More detailed history on the YMS located here and here.

Dive and ROV operations have not yet begun on this ship, so we do not yet know which of the 481 YMS ships built during WWII we have located. Based on experience with the relatively well known YMS-359 also located in Lake Washington, as well as other submerged minesweepers, we’re hoping the white designation numbers will still be visible on the bow.

Included below are a few sonar images from our work on Sunday, as well as some YMS 3D modeling images courtesy of Infusion Studio’s 3D.

A few things to look for when comparing our sonar images to the model photos: the narrow, but tall pilot house, fenders on stern deck (these reflect very brightly in the sonar image), opening in hold where ‘spool’ use to sit, opening in hold at engine compartment (meaning engines were removed prior to sinking), forward mount for guns.

More on this one as the story unfolds; I hope to post underwater images here before the end of the year.

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Potential New Wreck & The Coal Cars

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A few months ago when I was out conducting side scan sonar work with Innerspace Exploration, we hit an area North of 520 that had a number of wrecks within close range of one another.  

This area is generally known to the small group of local exploration divers, with the main wreck of the bunch being the YMS-359 – a US Navy Minesweeper that sits in 200ft of water and is about 135ft long.  So I didn’t think too much of the information until last week when I sat down with the data and tried to match wreck names to target locations.  As I matched coordinates to wrecks like Elfin, Urania, the previously mentioned YMS-359, Falcon, and Scout – I came up with one more set of coordinates than I had wreck names to match.

I bounced the general coordinates of this wreck off my friend Walter, who also has an extensive list of targets in the lake, and he couldn’t find a name to match either. So once again, I think we have a new target to explore…

The week of August 15th we’re going to make an exploration dive on the Coal Cars.  I have wanted to hit these submerged targets for awhile, so we’re going to make a dive on them first.  They are right up next to the 520 bridge, which can be really rough water depending on the wind conditions. 

Post dive we’ll head to the new coordinates to confirm them one more time; and see if we can locate the wreck with a basic fish finder. If we confirm the position of the wreck, we’ll make a dive on it a short time later. 

Back on the Lake

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This past weekend I was back out with Innerspace; searching for unfound wrecks in Lake Washington.  We were on the water running side scan for pretty close to 8 hours straight on Sunday; looking hard for two bi-plane seaplanes that crashed in the 1920’s south of the 520 bridge.  We found a couple targets in the right area but on close review they don’t appear to be airplane parts.  We’re planning to go back and make a quick dive on one of the targets just to be sure it isn’t a wing.  During the day we did manage to pick up good scans of a few known boat and shipwrecks in the area: SL Dowell, YMS-359, The Bremerton and a burned out hull – but never came across the plane(s) we were looking for.

GUE Tech II

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I spent the holiday week taking tech2 with Andrew Georgitsis of GUE and 5th D-X.  I made it through the class successfully but I’ll tell you it was a grueling week – both emotionally and physically.  I intended to post a daily blog on the class but that proved too difficult with both class activities and the pending holiday.  Our check-out dive was on the YMS-359 (Minesweeper) in Lake Washington.  Depth is/was 200ft.