Mysterious Disappearance of the USS Cyclops

Gambeir

Celestial
The Cyclops fell prey to a coal fire that smoldered until it exploded. This is now the officially accepted explanation for the explosion of the USS Main in Havana Cuba because George Bush wasn't around to plot it out, so they conjecture it was all accidental, but exploited nonetheless as a reason to go to war with Spain so that we could steal some islands for naval bases in the Pacific. Unfortunately the mob already owned Cuba so we had to let that one go back to them.

OK, well seriously now it's logical to think that the Cyclops cannot be found because she exploded, and there's nothing as powerful as coal dust except for a nuclear bomb. A dust bomb is basically a fuel air bomb and terrifically powerful. She was scattered all over and now there's nothing left after all these years with the salt eating away and the coral covering whatever few odd rivets that might have been blown off to kingdom come.
 

CasualBystander

Celestial
The Cyclops fell prey to a coal fire that smoldered until it exploded. This is now the officially accepted explanation for the explosion of the USS Main in Havana Cuba because George Bush wasn't around to plot it out, so they conjecture it was all accidental, but exploited nonetheless as a reason to go to war with Spain so that we could steal some islands for naval bases in the Pacific. Unfortunately the mob already owned Cuba so we had to let that one go back to them.

OK, well seriously now it's logical to think that the Cyclops cannot be found because she exploded, and there's nothing as powerful as coal dust except for a nuclear bomb. A dust bomb is basically a fuel air bomb and terrifically powerful. She was scattered all over and now there's nothing left after all these years with the salt eating away and the coral covering whatever few odd rivets that might have been blown off to kingdom come.

The Cyclops was carrying 10,800 long tons of manganese ore (not coal). Her capacity was about 8,000 tons.

The ship was thought to be overloaded when she left Brazil.

Try again.

German raider or submarine was thought to be the cause of the disappearance. I'm in the rogue wave camp.
 

Castle-Yankee54

Celestial
They said that flight out of Fort Lauderdale got disorientated and were young inexperienced flyers.

Yes and they were lead by a person who was susceptible to an unknown problem at the time. The conditions that day combined with the compass failures caused his spatial disorientation to cause him to get lost and confused. Its a pity he didn't let Captain Powers assume command.
 

Gambeir

Celestial
The Cyclops was carrying 10,800 long tons of manganese ore (not coal). Her capacity was about 8,000 tons.

The ship was thought to be overloaded when she left Brazil.

Try again.

German raider or submarine was thought to be the cause of the disappearance. I'm in the rogue wave camp.

OK, how's this hypothesis? The ship was driven by coal and it had taken on board "six hundred tons coal " for it's journey, and may have had as much as fifteen hundred tons of coal on board.
USS Cyclops (AC-4) - Wikipedia

The USS Cyclops, otherwise known as the AC-4 was just one of four so~called Proteus Class Colliers built for the US Navy. Evidently the class has a very checkered history. Of the original four Proteus Class, three were lost without a trace, with one being lost during war through known causes. None of the ships of this class survived: It was a cursed design.

Now regardless of these facts, the original ship in question was a coal powered ship and it's bunkers included a lot of coal to power the ship. Structural failure is possible, or if not that then there was as structural design flaw, wherein the coal bunkers would themselves seal the fate of the ships.

I'm in the exploding ship camp.
 

August

Metanoia
the guy that got downed by an UFO near tasmania, remenber him?
it was poison that killed them, no sinking frederick valentich comes to mind


There is no proof he drowned they never found his plane nor him. He certainly wasn't poisoned as you intimated in a previous post.
 

CasualBystander

Celestial
The Jupiter was sunk in WW2 as the USS Langley.....as posted above. It had been the first US air craft carrier.....and then a seaplane carrier. It was sunk by the Japanese in 1942.

Three points:

1. It wasn't the Jupiter anymore, it was the Langley.

2. It had been heavily modified and was not used for its original purpose.

3. It wasn't sunk by the Japanese, they just damaged it. It was sunk by the Americans. According to Wiki: The escorting destroyers fired nine 4-inch (100 mm) shells and two torpedoes into Langley's hull, to ensure she didn't fall into enemy hands, and she sank.

Given that it took Japanese bombing, Allied shelling and two torpedoes to sink the Langley, the loss of the ship could hardly be blamed on a "structural design flaw".
 
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