USS Maine (ACR-1) Totally Explained

Everything about Uss Maine Acr-1 totally explained

"The Maine" redirects here. For the pop punk band, see The Maine (band).

USS Maine (ACR-1), the first ship of the United States Navy to be named for the state of Maine, was a 6,682-ton second-class pre-dreadnought battleship originally designated as Armored Cruiser #1. Maine and
Ever since the ship sank, doubts about the validity of the Navy's 1898 and 1911 findings have been expressed by historians and scientists.

1911 Court of Inquiry

By 1908, the war drums had long stopped beating, and many parties demanded that the Maine be raised from Havana harbor. Cuban officials became worried about the safety of having a sunken ship in their harbor, U.S. officials wanted the remains of the sailors trapped in the wreck recovered and buried, and a few people wanted to confirm the cause of the sinking. Begun in December 1910, a huge waterproof cofferdam was built around the wreck and water was pumped out, finally exposing the wreck by late summer 1911. Sections of the hull of the Maine were numbered, many photographs were taken, and models of the Maine and her wreckage were built by the single Navy employee assigned to the job in Havana. Except for many souvenir items retained by the Navy and frequently distributed to the public, most of the tangled wreckage was dumped into the sea off the coast of Cuba. Between November 20 and December 2, 1911 a court of inquiry headed by Rear Admiral Charles E. Vreeland visited the wreck. The conclusions of the Vreeland Board differed with the Sampson Board only in detail. The Vreeland Board agreed that the explosion of the magazines was triggered by an external blast, but the damage to the Maine was much more extensive than the Sampson Board had thought. It was also concluded that the initiating blast occurred further aft on the ship, and a lower powered explosive breached the hull than was originally thought. After the investigation, the newly located dead were buried in Arlington National Cemetery and the hollow, intact portion of the hull of the Maine was refloated and ceremoniously scuttled at sea on March 16, 1912.

1976 Rickover investigation

The argument wasn't touched for another half a century, until a private investigation in 1976 was triggered by Admiral Hyman G. Rickover after he read a newspaper article on the sinking. He and several scientists from the U.S. Navy launched an investigation based on the evidence collected during the two Courts of Inquiry. Rickover believed that the new knowledge collected since World War II on analyzing ships damaged by internal and external explosions would shed new light on the sinking of the Maine. The Rickover analysis came to a completely different conclusion than the Courts of Inquiry. Rickover found that the cause of the explosion didn't originate outside the ship. The cause of the explosion originated within the ship, but what actually happened couldn't be precisely determined. Rickover believed that the most likely cause was a fire within a coal bunker, which had heated the magazines to the point of explosion. His 170-page book, How the Battleship Maine Was Destroyed, was first published in 1976. The world accepted this new conclusion, and for more than a quarter of a century, the coal bunker fire theory reigned over the external mine theory.

1999 National Geographic investigation

In 1999, to commemorate the centennial of the sinking of the Maine, National Geographic Magazine commissioned an analysis by Advanced Marine Enterprises, using computer modeling that wasn't available for previous investigations. The AME analysis examined both theories and concluded that “it appears more probable than was previously concluded that a mine caused the inward bent bottom structure and the detonation of the magazines.” Some experts, including Admiral Rickover’s team and several analysts at AME, don't agree with the conclusion, and the fury over new findings even spurred a heated 90-minute debate at the 124th annual meeting of the U.S. Naval Institute.

Unsolved mystery

The day after the Maine was sunk in Havana harbor, Assistant Secretary to the Navy Theodore Roosevelt
stated that “we shall never find out definitely” the cause of the disaster. Roosevelt's words have proved particularly enduring.

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