Navy Investigating 99-Year-Old Warship Wreck

The U.S. Navy is probing a warship

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disaster 99 years after the fact in an attempt to find out what really happened when it sank. The USS San Diego went down in 1917, and it was assumed that it was sunk by a mine or German submarine. Now, nearly a hundred years later, the Navy finally wants to find out what sent the ship to the bottom.

The USS San Diego was a Pennsylvania-class armored cruiser, built at Union Iron Works in San Francisco and commissioned into the Navy in 1907. San Diego displaced 15,138 tons fully loaded, could make 22 knots, and was equipped with four eight-inch guns, fourteen six-inch guns, and 30 light guns. The cruiser served as part of President Theodore Roosevelt's Great White Fleet, which sailed around the world to promote American seapower from 1907 to 1909.

Upon the United States' entry into World War I in 1917, the San Diego was used to escort convoys carrying troops and supplies across the Atlantic Ocean. San Diego did not lose a single ship to German u-boats or mines—but may have eventually succumbed to one itself.