Wreck of SS Badger State

 shipwreck, disaster site, merchant marine / merchant navy vessel

The SS Badger State was a World War II-built cargo ship for the US Navy serving as the USS Starlight (AP-175) in the Pacific theatre, earning four Battle Stars by wars end. Following the war she was sold into commercial service and plied the seas for the Luckenbach Steamship Corp as the SS Florence Luckenbach and eventually the States Marine Lines starting in 1959, renamed SS Badger State.

Under contract with the Military Sea Transportation Service in 1969, the SS Badger State sailed from Naval Weapons Station Bangor around December 12th, 1969 with a full load of 8,900 bombs, rockets, shells and mines bound for Da Nang, South Vietnam. As the ship made its way across the North Pacific she came into heavy weather roughly 550 miles North of Midway Island on the 17th and began to roll heavily in the growing waves and howling winds. As the ship rolled from side to side, the securing bands on her dangerous cargo began to give way threatening to let the bombs come loose onboard, meaning almost certain destruction for ship and her crew. Racing to re-secure the cargo in the midst of a major storm, the crew of the Badger State used everything they could to shore up the dangerous load of bombs; ships mattresses, hatch boards, spare lifejackets, chairs, linen, stores, mooring lines and even frozen meat to keep the bombs from coming loose.

For the next nine days the fight continued as the ship was lashed by ferocious weather, her Captain trying several different courses to minimize the ships side to side movement in the 20 foot seas. All efforts to secure the dangerous cargo were seemingly ineffective as the bombs destroyed much of their blocking and bracing and began to roll freely around the ship, striking her inner hull with enough force to punch holes and allow water to enter the ship. Terrified crew continued to do everything they could to prevent or lessen the movement of the cargo until the morning of December 26th, when a single bomb detonated in cargo hold #5.

While the explosion was not a full force detonation, it blew a 12x8ft hole in her Starboard side and started a large fire on the Stern of the Badger State. The order to abandon ship went out immediately despite the continuing bad weather, which was then lashing the ship with 25ft waves and 40 knot winds. No sooner had crew unlashed two rubber liferafts the howling winds tore them off the deck of the ship. Two other rubber liferafts were lowered into the water, only to be overturned and throwing two men into the water. With the rubber rafts gone, the entire ships compliment had to squeeze into the one operating lifeboat, the other having been damaged by the high seas.

35 men were being lowered into the water along the Starboard side of the ship in the remaining lifeboat when they passed the massive hole blown in the ships hull, where they could clearly see the entire cargo load of bombs rolling back and forth in the hold, which was still afire. As the lifeboat hit the waters surface, it was immediately slammed into the hull of the Badger State by a wave, which also shook a massive 2000lb bomb loose from her #5 hold. The bomb rolled across the bottom of the hold and straight out of the hole blown in the ships hull, and landed on the side of the full lifeboat, capsizing it and sending the 35 men into the 48 degree water.

Captain Charles T. Wilson of the Badger State and a skeleton crew of five men who volunteered to remain onboard immediately dropped lines to the crew who were in the water in an attempt to save them, and vectored the Greek freighter the Khian Star which had responded to the distress call to the survivors now scattered in the water around them. Rescue in the heavy seas proved almost impossible, as many of the men in the water were washed away as they were being pulled up to the decks from the surging waves. By daybreak on the 27th, only 14 of the crew who were in the lifeboat had been recovered; the other 21 were never seen alive again.

By this point the fires on the Badger State were beginning to set off other munitions, and the cargo loads in her forward two holds had come loose and could have detonated at any moment. After sending a final message from the ship, the Captain and his remaining crew abandoned ship into the Pacific and swam for the Khian Star through the 20ft seas. Of the five men, only three survived the swim, including the Captain.

Now totally abandoned and powerless, the Badger State was slowly consumed by fire from the Stern forward, and was rocked with countless detonations as she drifted around the North Pacific for the next ten days. Navy ships arrived onscene to assess the situation and possibly save the ship and what remained of its cargo, but the fire and explosions led to the Navy ordering that the Badger State be sunk as a hazard to navigation.

As the salvage tug USS Abnaki began to close in on the Badger State to open fire, the ship broke up and sank at this location on January 5th, 1970. 29 members of her crew died as a result of the sinking.

www.usmm.org/badger_state.html
www.statesmarinelines.com/ships/badger_state.htm
www.navsource.org/archives/09/22/22175.htm