SS Montebello

History
United States
Name| Montebello
Namesake| Montebello
Owner| Union Oil Company
Builder| Southwestern Shipbuilding Co., San Pedro
Yard number| 21
Laid down| 20 April 1920
Launched| 24 January 1921
Sponsored by| Miss Adelaide Stewart
Homeport| Los Angeles
Identification|

* US Official Number 221100
* Call sign MCNH (1918–1933)
* Error creating thumbnail: Unable to save thumbnail to destination
* Call sign KDPR (1934–1941)

Fate| Sunk December 23, 1941
General characteristics
Type:|  Tanker
Length:|  440 ft 4 in (134.21 m)
Beam:|  58 ft 2 in (17.73 m)
Depth:|  32 ft 8 in (9.96 m)
Installed power:|  402 Nhp
Propulsion:|  Llewellyn Iron Works 4-cylinder quadruple expansion

SS Montebello was an oil tanker sunk by the Japanese submarine I-21 off the coast of California on December 23, 1941.[1][2]

## Contents

* 1 Ship description
* 2 Sinking
* 3 Battle of Los Angeles
* 4 Exploration of the wreck
* 5 See also
* 6 References

## Ship description

Report on the sinking

SS Montebello was a shelter-deck oil tanker built by the Southwestern Shipbuilding Company in San Pedro, California for the Union Oil Company. She was launched in 1921. Steel hulled, she had a length of 440 feet (130 m), beam of 58.2 feet (17.7 m), and draft of 32.8 feet (10.0 m).[3] The ship had ten divided liquid storage tanks which ran the width of the ship and was a single-hull design. She had an expected life of 25 years and was 20 years old when torpedoed.[3] When she went down, Montebello held 73,571 barrels (11,696.9 m3) of crude oil along with 104,034 US gallons (393,810 L) of fuel oil for her engines.[2]

## Sinking

Montebello was torpedoed after leaving for Vancouver, British Columbia, from the small Central Coast seaport of Port San Luis in Avila Beach, California

The officers and crew were aware there had been several attacks on American shipping off the West Coast. The risk was so high that Montebello's skipper had refused to take the ship to sea and he quit. After replacing the captain with the chief mate, Olaf Eckstrom,[2] they set off at midnight. At approximately 5:45 am, off the coast of the small town of Cambria, California,[4] just north of Morro Bay, two torpedoes hit the ship. Though one was a dud,[2] the torpedo responsible for the sinking struck forward in the pump room and dry storage cargo hold.[5]

The crew was unarmed, and as the men jumped into lifeboats, the submarine surfaced and fired at them with its deck gun. By 6:30 am, the ship had stood on her bow and slid under, according to a report published the next day. No one was killed.[6][7][8] I-21 shelled the SS Idaho the same day in the same place, putting minor damge to the ship.[9][10] [11]

## Battle of Los Angeles

These and other attacks put fear into California coastal cites, they turned off lights or blacked out windows at night. Some sandbagged their homes and businesses. Some radio stations went off the air and civil ships were ordered to stay in port. Commercial air travel was grounded.[12][13][14][15] A military defense system was installed up and down the coast, that included blimps, patrol ships, artillery batteries, and aircraft. [16][17]

## Exploration of the wreck

In an expedition conducted on November 7, 1996, the submersible Delta descended with two men on board to the wreck at a depth of 880 feet (270 m) and found Montebello sitting upright on the bottom. Based on their observations it was concluded that a single torpedo hit Montebello just forward of the pump room. While the bow was broken from the impact with the sea floor, the overall condition of the wreck was thought to be quite good, giving rise to the concern that she could still hold her liquid cargo.[3][8]

In August 2010 the wreck was examined by a robot submarine from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute[2] to determine whether the oil cargo was still on board and whether it posed a possible environmental threat. The expedition created three-dimension images of the ship using sonar, to be analyzed onshore. Jack Hunter, an archaeologist for Caltrans who examined the wreck in 1996 and compared the images from the 2010 expedition expressed concern that the wreck has deteriorated over the past 14 years and could represent a risk if the cargo leaks.[2]

Further explorations of the wreck were scheduled for 2011 at an expected cost of $2.3 million, to be paid from a fund which oil companies pay into for such situations.[2][8][18] After two weeks of extensive testing in October 2011, researchers determined that no crude oil remained in the tanker and such oil most likely was released from the vessel shortly after sinking and dissipated throughout the region.[18][19]

The shipwreck was listed on the US National Register of Historic Places in 2016. SS Emidio and SS Larry Doheny were also attacked and sank off the West Coast of the United States.

## See also

* List of shipwrecks in 1941
* California during World War II
* List of shipwrecks
* Battle of Los Angeles

## References

1. ↑ Chawkins, Steve (February 20, 2004). "Experts probe WWII wreck just off California's coast". Oakland Tribune. http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-6979996.html.
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 Nolte, Carl (August 27, 2010). "Oil aboard sunken WWII tanker may pose threat". San Francisco Chronicle. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/08/27/MN5L1F24VA.DTL. Retrieved October 18, 2011.
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Ruppe, Carol (2002). International Handbook of Underwater Archaeology. Kluwer Academic Publishers. p. 728. ISBN 0-306-46345-8.
4. ↑ "S.S. Montebello". http://www.dfg.ca.gov/ospr/NewsPubs/Montebello/index.aspx. Retrieved January 6, 2014.
5. ↑ "S.S. Montebello:Assessing Potential Pollution Effects to the Marine Environment and California Coast" (pdf). http://nrm.dfg.ca.gov/FileHandler.ashx?DocumentID=28104&inline=true. Retrieved October 18, 2011.
6. ↑ "WWII tanker off Calif. coast may still pose threat". Boston Globe. Associated Press. August 29, 2010. http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2010/08/29/wwii_tanker_off_calif_coast_may_still_pose_threat/.
7. ↑ "Title unknown". New Times (San Luis Obispo). December 2009.
8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 Schwartz, Noaki (October 17, 2011). "Is sunken WWII tanker a threat to coast?". Orange County Register (Santa Ana, CA): pp. 1, 6. http://www.ocregister.com/articles/oil-142514-ocprint-montebello-ship.html.
9. ↑ www.militarymuseum.org, Montebello
10. ↑ merchantships2, ships
11. ↑ Panic on the Pacific: How America Prepared for the West Coast Invasion, By Bill Yenne
12. ↑ militarymuseum.org Victor Valley's Unsung Heros, by John Swisher
13. ↑ Battle of Los Angeles
14. ↑ USLO, The Armor of Democracy: Volunteerism on the Home Front in World War II California
15. ↑ The Triumphant Partnership: California Cities and the Winning of World War II, California State University, Northridge, April 29, 2005
16. ↑ Fourth Antiaircraft Command Brigadere, August 1945
17. ↑ Panic on the Pacific: How America Prepared for the West Coast Invasion, By Bill Yenne
18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 "U.S. seeks to pull oil from tanker torpedoed by Japan". The Japan Times. October 19, 2011. Archived from the original on October 19, 2011. https://web.archive.org/web/20111019214802/http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20111019f1.html.
19. ↑ Barboza, Tony (October 20, 2011). "Sunken WWII boat mystery: Where did 3 million gallons of oil go?". Los Angeles Times. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011/10/sunken-wwii-boat-mystery-where-did-3-million-gallons-of-oil-go.html. Retrieved October 21, 2011.

[ ⚑ ]  35°35′N 121°16′W﻿ / ﻿35.583°N 121.267°W﻿ / 35.583; -121.267

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