USS Moody (DD-277)

The USS Moody was a Clemson-class destroyer in the US Navy and was named for Justice William Henry Moody. Here is a picture of the original 4 stack destroyer:

After the Moody was decommissioned, the superstructure was sold as scrap metal and the rest of the ship was purchased by MGM for about $35k and was used in filming the movie Hell Below. During the filming, the Moody was modified to resemble a German WW I Destroyer. Dynamite was placed strategically and was then detonated on 21 Feb 1933. The explosion split the Moody in half between two watertight compartments and then two additional detonations breached the watertight bulkheads and she sank and currently rests about 140 feet deep. The two halves are about 100′ apart. We spent our dive on the bow section.

As usual, the summer water in Southern California had a green hue. The visibility at the surface was pretty bad but got somewhat better near the bottom. We spent about 30 minutes exploring the wreck and made a venture off to find the stern along a line that was already there; however, the visibility was pretty bad and we were already racking up a bit of deco so we headed back to the bow and up the shot line.

I finally got to see a wolf eel and got some decent pictures of it. Most other pictures have a ton of backscatter but below is a gallery of a few other pictures.

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