Nazi Aircraft Carrier Located on the Bottom of the Baltic Sea

One of World War II's secrets was finally revealed to the world last week with the discovery of the Nazi aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin on the bottom of the Baltic.

She was constructed in 1938 but never saw combat and was captured by the Soviets in 1945. The ship was roughly the same size as the largest American carriers of the war. When the German shipbuilding yards were about to be captured by Soviet forces in April 1945, the Nazis scuttled her.

But the Soviets refloated the ship, repaired it and used it as a ferry to haul German and Polish equipment back to the Soviet Union until at least 1947, when Western spies photographed her and witnessed what happened to her next.

According to recently released KGB documents and reports from the Western agents, the Soviet Navy and Red Air Force used her for target practice and sank her with bombs, gunfire and torpedoes. It was thought by Soviet officials that knowing how to sink a state-of-the-art aircraft carrier would be useful (if they ever had to fight the U.S. Navy) and was a valuable state secret, so the Soviets kept the exact location of the wreck of the Graf Zeppelin quiet for decades.

All of that changed last week when a team of oil explorers were doing a sounding on the bottom of the Baltic and detected the wreck. No one is sure which nation has control over the wreck, but the discovery has shed light on what was one of World War II's most facinating secrets.