Operation CHASE

Operation CHASE (an acronym for "Cut Holes And Sink 'Em") was a United States Department of Defense program for the disposal of unwanted munitions at sea from May 1964 until the early 1970s.

The CHASE program was preceded by the United States Army disposal of 8,000 short tons of mustard and lewisite chemical warfare gas aboard the scuttled SS William C. Ralston in April 1958.

[1] The mothballed C-3 Liberty ship John F. Shafroth was taken from the National Defense Reserve Fleet at Suisun Bay and towed to the Concord Naval Weapons Station for stripping and loading.

CHASE 1 also included bombs, torpedo warheads, naval mines, cartridges, projectiles, fuzes, detonators, boosters, overage UGM-27 Polaris motors, and a quantity of contaminated cake mix an army court had ordered dumped at sea.

[1] Village was loaded with 7,348 short tons of munitions at the Naval Weapons Station Earle and towed to a deep-water dump site on 17 September 1964.

[1] Other sources describe CHASE 6 as the Liberty ship Robert Louis Stevenson loaded with 2,000 tons of explosives at Naval Base Kitsap in July 1967 as part of the ONR and ARPA investigation to detect underwater nuclear tests.

[1][8] CHASE 10 dumped 3,000 tons of United States Army nerve agent filled rockets encased in concrete vaults.

Public awareness of operation CHASE 10 was increased by mass media reporting following delivery of information from the Pentagon to the office of U.S. Representative Richard McCarthy in 1969.

In 1970, 58 separate reports were aired on the three major network news programs on NBC, ABC and CBS concerning Operation CHASE.

[citation needed] CHASE 11 occurred in June 1968 and disposed of United States Army GB and VX, all sealed in tin containers.