On April 19, 2005, the USS America (CV-66), a retired U.S. Navy supercarrier, was deliberately sunk in a live-fire test approximately 250 nautical miles off the coast of Virginia. Unlike previous computer simulations, this real-world sinking exercise allowed the Navy to study how an actual carrier hull would respond to sustained missile and explosive attacks over several weeks. The extensive data collected from the structural damage, survivability factors, and progressive flooding significantly