Decommissioned U.S. Navy warship USNS General Hoyt S. Vandenberg was sunk Wednesday morning 6 ˝ miles off Key West in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary to become the world's second-largest artificial coral reef.

A total 42 explosive charges were used to create a pattern of holes in the side of the ship and its decks sending it 140 feet deep into its final resting place in the Gulf of Mexico in less than two minutes. The Artificial Reefs of the Keys led the $8.6 million project to make the Vandenberg an artificial reef.

The 17,250-ton, 523-foot long and 10-story high Vandenberg, previously named Gen. Harry Taylor, was built in a Richmond, California shipyard in 1943 to transport troops during World War II. After the war, it transported European and Australian refugees to the U.S. in the 1950s and tracked missiles in the 1960s.

The ship was retired in Norfolk, Virginia in 1986 and became the set of the 1999 movie "Virus" that starred Donald Sutherland and Jamie Lee Curtis. It was towed to Key West last month, 14 years after its scuttling was planned.

World War II veterans booed when the ship's conversion into an artificial reef was revealed by dive boat captain Joe Weatherby, according to Miamiherald.com. But the veterans agreed to the plan as they did not like the alternative, the scrapping of the ship in Japan to make it into razor blades, said Weatherby.