Why Virginia built a highway that dives into the ocean and disappears

In Virginia, a highway runs straight into the ocean and disappears underwater, then comes back up and does it again. The reason sits under the road: this was the Navy's doorway from Norfolk to the Atlantic, and a fallen bridge could cork the channel and trap the fleet inside. So the road went under the ships. Crews built four artificial islands from granite rings and sand, floated 300-foot steel tunnel sections 1,700 miles to Virginia, and sank them into a trench one by one. Six years after it opened in 1964, a Navy ship tore out 375 feet of roadway in a storm. The road failed. The ship channel didn't. Sources: • Wikipedia — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chesapeake_Bay_Bridge%E2%80%93Tunnel • CBBT — https://www.cbbt.com/explore/ • Virginia Places — http://www.virginiaplaces.org/transportation/cbbt.html • ASCE — https://www.asce.org/publications-and-news/civil-engineering-source/article/2021/04/12/chesapeake-bay-bridge-tunnel-opens