[GreenKeys] Navy plans to Sink America (off-topic)

[Don and Diana Cunningham]

Don,
Even as a museum ship, you are not guaranteed anything.  My old ship, USS 
Edson (DD-946), was part of the USS Intrepid Museum in NYC, but they decided 
she "didn't draw enough interest" as a Vietnam Destroyer, so had to fix her 
up in the Philly Navy Yard, and she is sitting there and we are hoping she 
will become a museum ship in Bay City, Michigan (THEY really want her).  The 
real insult was that the Intepid Museum threw her away for a new exhibit, 
the French Concorde, not even an American airplane!!  Go figure.
73,
Don, WB5HAK
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Don Robert House" <drhouse at mchsi.com>
To: <greenkeys at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Friday, March 04, 2005 9:47 PM
Subject: [GreenKeys] Navy plans to Sink America (off-topic)


> Explosive tests will send aircraft carrier to bottom of Atlantic
>
> The aircraft carrier USS America will become the largest warship ever 
> sunk.
>
> WASHINGTON DC - The Navy plans to send the retired carrier USS America to 
> the bottom of the Atlantic in explosive tests this spring, an end that is 
> difficult to swallow for some who served on board.
>
> The Navy says the effort, which will cost $22 million, will provide 
> valuable data for the next generation of aircraft carriers, which are now 
> in development. No warship this size or larger has ever been sunk, so 
> there is a dearth of hard information on how well a supercarrier can 
> survive battle damage, said Pat Dolan, a spokeswoman for Naval Sea Systems 
> Command.
>
> The Navy's plan raises mixed emotions in Ed Pelletier, who served on the 
> America as a helicopter crewman when the ship cruised the Mediterranean 
> shortly after its commissioning in 1965.
> He said he was "unhappy that a ship with that name is going to meet that 
> fate, but happy she'll be going down still serving the country." 
> Pelletier, of Poughkeepsie, N.Y., is a trustee of an association of 
> veterans who served on the America.
>
> Issues surrounding a vessel bearing the name of its country are often more 
> sensitive than for other ships. In 1939, Adolf Hitler, fearful of a loss 
> of morale among his people should Germany's namesake ship be sunk, ordered 
> the pocket battleship Deutschland renamed for a long-dead Prussian 
> commander.
>
> Since its decommissioning in 1996, the America has been moored with dozens 
> of other inactive warships at a Navy yard in Philadelphia. The Navy's plan 
> is to tow it to sea on April 11 - possibly stopping at Norfolk, Va. - 
> before heading to the deep ocean, 300 miles off the Atlantic coast, for 
> the tests, Dolan said.
>
> There, in experiments that will last from four to six weeks, the Navy will 
> batter the America with explosives, both underwater and above the surface, 
> watching from afar and through monitoring devices placed on the vessel.
>
> These explosions would presumably simulate attacks by torpedoes, cruise 
> missiles and perhaps a small boat suicide attack like the one that damaged 
> the destroyer USS Cole in Yemen in 2000.
> At the end, explosive scuttling charges placed to flood the ship will be 
> detonated, and the America will begin its descent to the sea floor, more 
> than 6,000 feet below.
>
> The Navy has already removed some materials from the ship that could cause 
> environmental damage after it sinks, Dolan said.
>
> Certain aspects of the tests are classified, and neither America's former 
> crew nor the news media will be allowed to view them in person, Dolan 
> said. The Navy does not want to give away too much information on how a 
> carrier could be sunk, she said.
>
> Why the America? No other retired supercarriers were available on the East 
> Coast when the test was planned, Dolan said. The others - the Forrestal 
> and the Saratoga - were designated as potential museums, she said.
>
> In a letter to Pelletier's group, Adm. John Nathman, the Navy's 
> second-in-command, called America's destruction "one vital and final 
> contribution to our national defense."
>
> "Ex-America's legacy will serve as a footprint in the design of future 
> aircraft carriers," he wrote.
> Although no larger warship has ever been sunk, bigger civilian vessels 
> have gone down. The largest ship in the world, the supertanker Seawise 
> Giant, was sunk by Iraqi warplanes in the Strait of Hormuz during the 
> Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. Fully loaded, it displaced more than half a 
> million tons. It was later refloated and renamed.
>
> The America, which is more than 1,000 feet long and displaces about 80,000 
> tons, exceeds the size of the Japanese World War II battleships Yamato and 
> Musashi, and the carrier Shinano, which all displaced close to 70,000 
> tons. The Yamato and Musashi fell to American warplanes, the Shinano to a 
> U.S. submarine.
>
> The America was the third carrier of the non-nuclear Kitty Hawk class, and 
> the first to be retired, a victim of post-Cold War budget cuts after 31 
> years at sea. It launched warplanes during the Vietnam War, the 1986 
> conflict with Libya, the first Gulf War, and over Bosnia-Herzegovina in 
> the mid-1990s.
>
> Pelletier and other veterans who served on the America said their 
> farewells in a Feb. 25 ceremony at the ship in Philadelphia. Some 
> artifacts have been removed for museums and veterans' groups; in addition, 
> Pelletier's association will place a time capsule on board.
>
> The Navy has several other carriers awaiting their fates. Environmental 
> regulations make breaking warships up for scrap metal largely 
> unprofitable, though some still are dismantled. The Oriskany, a smaller 
> carrier that was commissioned in 1950, is scheduled to be sunk as an 
> artificial reef off the coast of Pensacola, Fla., late this year.
>
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