I wish they close all the water tight doors and use her for target practice and show all of these anti carrier yahoos how hard it is to actually sink an air craft carrier.
Yes, I agree as I described in my post (I didn’t see yours, but we feel the same way)
Scrapping of a ship is a moment in the times of most men who ever served on that ship.
If you have been blessed to live long enough to see your vessel die of old age, you take notice, in much the same way you do when you read the obituary of someone you once knew well, many years ago. Perhaps an old girlfriend or someone who had a major influence on your life. I think it makes you feel your mortality.
But I must say, I always loved the story hearing about the scrapping of the first destroyer my Dad served on. Sure, it was hard to hear she had been sold to the Chilean Navy, and when they had no more use for her, sold her to Korea, where she was broken up for scrap. But that slow death of neglect and obsolescence that humans and ships sometimes share, was offset by an interesting twist.
My dad reported to the USS Rooks (DD-804) as a LTJG in June 1951 at San Diego, CA, they went via the Panama Canal to Newport, RI, where they operated up and down the East coast until April 1952, when they went BACK down to the Panama Canal and on to Korea where he spent four or five months operating in and around Korea. They went into the Indian Ocean, through the Suez Canal, and back to Newport, RI in April 1953.
It was an around the world cruise in the destroyer.
During that deployment, he had proposed to my mom in a letter (with the wonderfully corny but delightfully appropriate and sincere “Marry me and I’ll show you the world) and the wedding date was set for May 9th, 1953 after the ship was due back in its home port of Newport, RI.
When my dad’s ship came in just a couple of weeks before the wedding, and he was able to finally get off and head up to Massachusetts for the wedding that was to take place in the next few days, he realized after he arrived home that he had forgotten his dress shoes and the marriage license in his rack back on the ship.
He drove all the way back to the ship in Newport got his shoes and license, but when he got back up the Massachusetts, he couldn’t find the wedding license. He went back down again and went aboard the ship where he scoured the compartment and his rack, to no avail. Crestfallen, he had to go back without the license, but the office was closed for the weekend and he was unable to get another one. Someone he knew pulled a few strings, got the guy to come back in and he got a license, so the wedding went ahead as planned.
In the early Eighties, my mother got a call from South Korea (I think, but not sure) and the guy said they were breaking up a ship for scrap, and they had found a wedding license with her and my dad’s name on it. They were breaking up the USS Rooks, and when they were tearing the compartment apart, they found it in a bulkhead. Apparently what had happened, was my dad had got the certificate, put it on his rack, raised the mattress up to get the shoes underneath, and when he did, the license must have slid down a minuscule gap into the bottom of a dark bulkhead where it lay for 30 years until they tore it down. They offered to send it to her, but I think my parents had been going through some tough marital times at that point, and the last thing on her mind was a piece of paper from her past, so I don’t think she had them send it!
Actually, the reasons they are so hard to sink is also the reason why US carriers are only scrapped in US shipbreaking yards or sunk in extremely deep water in midocean. There are secrets to their construction - learned through hard experience in combat - that the United States doesn’t want exposed to hostile powers.