Additional pictures of damage to USS San Francisco, SSN-711

Submarine Photo Index ^

[WildTurkey]

(Even the photo caption was wrong ...

"The U.S.S. San Francisco limps back into port, damaged by a drunk driver."

[Robert A Cook PE]

Copper was in the old paints.

Then some more effective, less expensive, tin-based paints became very popular, but the enviro's complained. (Paint (in harbors) "might" fall off the boats and commercial ships, and "might" land on the bottom, and "might" get eaten by crustaceans -> fish -> people.

So they banned the more effective -> less bottom growth -> less water resistance -> less fuel-consuming -> less pollution paint to protect the environment. Much more expensive!

[El Gran Salseron]

Fiberglass.

Sorry but that is the way my spell checker spells it although I prefer your spelling. :-)

[passingthought]

The bottom is Mare Island Red, mostly because the folks working on the hull while waterborne find it easier to see.

[arizonasubmariner]

Actually, they probably won't decom her. She is one of 3 subs forward deployed to Guam (Houston and City of Corpus Christi being the others). The Navy wants to maintain a strong forward presence in the Far East region, and subs based out of Guam are vital to that effort. If I hear right, they will take one of her allready decommed sister ships, the Atlanta, and chop the forward ends off both boats and pretty much switch them around. That makes sense if you look at it logically, because the Atlanta (sitting in the boneyard in Washington) was allready like other decommed nuclear boats, she was due to be cut up for scrap anyhow. It would be a huge expense to do the alternative... decomm her, cut her up for scrap too, and then move another boat with its crew and their families out to Guam. Think of the force realignment problems from that.