Navy to scuttle a retired carrier USS America

Boston Globe ^ | March 6, 2005 | John J. Lumpkin, AP

[Cincinatus' Wife]

WASHINGTON -- The Navy plans to send the retired carrier USS America to the bottom of the Atlantic in explosives tests this spring, an end 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.

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.

[Dilbert56]

We could obtain the same test data by sinking France's carrier.

[COEXERJ145]

Better for the ex-America to die this way than by the cutter's torch. She can go down serving her country one last time.

[Blood of Tyrants]

Not really. It is already trying to surrender by sinking itself.

[Ramius]

While I do wonder about the value of the scrap steel, which is probably considerable, there is much to be learned from a real time test of explosives.

There's also something elegant about not letting a good ship be cut up for scrap, but put her to rest where she belongs... forever on patrol.

[snif] it's the romantic in me.