Posted on 05/20/2005 7:09:57 AM PDT by wjersey
The Navy sent the retired USS America aircraft carrier to its final resting place at the bottom of the sea Saturday, in a closely guarded series of explosions that the Navy didn't announce until days later.
The 84,000-ton, 1,048-foot warship, which served the Navy for 32 years, thus became the first U.S. carrier to be sunk since 1951, and the largest warship ever sunk.
"Explosions were internal to the ship and allowed a controlled flooding," said Pat Dolan, a spokeswoman with the Naval Sea Systems Command. She declined to say where the ship now sits, except that it was 50 nautical miles - or about 58 miles - off the coast, and more than 6,000 feet below the surface.
The Navy previously said the final explosions would be off North Carolina.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailypress.com ...
From the article:
Before it sank, it also served as a target for a series of explosions over 25 days designed to help in the making of the of the Navy's next generation carrier, the CVN-21, now being designed at the Northrop Grumman Newport News shipyard.
Er, no.
The classified parts of the ship (the details of the armor plating (above and below the waterline) and where and how it's installed in what areas are what must be protected.
Swimming around the hull reveals (to a knowledgeable designer) exactly how to design new cruise missiles and long-range torpedoes. (Not that they (Soviet, Chinese, NK, and France and their Muslim allies) don't already have missiles and (probably) some knowledge, but why make their job easier?)
It's why the Army tries real hard to recover the M! tanks from thebattlefield: Don't want the enmy to cut up the armor to investigate it.
(I do hope they recovered the propellers: hundreds of tons of brass IS worth the effort.)
Nice graphic. Thanks!
Why didn't they melt that sucker down for the steel? Seems like a waste of feeder stock to the steel mills.
Wanna bet asbestos is in there? Probably tons of it. Refit or salvage would have cost far too much. At least they got some useful data....
Possibly tested new torpedo technology. Rare to test it out on bery large ships.
"They couldn't dismantle it and use it for scrap metal?!? "
Probably cost a fortune due to environmental concerns. They used asbestos on steam lines.
The market for Carrier museums is pretty well saturated. One old carrier the Cabot?) rusted away for years while folks were trying to get up the money for a museum. I don't know if it's still sitting there or if it was finally scrapped. It takes a lot of money to set up a carrier, and more to keep it running. That's why destroyers, old subs, and PT boats are more popular.
El Gato mentioned San Diego, Norfolk and DC. San Diego already has a carrier museum. (The Midway). Aside from the issue of trying to get a carrier up the Potomac (the civil engineering involved would run in the hundreds of millions), where would you dock it in DC? And while Norfolk doesn't have a carrier, it does have a Battleship (the Wisconsin) and the community is probably too small to support two major ships.
The following locations have carriers on display. San Diego, Everett, Rhode Island, Charleston, SC, Corpus Christi, Baltimore (about as close as you can get to DC), New York, and Alemeda, CA. So you have 3 spaced along the west coast, four spaced along the east coast, and one on the Gulf. The only logical location which is missing one would be Pensacola.
NEAT GRAPHIC!
I'm trying to picture where more than 6000 ft of water occurs 60 miles off the NC coast. It must be the northeast part close to Virginia - off the Outer Banks, probably? Or does the shelf drop to that level closer to the southern portion of the state?
Really, I didn't know the water was THAT deep that close.
You are talking about a vessel with lots of open spaces not braced internally that must withstand the various torquing and twisting forces of the ocean while also going damn fast and dealing with the shifting weights of the AirWings, Catapult mechanisms and such.
But then, why would anyone listen to me? Lord knows I've spent no time on these things, and obviously have no idea what I am talking about.
Thanks, makes sense. Well, all we can do then is Salute Her for service well done both afloat and sunk. :^)
They could sell those to the French for the Charles de Gaulle.
Probably chocked full of asbestos. Too expensive to dismantle and comply with removal protocols.
Your post 52 seems to have been embargoed by the NSA.
"They could sell those to the French for the Charles de Gaulle."
No way, we don't need anything American being surrendered.
Certain elements in "the community" hollered bloody murder over docking the Wisconsin in downtown Norfolk. They'd raise an even bigger stink over a carrier, assuming that there was someplace to put her, which there isn't. Norfolk/Portsmouth is very much a working harbour.
I think they could have shot some holes in it and still salvaged it before it sank. Even if it would have cost more, I think it should have been salvaged. Makes me wonder why I save and recycle pop cans.
Cabot's gone, scrapped three or four years ago near Houston. Too bad, too. She was the last carrier with an unaltered, ash deck extant.
Out here in San Diego the old carrier MIDWAY was just towed into harbor last January and opened up as a museum a few months ago. I spent a night on board with my son and about 150 other Indian Guides. Just marvelous. We slept in actual seaman bunks (cramped!) and had a fun time.
Prison or homeless shelter? Naaah. These old carriers should get much more respect than that.
To prove that a ship with holes in its hull will sink? ;-)
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