Posted on 05/17/2006 4:54:52 AM PDT by fredhead
PENSACOLA, Fla. (AP) - Hundreds of Navy veterans who grew to love the famed aircraft carrier USS Oriskany will see their old ship off on her final voyage - a trip to the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, where she will become a massive artificial reef.
Many, like Boyd Tong of Phoenix, plan to rent boats and watch as the Oriskany is sunk 24 miles off Pensacola Beach on Wednesday morning. "I expect it will be a little emotional," Tong said as a Navy band played "Anchors Aweigh" at Pensacola Naval Air Station tribute for the Oriskany on Saturday night.
The ship is set to become the world's largest intentionally created artificially reef - an end many say is fitting for her long and storied history.
(Excerpt) Read more at wpmi.com ...
It is a sad day, but no greater honor for the ship itself. A breaking yard is sad.
I hope there are pics for later.
You're right, a fitting burial for a fighting ship. Sad is what happened to the WWII carrier Enterprise, the only pre-war carrier to participate in every major campaign of the Pacific Theater. She was sold for scrap and cut up after attempts failed at making her a museum. But parts of her still survive on board the current Enterprise.
I'm sure the Navy is filming the whole event as well as having press/photo coverage.
Check www.news.navy.mil later today and tomorrow
Thank you.
My son is in the Air Force but is stationed at NAS Pensacola. He and several buddies are taking their boats out to watch the sinking then do some fishing. If he send pics I'll post them here.
An article in the Pensacola News-Journal (which couldn't be posted because of copywright issues) stated that pleasure boats can be no closer than one mile from the site of the sinking. I agree, I want to see pictures.
She's going to a Warship's grave.
Old Ironsides
by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
bump for later
One of my old ships was used in a sinkex and the other was scrapped. It is much nicer to think of the old girl resting on the bottom rather than being turned into lug wrenches.
A question: When a ship is to be sunk like this, how does the Navy decide where it is to sink? I mean, do they use underwater Navigational charts and select sites based on specific criteria?
I served onboard the Mighty-O for its last West-Pac cruise in '76 (V-2 division, catapaults & arresting gear). Near the end of its functional life, it was in pretty sad shape. Also went through its decommissioning at Alameda before it was towed up to Bremerton. Fond memories.
Mighty O-Boat, airwing VFP-63 Det 4, next to last cruise for the O-Boat. Last Tonkin Gulf war patrol cruise for a carrier, detoured to the Indian Ocean, Gonzo Station, Christmas in Mombasa, Kenya.
Rest in peace.
Usually they work with the Marine Fisheries people to pick out a location then they clean the ship (remove oil and all other fluids) and put it in place.
An honorable sleep with the fishes, and memories of thousands of men who served aboard her. Wonder who will be the first to dive to her and what depth she will rest at.
I'm sure there will be but I don't think they'll be very exciting. The ship is not being used in a SINKEX. There are several small planted explosive charges that were laid in a careful, deliberate plan to bring the ship down in a manner where it will rest perfectly upright on the ocean floor. The sinking will take over 5 hours.
Oriskany Museum and USS Oriskany Reunion Association
USS Oriskany as a Reef
The Pensacola News Journal is doing an exceptionally fine job of telling the stories of the ceremony on May 13, speaking with shipmates, adding photos, and will be keeping us all informed about the actual sinking. I hope you will turn to their website to read all the latest. The articles are too numerous to copy/paste. I have printed all of the articles for our scrapbooks at the Oriskany Museum. Thanks, News Journal, for the super reporting!!!
Jim Phillips
www.ussoriskanyonline.com
www.mbtdivers.com
(850) 455-7702
http://peoships.crane.navy.mil/reefing/oriskanyfaqs.htm
This is an official U.S. Navy Website
Last Updated: 13 Apr-2006
ORISKANY Frequently Asked Questions
Q. When will the ex-ORISKANY be sunk?
A. The Navy has established the notional sink date as May 17, 2006, subject to weather conditions.
Q. Where will the ex-ORISKANY be sunk?
A. Approximately 24 miles off the coast of Pensacola. The site is part of the permitted Escambia East Large Area Artificial Reef site, which is 77 square miles. The proposed location is
30* 02' 38" N Lat
87* 00' 25" W Lon
Q. How deep is the water where the ship will be sunk?
A. Ex-ORISKANY will be sunk at a depth of 212 feet, at mean low water. This will provide a 61 foot navigational clearance at mean low water above the ship if the ship settles on its keel. A 55-foot minimum navigational clearance at mean low water is required by the Army Corps of Engineers permit.
Q. Will the Navy make other ships available to be sunk? When? What ships? How does the process work?
A. Yes, the Navy has identified additional inactive ships that potentially can be donated for sinking and use as artificial reefs. These ships are designated for disposal and may be utilized for artificial reefing, Navy deep-water sink exercises or domestic dismantling based on the needs of the Navy to further reduce the size of its inactive ship inventory.
Additional ships may be added to this list as active ships are decommissioned and designated for disposal, and as other inactive ships currently held in a retention status are redesignated for disposal. The Navy is currently working with the Atlantic States and Gulf States Marine Fisheries Commissions on an improved process for transfer of ships to states once all efforts to sink ex-ORISKANY are completed and lessons learned are incorporated in the transfer process. It is the Navy’s intent to start making some of these ships available for application in the fall of 2006.
Q. How will the ship be sunk? What types of explosives will be used?
A. The sinking will be conducted in accordance with an engineered sink plan. Main sea chest piping within eight machinery spaces will be breached by simultaneous detonations of small C4 explosive charges in 22 locations internal to the ship. Progressive flooding will sink the ship. A one-mile stand-off zone will be established around the ship during the sinking for the protection of public observers.
Q. Will the public be able to see the sinking?
A. A stand-off zone will be established around the perimeter of the ship during the sinking. The public may witness the sinking of the ship outside of this stand-off zone, but because the explosives are internal to the ship and will not cause damage to the hull, it is not likely that there will be anything to see except the ship slowly settling into the water over a five-hour period.
Q. How long will it take to sink the vessel?
A. From the time of the explosive charges until the vessel is no longer visible will take about 5 hours.
Q. Will the ship be open to the public at any time prior to the sinking?
A. The ship is not being prepared for general public tours. While the ship is currently accessible by a trained workforce conducting environmental and scuttling preparations, several fall and trip hazards exist which make the ship unsuitable for touring by the general public.
Q. Where will the vessel berthed in Pensacola ?
A. The ship will be berthed at Allegheny Pier, on Pensacola Naval Air Station.
Q. Will a memorial be held? If so, when and where?
A. The Pensacola Bay Area Chamber of Commerce and the Naval Aviation Museum Foundation are making plans to conduct a memorial service at the National Museum of Naval Aviation on May 13. ORISKANY veterans can register at the website www.Oriskanymemorial.com. The point of contact for this event is Debi Panyko, who
can be reached at 850-438-4081.
Q. How soon after sinking can people dive on the vessel?
A. This will be determined by the State of Florida’s Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. Due to the possibility of air venting after sinking, the State is anticipating to restrict diving for at least two days after the ship is sunk.
Q. Have there been any modifications for diver safety?
A. Yes, FWC requested several modifications of the superstructure area that will be accessible to recreational divers. These modifications included removal of protrusions on bulkheads and the removal of glass from windows. No safety modifications were made below the flight deck.
Q. Will the Navy/State put mooring points on the ship to provide tie ups for diving?
A. This was considered by the State of Florida during its inspections of ex-ORISKANY. The state determined that there were adequate existing features of the ship that will facilitate anchoring points for dive boats.
Q. What is special about the process to prepare the ex-ORISKANY as an artificial reef?
A. The reefing of the ex-ORISKANY is the start of a completely new program for the Navy. It is the first vessel that the Navy will sink intentionally to form an artificial reef. The authority was recently granted in the FY 04 National Defense Authorization Bill (HR 1588 Sec 1013), which permits decommissioned ships stricken from the Naval Vessel Register to be transferred to States for use as artificial reefs. This was also the first time the Navy was using the Draft National Guidance to prepare a vessel for reefing and the first time the Navy was seeking, for the reefing of the vessel, a risk based disposal approval under 40 CFR 761.62(c).
Q. How did the Navy clean the vessel?
A. The new national cleanup guidance identifies materials of concern that may be found aboard vessels, likely areas where they may be found, and cleanup goals. Using survey information, the Navy removed oil and fuel, asbestos, certain paints, and loose debris as recommended by the guidance. We also identified and removed all liquid
Q. What sort of remediation has been done to the vessel?
A. The environmental remediation actions are defined in the EPA’s BMP document. The Navy’s contract with Resolve Marine Group/ESCO Marine Joint Venture, awarded in Sep 03, was based on the draft EPA BMP document. The scope of work to prepare ex-ORISKANY for sinking as an artificial reef included removal/disposal of liquid hydrocarbons (fuels and oils) throughout the ship so that the ship is essentially petroleum free; removal/disposal of any loose or detached friable asbestos containing material; removal/ disposal of all capacitors, transformers or other liquid PCB containing components; removal and disposal of all loose paint accumulated on deck surfaces, bulkheads and overhead areas; removal/disposal of trash, loose debris, cleaning materials, and any floatable materials not permanently attached to the ship or that could be transported in the water column during sinking; removal/disposal of batteries, halon, mercury, antifreeze, coolants, fire extinguishing agents, black and gray water, and chromated ballast water. Most of this work was completed in December 2004, with final cleaning completed in Beaumont, TX,
while the ship awaited tow in February and March 2006.
Q. How was the ex-ORISKANY reefing preparation plan developed?
A. The ex-ORISKANY reefing preparation plan was developed using the Draft National Guidance: Best Management Practices for Preparing Vessels Intended to Create Artificial Reefs. It was the first application of the Draft National Guidance to a vessel being prepared as a reef.
Q. What documentation did Navy have available to support the environmental cleaning associated with the reefing preparation of the ex-ORISKANY in accordance with the Draft National Guidance?
A. Navy, as a part of its inactivation process for every vessel, performs many types of surveys. For the ex-ORISKANY, these surveys included documentation on the liquids (oils, fuels, water), asbestos, PCBs, Freon, mercury, and radiological materials that had been onboard and removed from the vessel. These documents provided a valuable baseline for the Navy as the statement of work was developed and for the Navy contractor performing the work. Navy personnel worked closely with the contractor to inspect for any materials not on the inventories, which required management. When there was a question about proper management for a material, appropriate sampling and analysis was completed. The results of that analytical work were coordinated with the appropriate regulatory authority.
Q. Is there any concern about debris or oil on the water surface after the ship goes down?
A. Some debris is expected to be released from the ship due to the force of rising water within the hull. To prepare for this, the same contractor that has completed environmental remediation of the ship will also be on site for two days after the sinking with clean-up vessels equipped with skimmers.
Q. What will happen to the equipment that is onboard the ex-ORISKANY during the sinking?
A. There will be a small “float-off” package remaining after the ship goes down. This is a small boat that contains the monitoring equipment used by the operations team, a small generator used to power this equipment and support the team that will be onboard during the tow, and the fuel bladder for the generator. This boat will be retrieved immediately after the sinking by an operations support vessel. The use of this float-off package will prevent contamination of the ship during the sinking.
Q. What are the plans to protect the ship if bad weather (e.g. Hurricane) occurs while it is berthed in Pensacola?
A. The 2006 hurricane season does not begin until June 1, 2006. NAS Pensacola will assist with heavy weather mooring as necessary during the month of May
Q. Why did the ex-ORISKANY require special approval from the EPA to sink the vessel?
A. There are solid PCB containing materials onboard the ex-ORISKANY, typical of virtually all other ships built before the 1980s. After cleaning, some of these solid PCB containing materials still remain onboard the ex-ORISKANY. EPA has granted a risk-based disposal approval to allow solid PCB containing materials to remain onboard, based on the Navy’s demonstration that the risks to people using the reef, and plants and animals living and feeding on the reef, are acceptable.
Navy was issued the risk-based Polychlorinated Biphenyl (PCB) disposal approval from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Region IV on February 15, 2006. The risk-based PCB disposal approval was issued pursuant to EPA regulations and is based on EPA’s findings that the disposal action will not pose an unreasonable risk of injury to health or the environment.
Q. What happens to the vessel now that remediation is complete?
A. The ship was towed to Pensacola, Florida where final preparations for the sinking are continuing, including dogging manholes and hatches open or shut and cutting bulkhead openings in accordance with sink plan requirements to ensure proper flooding. Explosive charges will be placed at each designated location and detonation cords will be run to the main deck in preparation for the final demolition priming at the sink site.
Q. How has EPA been involved in the development of the Prospective Risk Assessment Model (PRAM)?
A. From the very initiation of PRAM in 2001, the Navy has involved EPA in the design of model in periodic working group meetings throughout its development. In August 2004, EPA assigned personnel from their Office of Research and Development to review the current version of PRAM.
From this, EPA ORD identified changes to increase the conservatism of the model, and to expand the capacity of the model to include ecological risk assessments, and to develop and integrate a time delay model to assess the effects over the initial one to two years after sinking of a ship with some solid PCB containing materials onboard.
Upon delivery of PRAM and the ex-ORISKANY risk assessments to EPA in mid-June 2005, EPA Region 4 conducted an internal peer review of PRAM and the ex-ORISKANY risk assessments while an external peer review was conducted by the EPA Science Advisory Board (www.epa.gov/sab). The SAB completed their review on October 12, 2005.
Q. How much money has the Navy spent on ex-ORISKANY with all the delays? Isn’t this effort becoming unaffordable? Wouldn’t it have just been cheaper to scrap her after all?
A. Upon completion of the project, the Navy will have spent $ 13.29M on ex-ORISKANY to complete the environmental preparations for reefing in conformance with EPA guidance, to accomplish the sink preparations to allow internal flooding of the ship and to execute the scuttling event, $3.07M on towing and berthing, and $ 4.1M on the development and updating of the Prospective Risk Assessment Model to assess the risks associated with sinking ships as artificial reefs and ex-ORISKANY risk assessments. Of this amount, $ 1.0M is to be reimbursed by Escambia County as provided in the State of Florida’s November 2003 application for the ship.
The $ 13.29 M expended on the environmental preparations in conformance with EPA’s draft Best Management Practices guidance document, accomplishing the sink preparations and executing the sink event is still less than the cost of dismantling this ship. The sink event includes maintaining a stand-off perimeter from the ship at the reef site before sinking, securing the ship in the 4-point mooring, conducting the event, and picking up any debris on the water surface resulting from the sinking. This is still less than the cost of ship dismantling.
Based on the Navy’s actual cost experience of domestically dismantling and recycling 36 frigates, destroyers, and cruisers over the past five years, dismantling of the 32,000 ton ex-ORISKANY would cost approximately $ 24M. The cost of development of the Prospective Risk Assessment Model (PRAM) is an investment in the future. It will enable the Navy to assess the risks of solid PCB containing materials on any ship to be sunk as an artificial reef, in order to ensure that the vessel will not present an unacceptable risk to the environment or human health.
Validation of the PRAM through the peer reviews conducted by EPA will facilitate a streamlined and efficient process for subsequent ships. The Navy is working on a national permit based on PRAM that will give Navy artificial reefing authority to efficiently transfer additional ships to States for sinking as artificial reefs.
The PRAM could also be utilized to assess the risks of solid PCB containing materials on MARAD ships to be sunk as an artificial reef. Overall, a RAND Corp report in 2001 estimated that reefing obsolete Navy and Maritime Administration (MARAD) ships could save taxpayers as much as $1.5 billion compared to having a total dependence on domestic ship dismantling as a method of reducing the Navy and MARAD's inactive ship inventories.
There is more here:
http://www.ussoriskany.com/id18.html
The keel will rest at about 200 feet. The top of her island will be about 65 feet below the surface. Shallow enough to dive to but not to shallow as too impede other ships sailing above her.
Good find!
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