Posted on 06/17/2014 9:44:15 PM PDT by smokingfrog
Yet another decommissioned “supercarrier” is coming to the Port of Brownsville for scrapping, and it’s the biggest one yet.
In fact, the dismantling of the former aircraft carrier USS Constellation by International Shipbreaking Ltd. will be the largest ship-recycling job to take place in the United States.
Until the Constellation contract, the former USS Forrestal and the former USS Saratoga were the largest ships slated for salvaging by a U.S. ship breaker. The Forrestal arrived in Brownsville to much fanfare in February after being towed from Philadelphia, and is now being dismantled by All Star Metals.
The Saratoga, decommissioned in 1994, is expected to depart under tow from Naval Air Station at Newport, Rhode Island, this summer and will be recycled by ESCO Marine at the Port of Brownsville.
Construction began on the Constellation, the second of the Kitty Hawk-class of carriers, in 1957 at New York Naval Shipyard in Brooklyn. It was commissioned in October 1961. The vessel was decommissioned in August 2003 at the Naval Air Station North Island in San Diego, then towed to the inactive ship facility at Bremerton, Wash.
International Shipbreaking is expected to begin towing the 62,000-ton carrier — nicknamed “Connie” — from Washington in late summer.
(Excerpt) Read more at brownsvilleherald.com ...
With all that steel we should be able to make a whole lot of plowshares to send over to Iraq.
Active Duty/Retiree ping.
I did some work at the shipyard several years ago. Was in the drydock working under the Constellation. Really weird to be walking under this huge ship sitting on thousands of wooden beams. (”Wood beams!!?? That’s it? Twenty-first century with the most technologically advanced military? And I have to work under it supported by wood beams!!??”)
That's bio-supports, if you please.
It didn’t colapse and crush you so shut up!
“And I have to work under it supported by wood beams!!??”
You might be surprised to hear that when these things are on active duty, they use WATER to support them! Seems impossible.
I had no idea Brownsville, Texas had a port that big.
LOL. It was sad working there and knowing that it was heading for the scrap yard. I mentioned the work to a neighbor. Turns out he had served on the Constellation during Vietnam. On one of his weekend motorcycle rides he went over to the shipyard to say goodbye.
Everything in life is temporary. This mighty ship will be just steel once again, just as we will return to dust. That’s the cycle of life, and that’s ok.
Dan, my son goes to Sac State.
The feel and sound of being on the second deck of a KH class carrier running all eight boilers and all four screws turning at flank was awesome. The ship had a totally different feel to it at flank. You'd feel the internal vibration and the deck rising and falling. The turbines would be screaming. You just knew she was going all out.
The fact that none of them suffered a real full blown catastrophic boiler room disaster that could have blown the ship in half is a testimony to the quality standards they were build under. They had some incidents like America upon return from the MED in 1994 when at NOB but nothing close like what was possible to happen under a worse case scenario. Those were 8 boiler 1200 PSI superheated steam propulsion plants. Very deadly with even a pin hole leak. A silent unseen killer.
Both times I went to the Med we came back running Flank speed most of the way.
She and her class sister will suffer the fate of most ships. The bottom or the breakers.
They're way ahead of you: Link
If Ted Kennedy was still alive I guarantee the museum would have been federally funded.
Looks like Texas will have an abundance of material for steel targets soon.
Everything in life is temporary. This mighty ship will be just steel once again, just as we will return to dust. That’s the cycle of life, and that’s ok.
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