[Sicvee]

When I was a kid in the '50's I got a paper model building kit of this ship, one where you punch out the parts and insert tab bb3 into hole BB3. It was tedious but the end product was impressive. And then 3 years ago I took my family back east and we happened to be driving east out of Philadelphia when I saw the stacks on the horizon and thought it looked like the USS United States. Sure enough. There is a great website with all the facts on this ship that you could find on Google. I don't have the link now. As an economic proposition it is probably doomed.

[Bacons Rebellion]

In 1953 the SS United States was brought in to the Norfolk Naval Ship Yard (NNSY) for some repairs. For those not familiar with this installation it is actually loacted in Portsmouth, Virginia on the site of the old Gosport Navy Yard which dates back to the colonial period. If memory serves me correctly she was placed into Dry Dock No. 1 (the oldest dry dock in the U.S.). That was located directly behind the quarters at the Marine Barracks (long gone since the early 1960s) and from those quarters you could see the huge bows of this liner rising above all the other nearby structures. It gave the impression that she was sailing right on throught the concrete and steel of the navy yard and headed directly for our quarters. These photographs were evidently taken at that time.

http://www.ss-united-states.com/dry1D2.html

The web site is:

http://www.ss-united-states.com/