Posted on 09/10/2003 4:04:21 AM PDT by UPcrawfish
My apologies if this is not done correctly, my first attempt.. ===============
Trade center steel poured into mold for Navy ship
By VICKI FERSTEL - vferstel@theadvocate.com - Suburban writer
AMITE -- A relic of one of this nation's greatest tragedies -- 24 tons of steel from the World Trade Center -- was transformed Tuesday into a symbol of this country's military might when the steel was superheated and poured into a casting mold to create parts for the U.S. Navy's amphibious transport dock ship New York. The transformation took place in the small town of Amite, population 2,000, which houses Amite Foundry & Machine Inc., one of the largest steel foundries in the South.
The foundry, owned by Atchison Corp. of Atchison, Kan., has 134 employees.
"Thanks to the skill and hard work of the Amite Foundry and Machine (workers), a piece of our city will travel the world in democracy and freedom," former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani wrote in a letter read at the ceremony.
About 10 percent of the steel was lost when the foundry workers superheated the 48,780 pounds of World Trade Center steel to 2,850 degrees Fahrenheit.
That left about 21,000 pounds that they poured in about 72 seconds Tuesday into a casting mold to form the bow stem of the ship.
The mold took 112 hours to assemble and will be ready to be sent to the shipyard in 60 to 90 days.
That steel, when the ship is completed in four years, will be on the foremost section of the hull that slices through the water.
The other 21,000 pounds are being stored and will be made into anchor handling castings, officials said.
Joining the various dignitaries at Tuesday's event was Richard Torrens, petty officer second class in the U.S. Navy Reserve.
Torrens, who lives in the Bronx, one of the boroughs of New York City, lost a niece when the Twin Towers collapsed in the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
She died on the cusp of her 28th birthday.
Torrens, who works full-time as a New York City sanitation worker, spent time at Ground Zero searching for her remains.
The only part of her body recovered, her leg, was discovered eight months after the attacks, he said.
"This means a lot to New York," Torrens said before Tuesday's ceremonies got under way. "To some, it's a closure."
Torrens said the transformation of the steel into a warship is an excellent symbol "to let the terrorists know we're not giving up without a fight."
"Junior" Chavers, the foundry's operations manager, has worked at the Amite site for 38 years, but has never had a job quite like this.
"When the material arrived here, it was an experience I can't describe," he said. "When I laid my hand on it, the hair on my neck stood up."
Chavers was one of the three foundry workers who suited up in silver fire- and heat-resistant suits to guide the huge bucket carrying the molten steel onto the mold.
A few other workers manned the enormous gantry crane, draped with an American flag, that carried the bucket from the fire pit to the casting mold.
Dotty England, wife of former Navy Defense Secretary Gordon England, who is now deputy secretary of Homeland Security, was given the honor of pulling the lever to pour the molten steel.
"For all who will serve on the USS New York and for all who suffered from the attacks of 9-11, let us never forget," she said.
The audience cheered as Chavers and his crew, enveloped by sparks and smoke, guided the white-hot steel into the casting mold.
"Never forget" will be the motto of the USS New York, a 684-foot-long vessel to be built at the Northrop Grumman Avondale shipyard in New Orleans.
The vessel will be able to launch and recover any helicopter in the Marine Corps inventory as well as the MV-22 Osprey, a vertical take-off and landing aircraft.
It will carry 361 crew and 699 troops and be used in a variety of expeditionary and special operations, including amphibious and air warfare, command and control, humanitarian relief and noncombatant evacuation operations.
"Whenever this ship sails, the spirit and memory (of those lost on Sept. 11) will go with it," said Hansford T. Johnson, acting secretary of the Navy.
"In our nation's adversity, the inner strength of our people has been reborn," said Vice Adm. Philip Balisle, commander of Naval Sea Systems Command.
"Junior" Chavers, the foundry's operations manager, has worked at the Amite site for 38 years, but has never had a job quite like this. ... "When the material arrived here, it was an experience I can't describe," he said. "When I laid my hand on it, the hair on my neck stood up."
"Never forget" will be the motto of the USS New York, a 684-foot-long vessel to be built at the Northrop Grumman Avondale shipyard in New Orleans.
Ping for our best and brightest!
If you want on or off my ping list, please Freepmail me. Warning: it is a high volume ping list.
Oh, right! You figgered it all out. This is a Trilateral Conspiracy to manufacture defective warships to defeat the US.
Now please go back and work on your fallout shelter. Make sure you leave enough space so that you can bend over and kiss your butt goodbye!
This seems to be exactly the case. The solution does not seem to be to bang a drum about terrorism because we are all sick of it. We see some of the claims to be exagerated and most people are very sick of what terrorism drum beating does to the economy. I think Bush should focus on his original campaign promises and reduce the size of the gmt, call our troops back and be a good conservative.
9 posted on 09/09/2003 2:51 PM CDT by biblewonk (Spose to be a Chrisssssssstian)
I assume you're talking about this. Sick off it? right, I mean it's only a world at war. So who would be interested in this? UNBELIEVABLE!
FRom Titanic.com web site:
" Titanic was thought to be unsinkable by some, though she was never actually advertised that way by either Harland and Wolff or White Star. In fact, White Star advertised Titanic and Olympic simply as the "largest and finest steamers in the world".
"Titanic was divided into sixteen watertight compartments by means of fifteen watertight bulkheads which contained electric doors that could could be closed from the bridge. In June 1911 this system of bulkheads and doors was described in Shipbuilder magazine as making the ship "practically unsinkable".
"In truth, only twelve doors (about a third) could be closed that way. The rest had to be closed by hand. The night Titanic sank not all of the doors were closed. Many of the electric doors, which were in the very bottom of the ship, were reopened to make it easier to rig the pumps.
"It probably wouldn't have mattered if all the doors had been closed. Titanic was designed so that she would float with any two adjoining compartments flooded. She would even float with any three of the first five or all of the first four compartments flooded.
"The problem was that the first five compartments flooded. As they filled with water the bow of the ship sank deeper and deeper, allowing the water to spill from one compartment into the next. This eventually sank the ship.
"Most of the watertight bulkheads only went up as far as "E Deck", ten feet above the waterline. The first two and last five actually went to "D Deck". This was thought sufficient because, at the time, the worst thing anyone could imagine happening to a ship was a collision in the area of one of the bulkheads. Or possibly ramming head-on into something. No one ever envisioned a ship scraping against a solid object for nearly 300 feet."
Had nothing to do with recycled steel.
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