Posted on 10/23/2014 5:13:43 PM PDT by EternalVigilance
The USS Ranger maintains an important place in the military and cultural history of the United States, as well as in the personal history of the thousands of Navy, Marine, and Air Force personnel who served on board. The ship served the country with distinction in the Vietnam (earning 13 battle stars) and Gulf (flying more combat missions than any other carrier) Wars, as well as in humanitarian missions. Noted entertainers, including Bob Hope, Raquel Welch, Les Brown, Suzanne Somers, Gladys Knight & The Pips and Marie Osmond entertained on the flight deck. Noted visitors to Ranger include astronaut Neil Armstrong, then-VP George H.W. Bush, and Queen Elizabeth II. The ship appeared in both “Top Gun” and “Star Trek IV.” And, this cause is a personal one for my family: One of the shipmates aboard in Vietnam was my father, and I also "served" on board for three days as a baby.
In October 2013, the Navy announced that it was essentially giving away the USS Forrestal, a similar carrier, for scrap. On 18 February 2014, Forrestal arrived at the scrapyard in Texas - making Ranger's situation that much more critical. On 5 May, we got the sad news that USS Saratoga, anohther of Ranger's sister ships, is also headed for scrap, and was also given away. On 13 June NAVSEA awarded a contract for the scrapping of a Bremerton-based carrier - USS Consetllation - this time at a $3M cost to US taxpayers. In fact, all four Forrestal-class carriers are currently designated "Stricken - to be disposed of." Please don't let this happen to the Ranger! Tell the Navy that you care about this important piece of our history and want it to reconsider plans to turn the ship into a museum so that future generations can learn about its history firsthand.
I started this petition because I truly believe that by working together we can make a difference, and that we simply cannot abandon this ship without at least putting up a good fight and making our voices heard.
Please sign and join us! Join us on Twitter @SaveUSSRanger and speak up on social media using #SaveTheRanger #CVA61 #CV61 #SaveTopGun
Thank you!
The first carrier designed from the outset for a 50 year life was the Nimitz. All the others before that were designed for 25-30 year lives.
SLEP entered the picture in the 1980s to get the extra 15-20 years necessary out of the Forrestal and Kitty Hawk classes to bring the fleet up to 15 decks. The only one I heard of that went well was Independence, and that can probably be attributed more to her replacing Midway in Japan shortly after SLEP. And even then the yard at Yokosuka pretty much told the Navy she still needed quite a bit of work on stuff that hadn’t been addressed, either by not being done or not being done well, during SLEP.
In fact, Ranger was never on the SLEP list because she was supposed to be the replacement for Midway, and the yard at Yokosuka had done such a good job with Midway over the years that the Navy felt a SLEP wouldn’t be necessary.
Kitty Hawk, which replaced Indy, was kept in pretty good shape too. Compare/contrast with the stories about Constellation at the end of her service life ...
If you’re talking about the EMALS cats that are going into the Ford class, the big question is where do you put the generators and associated systems necessary to use them?
There’s only so much hull space. Look at the Fords, particularly the stern area. They have a modified Nimitz class hull and require really massive sponsons for all the stuff that has to be pushed out of the hull proper to make room.
Before the Fords the furthest the USN ever went with blowing out a carrier hull was Midway during her 1970s modernization. They still had to ditch a catapult (3 down to 2) and ended up with major stability issues. They overcorrected with big hull blisters, which made the stability issues worse, then finally hit a happy medium (there were still roll issues, just not as bad) by sectioning the blisters ...
One of the neater ship preservation ideas I heard was for docking the old LPH Guam next to Intrepid on the Hudson for use as a West Side heliport.
Yorktown at Patriots Point/Mt. Pleasant SC (across from Charleston) gets state funding partly because her hangar is where the SC State Police and other agencies shelter their helicopters during hurticanes. The land them on the starboard deck edge elevator, which is permanently lowered, roll them inside and drop the shutters.
If you ever go aboard her you’ll notice they keep that area empty of displays. There’s the Medal of Honor room on the port side, flight simulators (which can be easily unplugged and moved) forward and then the large USO stage and area with the snack bar tables aft. They even have their B-25 winched into the overhead to free up available deck space.
KH SLEP was done about on schedule and the Reagan administration pushed for maintenance. Maintenance funding was a make or break for carriers. Lack of will gave disasters like what happened to America. A shipyard closure {Old Philly} right in the middle of SLEP gave the Navy the JFK SLEP fiasco. Connie's SLEP began in 1990 was finished in Philly in 1993. JFK's SLEP was about the same time. The Poppy Bush years were not kind to several carriers mainly all conventionals from Connie - JFK. They were over deployed and due to funding under maintained. From the Poppy Bush years on began the decline and the real reason the carriers had issues. You can't get issues fixed that congress, Pentagon, and Sec of Def aren't willing to address. The stunt they did to the America three deployments in three years could have gotten men killed and did lead up to the boiler room explosion so severe she was towed Cold Iron up to NNSY. The SLEPs scheduled and carried out earlier than 1989 seemed to fair better. Here's a WIKI account of Ranger's fate and what I was saying about the carrier program USS RANGER
Since the late '80s defense cuts, Ranger did not undergo the Service Life Extension Program (SLEP) modernization process as did her three sisters and the later Kitty Hawk-class ships, and by the early 1990s her material condition was declining. Both the out-going Bush and in-coming Clinton Administrations recommended cuts to the defense budget and so the retirement of Ranger, along with her sisters Forrestal and Saratoga, was put forth. Ranger was decommissioned on 10 July 1993 after 36 years of service, and is at the Naval Inactive Ship Maintenance Facility, Bremerton, Washington. This decommissioning came instead of an SLEP refit scheduled for the same year. Such an extension would have extended Ranger 's life into 2002, requiring a re-authorization in 1994.[23] In September 2010, the not-for-profit USS Ranger Foundation submitted an application to Naval Sea Systems Command proposing the donation of Ranger for use as a museum ship and multi-purpose facility, to be located on the Columbia River at Chinook Landing Marine Park in Fairview, Oregon.[24][25] However, in September 2012, NAVSEA rejected the foundation's proposal, and redesignated the ship for scrapping.[26] Preparations for disposal Ranger were completed 29 May 2014.
These bad choices even by the much beloved by many Cheney as Sec of Def came back right after 9/11/2001 to bite us on the butt. This is why Connie and JFK could not get underway. It wasn't the fault of the two scapegoated Captains rather the fault of the GHW Bush, Clinton, and congress during those years for not allotting the funds for upkeep. There's no good reason to assume had maintenance not been funded all of the ships could not have reasonably seen a 40-50 plus year service. S.L.E.P. as such worked when it was funded to be done correctly. BTW Indy underwent Slep starting in 1985. It took a commitment & the will of POTUS and congress to get the maintenance done right.
We went through a rush job overhaul at NNSY in 1979-80 because Iran was heating up. Things that were supposed to be shipyard workers duties suddenly became ours. This was under Carter. We were likely the one of few carriers that came out of a year long overhaul on time. The Pentagon had ships company {mainly all Snipes} doing three section duty often into the evening hours to accomplish this. The ship when going into overhaul had anyone with over a year left transferred off which was a big mistake qualifications wise. When I got out only myself and another guy were actually qualified watch standards for watch above Rover status. Why weren't more persons qualified? Because it took having operational equipment to do so. The shop left the yards with one qualified man because I got out about a week before. The rest was a new greenhorn crew.
With the carrier fleet being drawn down from 15 to 12 decks, new nuke carriers in the pipeline, and not having been SLEP’d, America was a dead carrier walking.
I can see the Navy trying to wring a couple additional deployments out of her, the safety issues you cite aside. Thats exactly what the Navy did with Enterprise’s last couple deployments. Look how close they were to each other, but doing so provided some breathing room in the deployment schedule for the other carriers.
Correction: It was Kitty Hawk and JFK that after 9/11 had serious issues. Many seemed to stem from poor maintenance. Now the Navy knew as did congress POTUS and Sec Nav that the JFK had been an unofficial reserve ship for almost a decade not given due maintenance or funding. The Kitty Hawk had maintenance issues which likely was the cause of the so called improper watch procedures. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/743906/posts The bouy inncident was cause but the others were not when you had schmucks nickle and dimeing the maintenance to death. Many repairs should only be done in the yards and take the yards expertise and equipment. I’ve seen recent pictures of the carrier piers at NOB Norfolk and the flightdecks looked like Tent City. because yard maintenance was being done there instead of up at the yards.
Even under ideal circumstances things go wrong. We lost #3 MMR and had a switchboard melt due to a boiler feedwater line rupture right over the switchboard. Thankfully no one got hurt. I think it was either while we were in the last part of the 79 Med Cruise or a smaller sea trial afterward.
I can tell you something about America and why no radar before the 93 deployment. It's basically simple. The Operational electronics/Avionics systems on a carrier are very high demand cooling capacity dependent. Two of six generators? Of her 10 at that time A/C units only one if that would have been operable. I say that from first hand personal knowledge of her system I worked on. Damage Control such as fire pumps comes first then lights etc and the power needed to operate the boiler itself.
The chillers were the single biggest electrical power consumers. Chillers #1-6 took about 1600 amps at 460 volts to light off and then after the surge about 220 amps running. Chillers 7,8, & 9 took roughly 1200 amps start up and 180 amps running. Chiller #10 added in 1980 {I signed for that one LOL} took about 2000 amps start up and IIRC 300 amps running. No A/C meant no electronics except for one critical navigational equipment space that had it's own back up package unit. GOD help us if they are running the Nuke carriers ragged like they did the conventional at their end. Nuclear doesn't mean you can skip yard periods. The yard times are as much for addressing auxiliary equipment maintenance /replacement as it is addressing hull and propulsion issues.
I get what you’re saying. Remember when they announced that they weren’t going to make the 600 ship Navy goal, and James Webb resigned as SecNav in protest?
I had a friend who was assigned to a Garcia-class Frigate at the time. He said that the thing was a deathtrap and the crew was afraid to take it to sea. They were thrilled when the decommission order came down, thought Webb was a primadona idiot for his resignation stunt.
I thought it was Connie (and JFK), by that time Kitty Hawk was in Japan and being pretty well tended to.
But she had big issues prior to going to Japan. Wasn’t there some bug scandal where a sailor videotaped filing cabinets filled with bad maintenance reports being dumped over the side while underway?
Big, not bug.
I did too maybe Connie was a third but I looked it up. I’ll be back in later on today for more.
But she had big issues prior to going to Japan. Wasn’t there some bug scandal where a sailor videotaped filing cabinets filled with bad maintenance reports being dumped over the side while underway?
From what I can find Connie was at sea on 9/11 and came in a few days afterward and entered the yards to get one more deployment out of her. She deployed again Dec 2002 which with a three month yard time then a work up Dec 2002 sounds about like a normal scheduled deployment.
Kitty Hawk failed her Light Off assessment and was unable to get underway. She was a 40 year old carrier at that point. I didn't hear about a file dump scandal anythings possible. Could have also been some what should have been "Burn" material someone dumped. I did a brief stint in the Log Room. Records such as watch files were kept so long then burned. They were burned because a carrier technically below the second deck is classified as is a lot of the machinery. You didn't want Russia to know lets say that one of your boilers was OOC and they did check the trash.
My brain is fuzzy about how the PMS System worked. I knew there was a board in the shop with our gear and a file full of maintenance cards that were filed weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual, IIRC and you initialed something {maybe the card} but darned if I can remember what it was. I do know this though. Most of our gear to do most of the maintenance required a Tag Out {Red Tag} that you had to get down in Central. If you didn't tag out the equipment then it wasn't considered properly done. It was easy to get gigged on PMS. Every detail the card called for had to be done including using the exact specified wrench.
The Tag Out often took longer than the actual task. I think but can't swear to it those records then ended up in the ships 3M coordinators office usually a Chief was in charge of them. My thinking on it is it would be difficult to alter the records because the records interact with other engineering logs. Anythings possible though.
Here was what I found in Wiki on the JFK's readiness
In 2001, during a pre-deployment trial, Kennedy was found to be severely deficient in some respects, especially those relating to air group operations; most problematic, two aircraft catapults and three aircraft elevators were non-functional during inspection, and two boilers would not light. As a result, her captain and two department heads were relieved for cause.
The ship had been designated as operational reserve in 1995 and likely used so for longer than that. I understand cannibalizing had occurred from other ships likely condoned until SHTF on 911. You can't maintain what isn't funded and it's not the CO, CHENG, or Air Boss who ultimately gets shipyard attention and what doesn't. IOW there's some records somewhere with 2 Kilo??? forms requesting repairs and why.
My uncle was a retired Commander and captained a LST in the late 1960's. We were talking about the carrier fiasco after it happened and he said "how can they fail these things the Navy won't let you"? He was dead serious. Sad to say 9/11 as far as readiness goes was a lost lesson. Things are sloppy and it's congressional, POTUS, & Pentagon level issues causing it. Five carriers at NOB Norfolk at the piers. When we had 26 carriers in 1962 we still only had three carrier berths at NOB Norfolk. Yard tents on the flight deck of ships at NOB wasn't seen in my time. Now a 10 carrier posture plus they're talking about only one carrier deployed at a time Navy wide? If you want to destroy a ship leave her sitting in port all the time.
Incidents like the Cole were incidents had the Navy not abandoned policies that ensured safety in numbers would not have happened. Two days out from other ships help and fueling in Yemen? The bungled Comm the ship didn't get. Some stars and a secretary should have been fired.
I had a friend who was assigned to a Garcia-class Frigate at the time. He said that the thing was a deathtrap and the crew was afraid to take it to sea. They were thrilled when the decommission order came down, thought Webb was a primadona idiot for his resignation stunt.
After the Soviet collapse came there was cause and room for some cautious reduction. It was anything but cautious. A 50% reduction was unreasonable which is where we are now. Actually we hit the 50% mark of the 595 we had under Reagan in 2003. A rational compromise of say 425 minimal 475 maximum would have left some breathing room.
Older ships unfit for sea should be decommissioned. There's no sense of unnecessarily risking lives in unfit ships. There still though needs to be some room still left in the fleets to where it could happen without having a serious impact on other ships. Carrier wise? Thirteen sounds good six per east and western with one for unexpected malfunctions. We also need to loose our dependency on the Suez. Actually we did just that from The Six Day War till 1981. No carriers transited through in that time frame. With hostilities as they are now I don't think using it for a CVN transit is smart. At 10 left there's not many options left.
One of the last cruises I went on 994 was the 1987 round the world tour with the KH...they split off from our group and we independently steamed down thru the ditch and up the coast back to San Diego...
I do remember, from an operational standpoint, the K
H, Midway, not so much the Coral Sea...The really older CV’s had their stuff together, the airwings were fun to work with...
The lesson learned on that trip was to really appreciate the simpler things in life while on deployment...Made some fabulous ports of call in the Med, a lot of them, Haifa, Dubrovnik, a couple in Italy, a stop at Palma, Marseille (sp? ehhh) then we made the dash back over to our side of the pond to drop off the KH for her SLEP in Philly...
In either Trieste or Brandise I was working a UB one night coming from Fleet Landing back out to the ship. We got fogged in right about the breakwall all of the sudden all we could see was lots and lots of lights above us and in front. A cruise ship passed so close we could see in the cabins and tell you what the people were wearing. We had to get back to the ship on sonar. America as far as I know was the only carrier at that time with a Sonar Dome. They guided us back in to the ship over the radio.
We did a South America cruise in 77. Rio was good back then. I did get kinda a shock by the statue on top of Sugarloaf LOL. We pulled in I was in the rack and woke up at dusk. I walked up to the flightdeck to look at the city and suddenly the lights on top of Sugarloaf came on. All you could see was the statue which from where we were looked like Christ standing in the sky. One guy said Hey cool they turned the lights on. I didn't know the mountain was there. We also hit Salvador, Brazil. That place was depressing. Fleet Landing was the same area as the street orphans. You really had to watch your step literally. They'd put a switchblade to the back of your ankle if you weren't watching.
Those were the days...hehehe
I recently toured the USS Wisconsin at Norfolk. She has 9 16” guns and is touted to be able to hit a tank from 20 miles with a shell as heavy as a Volkswagen. We need one modern version of this ship for each state.
Floating hospital off-shore for healthcare.
It won’t happen, but we can dream.
Toured her in San Diego, 1990(?). A Seaman 3 escoted us. Beautiful ship. Never did find the engine room.
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