Got Two Cents? The Navy will Sell you a Super Carrier and give you change But Ill give you a post card for free!
Yes, you read it right boys and girls, the US Navy is having a beginning of the fiscal year blowout sales and all mothballed super carriers are at closeout prices!
Forrestal in better times
Just yesterday the venerable USS Forrestal, the ship considered the largest carrier in the world at the time of her birth, was sold for a penny for scrap. Thats one cupro-nickel red cent. Her three sisters, Ranger, Independence, and Saratoga are probably not far behind.
Forrestal was a marvel of her time and age at over a 1000-feet long and weighing in at twice the weight of the World War Two Essex class fleet carriers that she was built to replace. She was the only aircraft carrier to land and take off a C-130 experimentally.
Yes, Virginia, that IS a four-engined C-130A on her the Forrestal’s flight deck. If you know how big a C-130 is, just think of how big the ship is that was able to launch one 29 times!
Laid down 14 July 1952 she was commissioned in 1955 and spent years on Yankee Station off the coast of Vietnam. There a horrible fire left her with the nickname of “The Firestall” in the fleet. Nevertheless she was repaired and put back in the line, holding her own in the rest of the Cold War. Her last hurrah was the First Gulf War, which she prepared to sail to but did not. Then, at age 37 she was to be a fleet training carrier, replacing the old USS Lexington (AVT-16) at Pensacola.
However, in a rash of post-Cold War budget cuts, she was mothballed in 1993, never actually becoming what would have been AVT-59. Well, twenty years in red lead row doesn’t do well on barley maintained ships and she is basically in pretty bad shape now.
This 2012 shot of her stern shows the years have not been kind to the old girl. While she could have been returned to service ten years ago, by now she is just a floating wreck.
Even her scrapping is going to have to be a largely military operation. According to one expert, “The scrap value that Southern retains offsets the cost for abatement, disposal, labor/subcontractor costs associated with sensitive equipment removal/return to the Navy, etc. Typically in all Gov. vessel contracts, you (the contractor) have to prepare a scrap materials report with dollar values, submit to the Gov. Entity for approval, then credit this value against the vessel contract value. In addition, the recyclers has to cover sensitive areas of the hull structure below hanger deck from cameras, etc., so this is an expensive process to the contract as it will have to be reset every time they work their way down through the decks to the keel. Most of the structural arrangement of this class (i.e. contributing to the damage stability) is similar to the Nimitz class. The Navy would prefer that this information not leak out, if possible. Also, the labor used on this project will have to be US citizens, pass security clearance, and must pass through checkpoints to gain access to the vessel during the scrapping process.”
Full of decades worth of asbestos, lead paint, petroleum, oils, and lubricants, the scrapper will probably just break even on the deal once the haz mat crews are paid. The scrapper will most likely try to sell small items from the ship such as dials, signage, builders plates, etc to collectors, museums, and veterans groups.
The Navy looked at making the ship a reef, but since modern Nimitz class carriers are an improvement on the Forrestal‘s design, it would be hard to keep her construction secrets secret. For largely the same reason coupled with the fact that no group had come up with enough money to pull it off, she could not be turned into a museum.
Still a sad end to a brave ship.
Her Specs:
Displacement: 59,650 tons standard;
81,101 tons full load
Length: 990 ft (300 m) at waterline;
1,067 ft (325 m) overall
Beam: 129 ft 4 in (39.42 m) ;
238 ft (72.5 m) extreme width
Draft: 37 ft (11 m)
Propulsion: Steam turbines, 4 shafts;
260,000 shp (194 MW)
Speed: 33 knots (61 km/h)
Complement: 552 officers, 4,988 enlisted
Armament: 8 × 5″/54 Mk 42 guns (removed)
Mk 29 NATO Sea Sparrow,
Mk 15 Phalanx CIWS
Aircraft carried: approx. 85 aircraft (F-14, F-4, A-4, A-7, A-6, E-2,S-3B, EA-6B, C-2, SH-3, A-3B, KC-130 (test flight))
Motto: First in Defense
In memory of the Forrestal, I have ten vintage post cards of her as AVT-59 that I picked up at a roadside stop in the Pensacola area years ago.
Do you like? Want one of your own to amaze your friends? Just let me know and Ill mail you one out.
If you want one (for free) just drop me an email at egerwriter@gmail.com with your address. I’ll mail one to you (let me know if you want me to send the postcard blank in an envelope or actually mail it to you ‘as’ as postcard with your address etc written on it). And no, this is not some way for me to get your address for Nigerian banking scams, just a way to send someone who wants a groovy old postcard a postcard.
Ave atque vale, USS Forrestal. Hail and farewell.