USS America goes down next month…

and perhaps a small boat suicide attack

I wonder who was dumb enough to volunteer for that!?!?

“Now be careful Sailor,you’ll only get one try”

classic example of the professionalism of quoting on this forum :rolleyes:

“will simulate attacks by torpedoes, missiles, and perhaps a small boat suicide attack”

and perhaps a small boat suicide attack

I wonder who was dumb enough to volunteer for that!?!?

“Now be careful Sailor,you’ll only get one try”

http://www.alert5.com/archive/2005_04_03_alert5_archive.html#111301039444085093
The U.S. Navy confirmed that commencing Apr. 11 it will conduct a four to six-week series of underwater and above the surface explosions aboard the America which will simulate attacks by torpedoes, missiles, and perhaps a small boat suicide attack.

Not entirely on topic, but …
The picture below is LPH-3 USS Okinawa being hit by a Mk48 torpedo.

And this here is LPH-9 USS Guam hit by something (possibly Mk84 bomb).

I’ve heared SINKEX 2005 will start around April 11th, CVA-66 will then be towed from Philly to Norfolk first, then out on the Atlantic. Since they have scheduled the test for four to six weeks, USS America will propably be sunk in the last days of May.

Ah! Reminds me of that other ship with that name – SS America.
A late 1930’s liner, she entered service just one day before WW2 broke out. She spent the war as the “USS West Point”, being the largest ship us the USMM (she had a colorful service life, e.g. escaping Singapore, almost being hit by German uboots at Rio de Janeiro and in the Red Sea – but that is a different story). After the war ended and the Magic Carpet operations ended, she served on the North Atlantic route for the United States Lines from 1946 to 1964, but was sold as a cruise ship and renamed the “SS Australis” in 1965, later “SS Italis”, “SS Noga”, “SS Alferdoss” and ended her life in January 1994 as “SS American Star” on the shoals off Playa de Garcey at Fuerteventura (Canary Islands), where was was thrown by a force 11 gale after snapping her tow on the way to Thailand. Was said to have been insurance fraud. The Spanish Air Force used her as A/G target at one point, but it soon became a tourist magnet of sorts. Today almost nothing is left, only a small portion of her bow.
(Factoid: On Februar 1st, 1964 both SS America and CVA-66 USS America, scheduled to be launched next day, encounter each other at Newport News).

indeed

i don’t think it went down yet
but some updates might be nice 🙂

So what were ther test results?

I don’t think a name is such a big deal, it’s a ship sunk under the purpose of tests. (Personally i value the name enterprise alot more 😉 )

as for the america’s choice, it’s the only carrier resembling modern carriers, a forrestal is outdated design

anything is better then the scrapyard, i hope we get to see the go down on tv

He, sure in these days to hear (see Irak, public debt, Bush etc.) that “America is sinking” sound not so good.

Distiller, the guy in your profile is you?

Isn’t it considered a curse to rename a ship in naval tradition? Certainly didn’t work out for the “Deutschland/Lutzow”, she was blown apaprt by Norwegian coastal batteries in 1940…., unless I’m mistaken as I seem to think that was the cruiser Blucher’s fate :confused:

I know that I’m driftin from the topic but Lützow did survived the Norwegian coastal batteries. She was badly damaged by three 6-ton Tallboy bombs dropped by the Royal Air Force in April, 1945 as it lay off Swinemünde, and she came to rest on the bottom. She was repaired, and then did further support of the army; and was finally scuttled by her crew in May.

It is considered bad luck, but the ship will be scuttled. So what if it attracts a bit of bad luck. What’s the worst that can happen? It will stay afloat?

LOL,

That’s a very good point there tenthije,true indeed 😀

Isn’t it considered a curse to rename a ship in naval tradition? Certainly didn’t work out for the “Deutschland/Lutzow”, she was blown apaprt by Norwegian coastal batteries in 1940…., unless I’m mistaken as I seem to think that was the cruiser Blucher’s fate :confused:

It is considered bad luck, but the ship will be scuttled. So what if it attracts a bit of bad luck. What’s the worst that can happen? It will stay afloat?

They really should rename it! It’s not good to sink America.
That’s why the Germans changed the name of their battlecruiser “Deutschland” into “Lützow” before the war.

Isn’t it considered a curse to rename a ship in naval tradition? Certainly didn’t work out for the “Deutschland/Lutzow”, she was blown apaprt by Norwegian coastal batteries in 1940…., unless I’m mistaken as I seem to think that was the cruiser Blucher’s fate :confused:

No, she was laid down in 1929, four years before the NSDAP was elected into power.

Quite interesting! Need to see a video of this! Date? Place? Source?

Ah here! http://msnbc.msn.com/id/7081234/

They really should rename it! It’s not good to sink America.
That’s why the Germans changed the name of their battlecruiser “Deutschland” into “Lützow” before the war.

Wasn’t the “Deutschland” “Adolf Hitler” before that?

You would think that the UK would be glad to take the ship off of our hands.

They are too manpower intensive for the UK.

One might think that someday the US could use a perfectly good aircraft carrier. 🙁

hope not…that would mean WWIII when we need to use these carriers again. But, yea….isn’t there a forrestal class somewhere? Maybe because these Kitty Hawk class are closer to the current carriers than the Forrestals….big difference since Kitty Hawks are lessons learned from them while Nimitz are only adopted as Nuclear so probably a lot more similarity in the overall sense.

Isn’t there a Forrestal class carrier we could sink instead? You would think that the UK would be glad to take the ship off of our hands. We have a boneyard full of F-14s and A-7s to put on it. Its such a waste. One might think that someday the US could use a perfectly good aircraft carrier. 🙁

Navy cleaning up their scrapyards

The aircraft carrier America never faced enemy fire during its service of 32 years. But it will encounter lots of friendly fire this spring.
The Navy plans to sink the 84,000-ton vessel off North Carolina in April – giving it the honor of being the first U.S. carrier to be sunk since 1951 and the largest warship sunk in either war or peace.
But before the Newport News-built carrier disappears beneath the surface and descends more than 6,000 feet to the ocean floor, the America will have one last mission: facing several explosions to verify computer models on the survivability of the Navy’s next-generation carrier, the CVN-21.
But not everyone agrees with the decision to sink the America. That includes Lee McNulty, a New Jersey resident and president of the USS America Museum Foundation. His group was trying to turn the America into a museum, similar to the USS Midway in San Diego.
“It’s heartbreaking,” said McNulty, a former boatswain’s mate third class on the America during the Vietnam War, who said he’s been working four years on the project. “We don’t agree with it at all. Her name alone, and her history, would have made for a great museum.”
McNulty said President John F. Kennedy personally named the ship and termed it “America’s flagship.”
The America, a 1,048-foot-long conventionally powered carrier, was decommissioned in 1996, with 18 years of service life still unspent. The ship, also known as the CV (carrier vessel)-66, now sits in Philadelphia but will leave April 11.
The Navy declined Thursday to reveal exactly where the America would sink but said it would be more than 50 nautical miles – about 58 miles – off the coast.
Before the testing, the Navy will outfit the America with lots of sensors and cameras. It will set off a blast in the ship.
It will also set off underwater explosions a bit away from the ship, followed by a detonation near the hull at the water line.
Then controlled explosives will bring the ship down.
Much of what the gathered data will be used for is classified, the Navy said.
“We have had previous vulnerability testing on aircraft carriers done by computer models, but the tests on the America will help us to validate that data,” said Pat Dolan, a spokeswoman with the Naval Sea Systems Command, overseeing the project.
That, she said, will allow the Navy to “improve the survivability of future aircraft carriers.”
Northrop Grumman Newport News, now in the middle of detailed design on the CVN-21, will also be involved: “We’ll be using some of the data from that testing and incorporating it into the CVN-21 design,” shipyard spokeswoman Jerri Fuller Dickseski said.
The America isn’t the first sunken carrier, of course. Several U.S. carriers were sunk during World War II. The USS Saratoga (the CV-3) was sunk in 1946 during an atomic bomb test. The USS Independence was sunk during weapons testing in 1951.
But six other decommissioned carriers are still awaiting disposal.
Those include the Oriskany, the Forrestal, another Saratoga, the Ranger, another Independence and the Constellation.
Sinking the America will allow the Navy to get rid of it at a much lower cost than usual.
Because of new environmental regulations, tearing a warship apart in a scrap yard has become increasingly costly.
It would cost the Navy more than $65 million to scrap the America, Capt. Lawrence Jones, head of the Navy’s inactive ships program, told Defense News, a newsweekly of the international defense community.
But Dolan said the Navy couldn’t simply sink a ship anytime it wanted.
Although the Navy has the authority under law to sink its own vessels, she said, it can do so only as part of an approved fleet exercise or testing like that on the America.
For the America’s sinking, the Navy consulted the National Marine Fisheries Service, part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, she said.
The job will cost $22 million for testing and sinking.
That amount also includes cleaning tanks, getting rid of floating parts and removing contaminants like toxic polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs.
But some of those toxins will stay on the America when it descends to the sea floor. “We won’t get them all,” Dolan said of the PCBs.
“Wires and insulation can contain solid PCB material, but we can’t remove every wire if it’s strung through the bulkhead.
“If it’s not removable without tearing the ship apart, we won’t remove it.”
There’s one other possible alternative to scrapping ships – turning the vessel into an artificial reef in shallow waters easily accessible by divers and tourists.
The Oriskany, a carrier scheduled to be sunk off Florida in 2006, will be disposed of using that route.
But that approach requires a more complete effort to rid the ship of contaminants before the sinking.

Source: Sinking the America

What are they going to use? Does the US have any supersonic seeskimmers in their inventory?