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
Sign In
