Warbird Information Exchange

Story from CNN Website:

http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/23/us/galler ... ?hpt=hp_c3

Heck, if I knew the going bid was one cent, I would have doubled the bid. It's not too often you can own your own supercarrier for two cents. It's going to Brownsville Marine for scrapping. Too bad. It would have been nice to see the class leader of the supercarriers saved. I imagine, though, it would take a fortune to turn it into a museum.

How does scrapping one of these work? Is the one cent bid basically a gamble considering it could cost you millions with environmental issues when you take one of these apart?

All it takes to make it a 'legal' sale is the conveyance of any agreed upon amount of money to signify a sale for cash. In the early 60's the Navy sold the Renton Plant to Boeing for $1. The plant was originally built to make the PBB-2 SEA RANGER Navy patrol plane, it was 'loaned' to the Army to build B-29's and finally sold to clear up some very old paperwork issues.

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Hey Inspector,
Good to see you posting again.
Your insight and Knowledge have been missed!

Andy Scott

I am sure you would never get past the bouncer.
Private party, invite only.

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Yes. I figured as much. I was being a bit facetious. Even if I bought the Forrestal for two cents, I'm sure the Navy would want me to move it ASAP, and that probably would cost into the tens of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands), and then I'd have to have a place to put it, and then restore it, and then furnish it, etc.,. etc., etc., By the time I was done, I'm sure I'd be several million in. I don't have that kind of discretionary income floating around.

What happened to the Baltimore plan?
Guess it came up short.

http://ww2.somdnews.com/stories/030708/ ... 2147.shtml

1 cent on the taxpayers investment, not even scrap metal value?

Is there a way to track the ship's transit to Texas? Through AIS?
If nothing else, I'd at least like to see it sail past along the east coast, somewhere.

The Baltimore plan fell apart years ago. Heck, Baltimore had a chance a the Forrest Sherman (DD-931), but then Mayor (and now Governor) O'Malley basically went back on his word to the group that was trying to save the ship. If they couldn't make accommodations for a destroyer, how could they do an aircraft carrier?

During the Cabot fiasco, groups from Baltimore and Tampa were so busy competing over who would get the Forrestal that they literally let Cabot slip through their fingers. Either group at the time certainly had the wherewithal to save Cabot, but they were playing "long ball" to get the Forrestal. Now Cabot is long gone and no one ended up with Forrestal, either. Cabot would have been a fantastic addition to the Inner Harbor. Oh well, hindsight is always 20/20

I had the chance to see the laid up Forrestal and Saratoga up close at Newport RI a few times over recent years. Both are in very rough shape with zero preservation at all- really past gone. Either would be a fortune for a museum to take on. Looks like the Ranger preservation effort failed as well. Condition wise Kittyhawk would likely be the best choice once/if it comes off reserve status. I'm not optomistic on the survival of the Saratoga, Independence, Constellation or Ranger (which never had a late SLEP) or even the JFK either.

Thomas_mac: spot on. The scrapper is required to meet environmental disposal laws, including tons of asbestos, PCB's etc. In earlier years it would have been preferred to go to an overseas scrapper with cheap labor and lax environmental laws. More recent legislation requires scrapping in the US so as not to dump US hazardous material on other nations. Labelled as a win-win for the government as the gov't does not have to spend a fortune on HAZMAT disposal and the scrapper gets some profit of the scrap value, but the scrapper won't get rich on this.

The guys in Brownsville will probably also save any historically significant items that may have been missed by the Navy. They did that for the Cabot and a couple of the smaller ships they scrapped as well. An overseas scrapper may not have the same morals and sacrifice a little bit of their profit to keep history around in some form, even if it's not the complete ship.

Ya can't save 'em all, pure and simple. So many musuem ships are struggling not to sink at their moorings as it is.

Yeah, I was surprised to see the Cabot's island inside the USN museum at Pensacola last month. I see that ship tied up in New Orleans in 1997 and it never occured to me she'd get cut up.

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Would it be possible to save the island from the Forrestal as well? (Or possible but not feasible?)

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All right, Mister Dorfmann, start pullin'!
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What you saw is a recreation of the Cabot's wartime island.

The actual structure was removed from the ship when she was scrapped at the end of 2000 and sent to the now defunct Texas Air Museum in Rio Hondo.

Technically it is feasible. I believe the supercarriers since CV-59 had the island installed in a modular fashion and craned aboard as a large single unit- at least I know that is the case with the Nimitz class built at Newport News, I am not so sure about the Forrestal class with the more comlicated stack trunking. They even entombed the wings of pre-commissoing commanding officer under the island as tradition. But in either case a massive gantry type crane, or massive derrick type crane on a barge would be able to lift off the island. I think an Island and a parking lot like area with re-creation or outline of a flight deck would be a good way to more afforadably preserve the heritage of a few of these supercarriers. You could then park an airwing on the flight deck (but therfore outdoors). A few submarine sails have been saved this way. The CVN-65 Enterprise island would be great. Now where to put it? Norfolk would be a great place.