Posted on 05/09/2014 9:57:38 AM PDT by US Navy Vet
The USS Saratoga — the legendary aircraft carrier that played a key role in the Cuban Missile Crisis, Vietnam and Gulf wars and made Libyan strongman Muammar Qaddafi back down — is destined for dismantling after the Navy paid one penny to a Texas firm to recycle the 81,101-ton behemoth.
The once-mighty vessel is the second of three conventionally-powered carriers to set to sail to the scrapyard, following another one-cent deal involving the USS Forrestal in October. ESCO Marine, of Brownsville, will pay to tow, dismantle and recycle the ship, which was decommissioned in 1994 after more than 38 years of service. Efforts to spare the ship failed, as they did with the Forrestal last year.
“[It is] emotional in that we who served on ‘Sara’ feel that our ‘surrogate mother’ is passing from our lives,” Sammy King, secretary of the USS Saratoga Association, told FoxNews.com in an email. “We owe her a lot. We went aboard as ‘snot-nosed kids’ and left as ‘men.’ Some of us are very sad and some are very angry at the decision to scrap her.”
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Wrong Saratoga. This one was built in the 50’s.
Depends on the breaker involved. I beleive ESCO worked with the Naval Institute when they broke up some otehr Navy ships to make pieces of deck teak available on presentation plaques, and a friend of mine who once served on an LHD or LHP managed to get a 1-MC speaker, some klaxons and a few other items from the breakers when his ship was disassembled.
Sell it to someone for a lot more than a penny—China? Russia? France? England? Brazil?
“I wonder, when they break up a ship like this, especially one with a long and storied history, do they tend to make some parts available for auction or purchase?”
I don’t know about auctions, but certain identifiable items — ie. the Ships Bell, dedication plaque, Wheel, etc. might be donated to a museum. Sometimes larger items like a screw (propeller) or an anchor might find its way as an outdoor display outside a base gate.
By the end of WW2 the “Saratoga” and eventually “Enterprise” became known as the “Queen of the Baby Flattops” because they provided night-fighter cover for the invasion fleets. Kamikaze attacks sometimes happened at dusk or at night.
Your comment is what is outrageous.
Spending federal money to preserve every ship that ever sailed would insure we could never afford to build one that could actually leave the pier.
And what about all the tanks, planes, jeeps, etc...shouldn't we make memorials of them too?
Just damn.
You are aware it was decommissioned 20 years ago? What would you have them do with it?
Because she's 60 years old, worn out, obsolete, and has been sitting around rusting away for the past 20 years.
I don’t know, by every account I’ve read Sara was a pretty special ship, with unusually strong affections and loyalty by her former crew.
The association that was trying for a couple decades to get her as a museum in Rhode Island, and apparantly came close to doing so, has made some noise that Sara was pushed aside - actively undermined - by the Navy and MA politicians so that the USS Kennedy (CV-67) would be preserved instead.
The North East already has three big museum ships with Intrepid, the heavy cruiser Salem and battleship Massachusetts, plus the Constitution and
assorted other ships. Basically they’re at the saturation point for being able to sustain all of them and the area simply couldn’t support two supercarriers ...
State of Texas needs to buy it, we need our own Navy.
That USS SARATOGA was built in the 1950s. The WWII hull number was CV-3. It was mothed ball 20 years ago.
Do NOT expect the gov't, at any level, to expend tax dollars to do it.
And DAMNED sure do not flame gov't officials (however onerous they may be) for not supporting it.
Traditionally AIRCRAFT CARRIERS were named in honor of famous Naval battles, such as Midway, Coral Sea, Phillipine Sea and to honor the memory of famous Navy ships of any type.
For example, Hornet, Wasp, Enterprise, and Ranger first set to sea powered by sails.
When I was at sea, the very name of any U.S. Navy ship told you just what the ship type was.
This new naming crap is just that. There are other types that could be named for former Presidents, ships of types that didn’t even exist not that long ago.
Well then, it is of little consequence I suppose.
Truly a “haunting” observation.
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