USS America will be sunk in the Spring
Associated Press


"The Navy says the effort, which will cost $22 million, will provide valuable data for the next generation of aircraft carriers, which are now in development. No warship this size or larger has ever been sunk, so there is a dearth of hard information on how well a supercarrier can survive battle damage, said Pat Dolan, a spokeswoman for Naval Sea Systems Command.

The Navy's plan raises mixed emotions in Ed Pelletier, who served on the America as a helicopter crewman when the ship cruised the Mediterranean shortly after its commissioning in 1965.

He said he was "unhappy that a ship with that name is going to meet that fate, but happy she'll be going down still serving the country." Pelletier, of Poughkeepsie, N.Y., is a trustee of an association of veterans who served on the America.

Issues surrounding a vessel bearing the name of its country are often more sensitive than for other ships. In 1939, Adolf Hitler, fearful of a loss of morale among his people should Germany's namesake ship be sunk, ordered the pocket battleship Deutschland renamed for a long-dead Prussian commander.

Since its decommissioning in 1996, the America has been moored with dozens of other inactive warships at a Navy yard in Philadelphia. The Navy's plan is to tow it to sea on April 11 - possibly stopping at Norfolk, Va. - before heading to the deep ocean, 300 miles off the Atlantic coast, for the tests, Dolan said.

There, in experiments that will last from four to six weeks, the Navy will batter the America with explosives, both underwater and above the surface, watching from afar and through monitoring devices placed on the vessel.

These explosions would presumably simulate attacks by torpedoes, cruise missiles and perhaps a small boat suicide attack like the one that damaged the destroyer USS Cole in Yemen in 2000.

At the end, explosive scuttling charges placed to flood the ship will be detonated, and the America will begin its descent to the sea floor, more than 6,000 feet below.

The Navy has already removed some materials from the ship that could cause environmental damage after it sinks, Dolan said.

Certain aspects of the tests are classified, and neither America's former crew nor the news media will be allowed to view them in person, Dolan said. The Navy does not want to give away too much information on how a carrier could be sunk, she said.

Why the America? No other retired supercarriers were available on the East Coast when the test was planned, Dolan said. The others - the Forrestal and the Saratoga - were designated as potential museums, she said.

In a letter to Pelletier's group, Adm. John Nathman, the Navy's second-in-command, called America's destruction "one vital and final contribution to our national defense."

"Ex-America's legacy will serve as a footprint in the design of future aircraft carriers," he wrote.

Although no larger warship has ever been sunk, bigger civilian vessels have gone down. The largest ship in the world, the supertanker Seawise Giant, was sunk by Iraqi warplanes in the Strait of Hormuz during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. Fully loaded, it displaced more than half a million tons. It was later refloated and renamed.

The America, which is more than 1,000 feet long and displaces about 80,000 tons, exceeds the size of the Japanese World War II battleships Yamato and Musashi, and the carrier Shinano, which all displaced close to 70,000 tons. The Yamato and Musashi fell to American warplanes, the Shinano to a U.S. submarine.

The America was the third carrier of the non-nuclear Kitty Hawk class, and the first to be retired, a victim of post-Cold War budget cuts after 31 years at sea. It launched warplanes during the Vietnam War, the 1986 conflict with Libya, the first Gulf War, and over Bosnia-Herzegovina in the mid-1990s.

Pelletier and other veterans who served on the America said their farewells in a Feb. 25 ceremony at the ship in Philadelphia. Some artifacts have been removed for museums and veterans' groups; in addition, Pelletier's association will place a time capsule on board.

The Navy has several other carriers awaiting their fates. Environmental regulations make breaking warships up for scrap metal largely unprofitable, though some still are dismantled. The Oriskany, a smaller carrier that was commissioned in 1950, is scheduled to be sunk as an artificial reef off the coast of Pensacola, Fla., late this year."

Sad but true...

Thank you for sharing, Steve.
At least it will serve a porpose, and US have very good museums out of Navy vessels, from subs to carriers...
(I have been on some, and I intend to go on two more this year).
It's just the "period" at the end of a brilliant career.

Skipper

This is unfortunate, in that the American tax payers did pay for that ship, and I can not understand why it is not being turned into a musume SOMEWHERE! And I may be thinking a little differently than most on the idea that what you have DONE for the the next conflict is what you have to work with, so why not keep it in mothballs? The Greek AF is still using A-7' s from 40+ years ago. Second or third line, OK but they have a line! So now that I have said all this, I will get on the soap box and go find a sub to complete!

I remember .... "OH Heck... He's remembering again" :-) :-) :-)
We did this when I was in the Navy..... One year they towed out an old WW2 DD, and our air wing bombed and rocketed the crap out of it. YET she still stayed afloat. Our escorts pounder her with 5 inch shells, she still stayed afloat. Off course being in 100% watertight integrity, and having no fuel or ammo aboard, she took a hell of a lot more punishment that a fully combat loaded vessel would have. But eventually a 1000 pounder broke her keel, and she went down.
I wish I could say all our bombs, rockets, and shells hit her.... but they sured didn't...... :-) :-) :-)
But for a young man, it was interesting and exciting to watch, since we crusied about 5 miles away, while the attack was going on. I watched the beginning, went down the hole to stand my watch, and they were still trying to sink the old girl 4 hours later when I went topside again..... and of couse we got an excellent, blow by blow discription of the attack, by "smokey" the smoke watch over the sound powered phones.


Someday... I'll tell you about the weather ballon experiments....... as I roll on the floor.

I think it's great that they will get some scientific use out of the old lady rather than letting her rust away in some shipyard. As for a museum, I'm sure the military and the government is no longer interested in paying the money to keep it afloat. They would rather use the same money to run the experiments for their next class of carrier

I too find this sad, but ultimately she will provide important information that may save lives and/or other ships in the future. I have to believe her demise will serve the greater good. Of course I can't imagine what a past crew member must feel after hearing that...I had a hard time returning to Ft. Benning only to find that my WWII basic training barracks were nothing more than an overgrown field of grass. Actually brought tears to my eys. I can only imagine how the crew would feel seeing her go down.

She will become home to all kinds of aquatic life though, so she is still serving, just in a different capacity.

Yes this is sad. I aways hate hearing of a great ship going to her death.

I really kind of question why they named that ship America in the first place. I remember reading one of Dan Gallery's books from the mid sixties. Dan Gallery was the task force commander that captured U-505 in 1944. He wrote a couple of interesting first person books about his naval career. He said that at one time he was in Washington and had something to do with naming ships. At one point they wanted to name a carrier either United States, or America, can't remember which, and he said it was a bad idea. What would happen to our reputation is a ship named America ran aground, or sank? A guess a similar reason to this was why the Germans renamed the armored ship Deutchland to the Leipzig. At that time they decided not to name the ship that at that time. Supposedly he also suggested calling the next Essex class launched the Shangra La in honor of FDR's comment, "they came from Shangra La."

Now I've one more comment. I wonder why they're sinking her in such deep water? I've read where other navies, possibly even the USN, have sunk expended warships in relatively shallow water to be used either as artificial reefs or to give wreck divers something to dive on? Can you imagine that, diving a carrier that big? I know some people dive the USS Saratoga, expended at Bikini, but that's an awful long way to go for the chance.

I fully understand the utility of using this carrier as a study subject, yet as a historian, I cringe at how she will meet her demise. In addition, as a historian, you can never have too many museums and just think of the stories her bulkheads could tell about her lifetime. Yet, if you want be open minded about it, she'll live on but in a different form on ocean floor.

But it's still sad.

Just a guess, but it is probably being sunk deep so people cannot examine her to figure out how she was sunk.

The cost of maintaining an aircraft carrier or any ship as a museum is enormous. It does seem a shame, but I bet the $22 million is a drop in the bucket compared to refitting the vessel as a museum.

The government keeps telling us to do more with less. There comes to a point where you can't do any more with what you've got.

:-)

I'm sad to see this happen to a ship that served for so many years but we must look at it this way at least her final moments will be in serving the country instead of rusting quietly away somewhere untill they decide to sell her for scrap metal.

If anyone wants to read up on the service history of this ship here is a link.

America Service History 1961-1988

USS America (CV 66) History

Its interesting to note that America was the Aircraft carrier that responded to the attack on the Liberty.

This is a sad story. I can understand the learning value to be gained by the sinking, but it does seem a shame. I've always felt sad that the CV-3 Saratoga was expended as a target at Bikini, given her importance to our carrier development, but that is nowhere nearly as sad as the fact that the CV-6 Enterprise, the most decorated carrier of all was scrapped in the '50s. That was almost criminal.

As a side story, most people will recall the story of the CV-13, the Franklin. She was so badly damaged by kamikazes at the end of WW II, that by the time they got her back, it wasn't worth the effort to totally repair her. She stayed in mothballs until the 60's or early 70's when she was towed to a spot south of the Norfolk Navy Yard in Portsmouth, VA (about two miles from my house at the time) where she was slowly dismantled.

During this process, her "island" was removed and was supposed to be kept as a memorial.

Where that island is today and what ever happened to it is a mystery.

Tom

I'd rather see her go to a watery grave than a cutter's torch, THAT is truly a sad sight to see. I watched many a ship get cut up in the old Kearny shipyards. Better at the bottom, than a Toyota.

Wow, the first supercarrier to go. Are the Kittyhawk and JFk still serving? We've got the Enterprize and what 8 Nimitz class on duty now? The America served us well and glad to see her end will also be of great use.

Active U.S. Carriers (12 in 2005):

63 USS Kitty Hawk
65 USS Enterprise
67 USS John F. Kennedy
68 USS Nimitz
69 USS Dwight D. Eisenhower
70 USS Carl Vinson
71 USS Theodore Roosevelt
72 USS Abarham Lincoln
73 USS George Washington
74 USS John . Stennis
75 USS Harry S. Truman
76 USS Ronald Reagan

Planned:
77 George H. W. Bush

Inactive / Mothballed / Storage:
66 USS America
64 USS Constellation
62 USS Independence
61 USS Ranger
60 USS Saratoga
59 USS Forrestal (on hold as museum donation)
34 USS Oriskany (to be sunk 2005 near Pensacola, FL)

Memorials/Museums
41 USS Midway (San Diego, CA)
16 USS Lexington (Corpus Chrisi, TX)
12 USS Hornet (Alameda, CA)
11 USS Itredid (New York, NY)
10 USS Yorktown (Charleston, SC)

Remainder were either sunk in battle/test or scrapped
source: http://www.chinfo.navy.mil/navpalib/ships/carriers/cv-list1.html

Guys, I am happy to see this end for this fine ship. Her useful days are past, and she will make one last positive contribution to future sailors, by giving her life so that we better understand how to keep our sailors alive. In the past, data from DDs and FGs has been "interpolated" into the larger ships, rather than use a vessel of such large size.

My best friend's older brother served on the America back in the early days of Vietnam ('66, IIRC). I still remember some of his war stories. :-)

I suspect she is being put to such a depth for pollution reasons. There have been a lot of concerns over the release of PCBs and other pollutants from the Oriskany, when she decays in shallow water. Deeper means colder water, slower decay rate, and less concentrated pollution.

This sure beats the H*** out of making her razor blades, Toyota fenders and soup cans!

I find it quite disconcerting that the USN will be sinking a ship named "America". Couldn't they instead use a different carrier to sink and instead have USS America turned into a museum? I thought sailors are a superstitious lot, so sinking a ship named USS America doesn't quite seem right.

My .02-centavos

To what I was wondering is, how are they going to learn from the sinking of her, when she has no fuel, or bombs on board, that an empty ship acts totally different from a loaded ship, Grumpy even said it took them forever to do that other ship cause it was empty.

Most sunken ships during war, their own bombs helped, or it's own fuel, but then that would pollute if they had it full of fuel, but they could have some bombs laying in it, they just don't need to be on the planes, other wise this test won't be nothing like the real thing.

Kerry

Not sure what they are planning, and I suspect most of it will be kept secret. When Saratoga was expended at Bikini, she had bombed and fueled up Avengers on her flight and hangar decks.

They may also fill fuel voids with water, to determine the cushioning effect from bunkers. The plan is to put several million dollars of monitoring equipment onboard to give them a view of damage as and after it occurs. She probably will be sunk over several days, much like some of her predecessors, the Virginia, Ostfriesland and Washington. They will doubtless use several types of ordnance, and do as much examination as possible between shots.

It was mentioned that she will be hit by a suicide boat equivalent, similar to the Cole's. I suspect they will also hit her with a Harpoon or two, something to simulate the larger warheads of the AS-4 and AS-6, and maybe finish her off with a spread of Mk. 48s. I hope the Navy will share some photos. I am also a gamer, and it would be interesting to see how right or wrong various wargames are in estimating damage.