USS John F Kennedy

I see on the AP that the gov't is giving away the USS JFK. Hope someone can come up with the money to sink this baby offshore.

Garrobo:

I see on the AP that the gov't is giving away the USS JFK. Hope someone can come up with the money to sink this baby offshore.

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You know, that would be my first wish but what really needs to happen is for the steel to be recycled by domestic industry into a new ship or wind turbines or whatever rather than importing tons of Chinese steel from the criminal regime that has become the world's worst polluter.

N

Nemrod: We don't have a shortage of steel so recycling isn't all that economical when you think about the cost of dismanteling the ship. If it can be dropped in one piece after a cleanup it would save a lot of money. Taxpayer money by the way. And as far as China goes, forget it. They'll take their own path no matter what you or I and the rest of the free world thinks, just as the people who are responsible for all the imports into this country, the American consumer.

Nemrod:

You know, that would be my first wish but what really needs to happen is for the steel to be recycled by domestic industry into a new ship or wind turbines or whatever rather than importing tons of Chinese steel from the criminal regime that has become the world's worst polluter.

N

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I read an artical discussing this idea. There are so many environmental laws and regulations now that it too expensive to send a ship to the breakers in the states. The price of the recovered materials is less than the cost of breaking the vessel.

Garrobo:

I see on the AP that the gov't is giving away the USS JFK. Hope someone can come up with the money to sink this baby offshore.

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The article I read said they were taking bids from government/city/county groups and non profit groups for use as museum.... (didn't see anything about using it as a reef).

I think the bids also were just basically proposals on how they were going to do it and how they were going to fund it......

I'm betting that it winds up in Massachuttes somehow.... as a floating museum. Folks up there still love the Kennedy family enough for that...



not sure that the Navy will want the hull viewable by others (divers) either...

in the planning of the sinking of the Forrestal, they want to sink it deep because aspects of it's hull are still considered classified. Might be same true for the Kennedy, which was commissioned 13 years after the Forrestal.

Oh well. It was a good idea for a moment.

That's probably a pretty accurate assessment. WIth the kennedy name it will most likely end up in MA as a floating museum - but it would take up a lot of space and cost a great deal of money to find / create a suitbale location for it in Boston Harbor as extensive dredging would be required.

And then there would be a steady drain of cash to keep it afloat as a museum. Plus the potential security issues with the hull would still be ever present requring security pretty much 24-7. And preventing access by divers in a public harbor would be difficult. The most cost effective option in terms of long term security would be to essentially dry dock it in a coffer dam and then fill it in with sand. And that is something of a less than glorious fate for a ship.

In that regard it makes just as much sense to sink it. Look at the CV-34 - it's heavy enough to sink into what most would regard as a hard bottom and the CV-67 is a lot heavier at 164 million pounds. Put it down on soft sand or mud bottom and the odds are good there will be little of the hull to observe.

Personally, I think it is a bit more noble for a ship to be reefed than laid up as a museum, and the life it attracts is astonsihingly beautiful.

But on the other hand, the Oriskany has potentially become one of the biggest impediments to getting more aircraft carriers reefed. The EPA requirements were stupid in the extreme with insistence on removal of pretty much all PCBs etc. when many of those would have been released very slowly if at all over a period of a couple hundred years. The end result is that no great advantage was gained in terms of environmental protection and the reefing was not cost effective.

To make it worse, it is hard for the dive community to argue that the CV-67 would be a "memorial" when things like the phone in primary flight on the CV-34 disappeared within a few weeks of the sinking. Divers who feel they just have to take artifacts don't help the cause.

Take it down to the Keys or off the Carolina coast and torpedo it after emptying all the tanks. It would be no different than the wrecks there now that went down during the war with all kinds of crap in them.

I would like to have it.
I will ask my wife if it is OK.
Any suggestions as to how I ought to frame the request letter to the Government if she says it would be OK?

Chug

Garrobo:

Oh well. It was a good idea for a moment.

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No, it was a good thought, if it is not economical to recycle it into lawmowers might as well recycle it into a living reef. We can hope.

N