I'm always fascinated by old ships and find myself checking up on the whereabouts of certain ships.

There are four carriers in Bremerton now. Independence, Ranger, Kitty Hawk, constellation. JFK and Forestall in Philadelphia and Saratoga in Newport.

Enterprise will join the list soon. Anyone have any insight into the numbers to be kept and for how long? It takes many years to build those things and i guess to bring one back into.service would be a matter of less than 18 months?

Curious if anyone knows.

It would not be a matter of less than 18 months on a nuclear carrier. Once the fuel is removed those are out of commission for a long time even if the funds and authorization to bring them back was given. It took about 18 months to get the Iowa recommissioned but that was not a nuclear vessel. Bureaucracy and the diminished industrial base would also make it very difficult to recommission them in any decent amount of time. It's not a ship or a weapon system but just as an example of how things get wrapped up in bureaucracy and modern governmental process consider that it took 18 months to build the Pentagon in the early 1950s. It took over ten years to renovate it beginning in the early 2000s.

Every carrier that i named except for the Enterprise is not nuclear. I know what you mean about the bureacracy but during a time of war (the only reason i can imagine reacivating one of those ships) we would probably flip off the bureacray and actually get it done.

Also leslie groves overeaw the pentagon construction before mobing on to the manhattan project i think.

Correct about Groves. Wartime emergency had much to do with the rapid building of both the Pentagon and the Atomic Bomb. Los Alamos went from an almost deserted mesa to a city/lab of 4000 in two years.

Though I will say in the case of the Pentagon rebuilding, it is always faster and easier to build from scratch, especially if the rebuilding project is in a building you are still using during the rebuild.

Those ships will never sail again, short of a post nuclear strike world.

I'm currently looking out my window at a few of the National Defense Reserve Fleet ships in Charleston here at the Federal Complex.....

Never go to an aircraft carrier unless your there for upward mobility. Those ships are graveyards for officer careers.

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Never go to an aircraft carrier unless your there for upward mobility. Those ships are graveyards for officer careers.

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All officers? Just SWOs? After a certain rank?

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Never go to an aircraft carrier unless your there for upward mobility. Those ships are graveyards for officer careers.

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I don't understand. Wouldn't something being good for upward mobility mean that it isn't a graveyard for a career?

There are only a few people who have upward mobility. CO, XO, Airboss, Reactor Officer, and a few other Dept heads.
Reactor Dept is it's own animail.

For the vast majority of 05 and 04's its their final tour, or the tour right before their sunset tour.

Interesting.

Why is that?

The carrier is so large it requires a lot of middle managers. Promotion for aviators is a bloody pyramid scheme. These guys have long obligations and have to run the clock out if they are promotable or not. The best place to send all the dead end middle manager aviators is a carrier. There are so many people even a sub-par officer can be successful by just staying in his lane. Additionally there is an incredible amount of senior enlisted leadership you have to try hard to mess something up. In the end people are just bodies filling a billet.

Big E is a bit of an exception. She's tied up in some SALT/START treaty stuff. So, as part of he deactivation, they will be cutting holes through the flight & hanger decks to pull out her eight reactors. She'll then be parked, with the empty engine rooms exposed to space. This will also allow some low-level ionization from the heat exchangers so that they will drop to lower levels.

The Naviators are quite happy to have the oil-burners in retirement. The stack gasses make a sort of turbulent "thermal" effects which adds to the tension of a wire trap. You line up on the angle portion of the deck, to allow a bolter, which means having to cross the stack gasses coming down the glidepath from the ball.

^makes perfect sense but never woulda thought of that.

When I was in the reserves in the '90s, I got to walk around a decommed carrier in Bremerton. It was really cool to see, but maybe a little bit weird. I'm sure they would need serious work to get going.

Does anyone have any idea how long it would take?

I would love to go to Bremerton and check one out but would prefer not to do it alone. I'd hate to get lost.

[This message has been edited by couplandboy (edited 9/4/2013 2:03a).]

I doubt anyone is going to let you walk around or in one of those ships alone

With those ships being mothballed there is no telling what condition they could be in. I wouldn't be surprised if its missing ladder wells, hatches, and other stuff because other ships have come and raided it for parts.

Rev, that's exactly what we were doing. We grabbed some lanterns and other miscellaneous items, but you could tell it was picked over.

The one in newport has a decent size leak because everytime I fly in she has atleats a 5° list.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/09/us/penny-for-an-aircraft-carrier/index.html?c=homepage-t

Great thread! I know crap from shinola about retired carriers, but have totally enjoyed the conversation.

I am on the USS Ronald Reagan CVN 76. Would of prefered a small boy.

My dad was on the Kennedy for a long time as the intelligence officer, can't remember the title.

He saw some interesting things by analyzing photos taken by vigilantes, basically witnessed the entire Israeli/Egyptian war through pictures.

The way they did things is unheard of today, analyzing a photo and determining distance between various spots by hand but it is interesting.

Great story, but you might have mentioned that the Vigilantes were carrier based recon planes. They started life as carrier based nuke bombers with a unique delivery system. They farted the nuke out their tail. (Or crapped it out.). They were also used as conventional bombers in Vietnam and had quite a storied history. They were then converted to Recon birds. A very large aircraft BTW. A really neat airplane all in all.

I lived in Martinez/Concord (SF East Bay Area) in California and used to pass the Suisun Bay Reserve Fleet fairly regularly while crossing the Benicia-Martinez Bridge. It was fun to try and spot any new ships that might have been added/removed. There were at least a few small carriers out there in the early/mid 1990s.

My favorite ship for a long time though was the USNS Glomar Explorer. The Howard Hughes-built ship secretly used in the effort to raise the sunken Soviet sub K129 from the Pacific. For years, it was anchored all by itself just east of the bridge. I understand it was sold in the 90s and is now in service as a drilling ship for Global Santa Fe.

When I was stationed in Naples, there were lots of pics posted in the Base Command's hallway of recon overflights of the Med, including some great pics of Moskova and Kiev class ships. I always wondered if Vigilantes took some of those pics.