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Cold-War Era Naval Vessels Up For Grabs
mcleland lets us in on a Wall Street Journal story about two cold-war era, formerly top-secret vessels the US Navy is trying to give away. At issue are the Sea Shadow (the ancestor of all modern naval radar-evading technology) and the Hughes Mining Barge (a floating dry-dock and more-or-less base for the Sea Shadow). While the ships are being 'given away,' there are multiple regulations involved, making the gift a very costly one. "A Naval Museum is 'a bloodthirsty, paper-work ridden, permit-infested, money-sucking hole,' warns the Historic Naval Ships Association. Because the Navy won't pay for anything — not rust-scraping or curating — to keep museums afloat, survival depends on big crowds."
Dealing with the Navy on issues of museums is a bona fide pain in the ass. As far as they're concerned, there is nothing, zip, zero nada, nil that they have ever 'lost.' Whatever it was, where ever it is, it is still theirs and will gladly tie you up in court for the rest of your life to prove this point. They stick to the following excuses when it comes to the issue of recovering one-time Naval Aircraft:
-It's a war grave (the excuse they've given for blocking the recovery of Grumman TBM Avenger dive bombers in Lake Michigan. That the pilots may have survived in most cases makes no difference. They're all war graves.)
-It's still Navy property that they've never bothered to finish recovering (the excuse that's being used after a North Carolina man recovered pieces of an FG-1, a Goodyear-built Corsair. Never mind that the Navy last visited the crash site in 1945.)
-It just plain doesn't exist at all (the excuse that was given for years when attempts were made to recover one of several B-29's that were being used as target practice at China Lake, even after recovery groups showed recent satellite photographs of B-29's out in the desert, the Navy simply responded by saying that they did not, nor did they ever, possess B-29's.)
There is purportedly still one, more-intact-than-most-B-29's B-29 that was moved to a hangar sometime in the 1990's, but the Navy refuses all inquiries regarding that aircraft. To their credit, the Navy also had some bad experiences with allowing warbird recoveries at China lake, as the last group that was allowed in supposedly stuffed their B-29 full of whatever happened to be lying around, instead of just grabbing 'their' plane and leaving. There are a few hundred thousand versions of that story floating around, changing by the minute.
The Navy is an institution unto themselves when it comes to loaning items to museums. Hell, They Scrapped the USS Enterprise. Perhaps it's the type of person that the Navy assigns to handling museum requests, or perhaps its the hundreds of years of Maritime Salvage law that they have to contend with, but based on everything I've heard, they are a bureaucratic nightmare directly out of 'Brazil.'
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
"He really believed Nixon when he told him there was all that gold in the continental shelf."
I don't recall anything about gold, but the "official" cover story for the Glomar Explorer was deep ocean mining, and they even made at least one test run.
I still have a couple of deep sea photos showing the manganese nodules littering the ocean floor, and a small box of tennis ball sized manganese nodules recovered on that test run (they are soft like Ulexite/Borax, and turned my hands black when handled).
My late father was a principle designer on the H-MB "mining barge", and "Clementine", the huge claw made to pick up the Russian Golf class sub.
Every time our family drove past the H-MB on the 101 in Redwood City, he'd point it out to us, likely chuckling inside because if we only knew what it was really for ...
After it was declassified, he eventually received a framed commendation from then President Regan, and a bronze medal.
If you want some more history, try to read "A Matter of Risk", it was the first book published after the covert operation was declassified, my father said it was fairly close to actual events.
Wow, guess it's out of print: http://www.amazon.com/Matter-Risk-Incredible-Explorer-Submarine/dp/0394424328
If it don't GO... chrome it. ~ Frank Banks