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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."
A Naval Museum is 'a bloodthirsty, paper-work ridden, permit-infested, money-sucking hole,' warns the Historic Naval Ships Association.
But tell us what you really think. Don't hold back.
Developers: We can use your help.
...hold out for an exhumer, man!
What if I didn't put them as a Museum? Instead, I'll use them as part of my dastardly plot to steal missiles from a British vessel lost in the South China Sea due to tampering with the GPS signal. Then use those missiles to provoke a war between China and Great Britain.
Do you think they will still let me have it?
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
That quote really sounds awesome if you say it with a pirate voice!
None of my friends and family qualify as "innocent". It's all good.
"Flame away, I wear asbestos underwear"
"In all seriousness, where are those $15 jeeps?"
They were scrapped carcasses back many decades ago. For example, M151s were demilled by being torchcut into chunks. "Jeeps" of the actual "Jeep" persuasion are ancient history.
http://www.govliquidation.com/
is where to directly bid online for much of what Uncle Sugar no longer needs, but bulk buyers drive up costs quite a bit. If you collect military vehicles, large trucks are often bargains, but fun stuff like CUCVs tend to go high. Lots of interesting stuff, and well worth a browse.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
No, the Navy didn't want it because it was very expensive and of limited combat utility. It might have been of some use to a primarily coastal defense navy, but it's useless to a power projection navy like the USN.
The paint locker story reflects Ben Rich's ignorance of the Navy and inability (or unwillingness) to listen to people other than himself. Had he asked, he'd have found that the paint locker is an important space on a warship - because the paint locker is where volatiles and flammables are stored. It has special ventilation and fire fighting provisions, something quite important on a ship that goes in harm's way.
The ship in question, and the floating dry in which it rests are here:
http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=38.069464,-122.101327&spn=0.001824,0.003455&t=h&z=18
The box at the Northwest end of the row, contains the Sea Shadow. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Shadow
Interestingly the ship on the other end of the row is the USS Iowa, a WW2 and Korean War Battleship. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Iowa_(BB-61)
-- QED
Which, as I said, is indicative of Ben Rich's ignorance of the Navy - a paint locker isn't a petty detail. A paint locker is a matter of life or death if a Sea Shadow was ever damaged in combat. It's fine for Ben Rich to sit in his ivory tower and paint the big picture, but the Navy guys have to worry not only about the combat capability of the ship, but it's survivability in combat.
Other accounts I've heard through the grapevine over the years tend to support my interpretation - Rich offered the design to the Navy, which built and evaluated it. The Navy found it had little combat capability and low combat survivability, and lost interest. Rich then got pissed be he saw the Navy as rejecting his wonder weapon.
The Air Force is also filled with guys interested in high technology for high technologies sake. In the Navy you get promoted for commanding things, but with the high tooth-to-tail ratio of the Air Force you get promoted for being a brilliant manager - especially if you are the brilliant manager who brings home a new shiny. Heck, as long as you fight the good fight against the bureaucracy and Congress, you don't even have to actually bring it home.
The Navy already has entire service branch dedicated to exactly that task - the original stealth service. The Submarine Service.
You also have to consider that a power projection Navy needs global range - something the Sea Shadow cannot do without requiring tremendous support while being less flexible than aircraft.
The USN and USAF operate in completely different environments. The USN doesn't have to take out a missile battery to get at given tactical target - they have to take out entire ships. By the time Sea Shadow came on the scene, the USN had already worked out the combined arms tactics using aircraft and submarines in concert to defeat large enemy formations. The Sea Shadow didn't really bring anything useful to the picture.
And no, it doesn't actually work as well as advertised. Something you won't find in Skunk Works and only rarely discussed in the open literature is this: Against any halfway decent ASW radar (the kind they use to spot periscopes), the Sea Shadow stands out like a sore thumb - while the ship itself is invisible, it's wake is highly visible. If the Sea Shadow slows down to avoid leaving a detectable wake, the defenders have won because a ship sitting virtually still isn't sneaking up on anyone. It's being left behind in their wake.
"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