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US Navy Sells 'Top Gun' Aircraft Carrier For One Penny
HughPickens.com writes Kitsap Sun reports at Military.com that the USS Ranger, a 1,050-foot-long, 56,000-ton Forrestal-class aircraft carrier, is being towed from the inactive ship maintenance facility at Puget Sound for a 3,400-mile, around-Cape Horn voyage to a Texas dismantler who acquired the Vietnam-era warship for a penny for scrap metal. "Under the contract, the company will be paid $0.01. The price reflects the net price proposed by International Shipbreaking, which considered the estimated proceeds from the sale of the scrap metal to be generated from dismantling," said officials for NAVSEA. "[One cent] is the lowest price the Navy could possibly have paid the contractor for towing and dismantling the ship."
The Ranger was commissioned Aug. 10, 1957, at Norfolk Naval Shipyard and decommissioned July 10, 1993, after more than 35 years of service. It was stricken from the Naval Vessel Register on March 8, 2004, and redesignated for donation. After eight years on donation hold, the USS Ranger Foundation was unable to raise the funds to convert the ship into a museum or to overcome the physical obstacles of transporting the ship up the Columbia River to Fairview, Oregon. As a result, the Ranger was removed from the list of ships available for donation and designated for dismantling. The Navy, which can't retain inactive ships indefinitely, can't donate a vessel unless the application fully meets the Navy's minimum requirements. The Ranger had been in pristine condition, but for a week in August volunteers from other naval museums were allowed to remove items to improve their ships. The Ranger was in a slew of movies and television shows, including "The Six Million Dollar Man," "Flight of the Intruder" and "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home" where it stood in for the USS Enterprise carrier. But the Ranger's most famous role was in the 1980's Tom Cruise hit, "Top Gun." "We would have liked to have seen it become a museum, but it just wasn't in the cards," Navy spokesman Chris Johnson told Fox. "But unfortunately, it is a difficult proposition to raise funds. The group that was going to collect donations had a $35 million budget plan but was only able to raise $100,000."
The Ranger was commissioned Aug. 10, 1957, at Norfolk Naval Shipyard and decommissioned July 10, 1993, after more than 35 years of service. It was stricken from the Naval Vessel Register on March 8, 2004, and redesignated for donation. After eight years on donation hold, the USS Ranger Foundation was unable to raise the funds to convert the ship into a museum or to overcome the physical obstacles of transporting the ship up the Columbia River to Fairview, Oregon. As a result, the Ranger was removed from the list of ships available for donation and designated for dismantling. The Navy, which can't retain inactive ships indefinitely, can't donate a vessel unless the application fully meets the Navy's minimum requirements. The Ranger had been in pristine condition, but for a week in August volunteers from other naval museums were allowed to remove items to improve their ships. The Ranger was in a slew of movies and television shows, including "The Six Million Dollar Man," "Flight of the Intruder" and "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home" where it stood in for the USS Enterprise carrier. But the Ranger's most famous role was in the 1980's Tom Cruise hit, "Top Gun." "We would have liked to have seen it become a museum, but it just wasn't in the cards," Navy spokesman Chris Johnson told Fox. "But unfortunately, it is a difficult proposition to raise funds. The group that was going to collect donations had a $35 million budget plan but was only able to raise $100,000."
Correction: Navy *pays* a company $0.01 to a company for the service of removing it and dismantling it.
It didn't sell anything.
Kid-proof tablet..
The ship wasn't sold for 1c; the Navy paid 1c to have the thing dismantled: usually they pay significantly more.
The Ranger stood in for the u.s.s enterprise in Top Gun, not Star Trek IV... Talk about an aircraft carrier going where no aircraft carrier has gone before!
A historic ship both in the actual theater of war and in the movie memories of the general public, in pristine condition and one penny is the best they can do, for a gross weight of 56000 TONS??
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Is that they couldn't find a way to reuse the hull for other purposes. I mean a 56000 ton WW2 era aircraft carrier. If you can't use it as a museum ship, find a way to gut it out (to deter attempts to return it to military readiness), and use it for foreign aid missions, airlift support in civilian operations, etc. An example of where this could be useful would be during outbreaks in the coastal regions of africa, where you could provide supplies from a centralized off-shore location to help ensure quarantine while providing logistical access to the mainland.
is 3400 miles? Really??
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
After losing both catapults for 10 minutes during an attack (that was over in 2 minutes) that was only averted thanks to Pete "Maverick" Mitchell saving their asses, that ship had clearly seen its day.
Florida enjoys using ships for reefs to attract fish. Pump all th oil and grease out of the vessel and sink it in 300 feet of water and it makes a great fish habitat. Why use it as scrap?
They did the same with the old Forest-Fire (USS Forrestal) when it came time to turn it into razor blades....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
What parts of "Top Gun" did RANGER appear in? Any shots that could be identified were of ENTERPRISE, with her distinctive cubic superstructure. See this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Did they shot some interior footage on RANGER, or is this just wrong?
Amazingly, one of the pilots in the F-14 footage is still on active duty, nearly 30 years later. ADM James Winnefeld, now the Vice Chair of the JCS, was one of the instructors at Top Gun when the movie was shot and flew some of the dogfights.
I'da payed substantially more to be towed out to the gulfstream and spent a few years trying to keep it from sinking.
The only thing stupider than the US government is the US citizen, notwithstanding stupid illegal aliens tha are too stupid to make it in their own fucked up countries and think it's actually better here.
What group of slimeball politicians got paid under the tablefor this latest episode of fuckme-imamerican?
Well nitwit, you could have bid on it. You generally need to be a telecommunications maganate before you go out buying aircraft carriers and parking them in the middle of the ocean.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
These ships are not cheap to maintain, even in museum status. The battleship U.S.S. Massachusetts, berthed at Battleship Cove, costs over $1M per year to keep in presentable and safe condition for tourists, keep the lights and ventilation on, etc.., and that doesn't count the significant volunteer work that is done for free.The pier built for it was something over $10M IIRC. That's all for a ship that doesn't go anywhere anymore. It just sits and floats. I believe Battleship Cove was offered the U.S.S. JFK (Enterprise(?) class nuclear carrier), but they simply could not afford to build the proper pier structure for a ship of that size, never mind the annual upkeep.
Just sitting in the water takes a big toll on these vessels. They need hull maintenance and paint regularly. Their hulls wear thin over the years due to corrosion, and periodic corrosion removal and repainting. If you just left them to the weather and never maintained the hulls they'd probably rot through and sink in a few decades.
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
I would have gladly paid the Navy $1 for it, and turned it into the coolest houseboat ever!!!
It's a said day for me. I served about the USS Ranger while part of VAQ-137, The Rooks. She was a old ship but purpose build. Unlike the newer ships you knew you were on a fighting ship as that's how she was designed. I've several fond and not so fond memories of my westpac cruses aboard her. I salute the fine ship USS Ranger and applaud here many years of service to the United States. Well done old friend you will be missed.
Summary contradicts itself.
The summary contradicts itself with the scrap dealer paying 1 penny for the ship, "US Navy Sells 'Top Gun' Aircraft Carrier For One Penny"
or being paid 1 penny to haul away and scrap the ship, "[One cent] is the lowest price the Navy could possibly have paid the contractor for towing and dismantling the ship."
Article reads as scrap dealer paid 1 penny for the ship..."The Navy announced Monday that the same company, International Shipbreaking, acquired the Vietnam-era warship for a penny and would be tugging it away in January or February."
The US still has plenty of pieces of military death crap for you to get your war hard-ons.
1 penny, or $100,000 ?
We, the American People will take a penny, because we are a charitable country...
This guy doesn't know what he's talking about
"Just sitting in the water takes a big toll on these vessels."
Then the answer would seem to be obvious, take them out of the water. Dig a very narrow "drydock" channel for them a few thousand feet off of a waterway they can navigate to, then slowly tow them into it with heavy equipment, fill in the mouth of the channel and slowly pump out the water. Afterwards fill in the channel with some of the dirt you excavated to form it. I can't imagine digging a hole and filling it back in would cost more than all of the engineering, permits, environmental concerns, etc of building a permanent coastal docking facility and the long term savings from not having to worry about mooring, storms, water levels & maintenance should be significant.
Why not sell it to Libertarians or Pirates (The party kind, not the "Yar" kind) so they can create their perfect society in international waters?
XDInd
With the propulsion system ripped out or replaced with a simpler, cheaper system (giant outboard motor?), a carrier would be an awesome platform for responding to disaster. It could provide shelter, feeding facilities, power generation, emergency hospital facilities with isolation usits, transportation (trucks, helos,etc), potable water, and more. This would be an incredible tool for the UN or maybe an organization like Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières.
Could you translate this into english for the rest of us?